THE WORLD PRAYS.
No, it doesn't. I'm picking on the Miami Herald headline because the Herald was one of the first papers I saw this morning, but I'm sure many papers defaulted to similar treacle in light of the unfortunate papal situation.
I'm sorry to be so crass, but there is a lesson to be learned here about inclusiveness. Not everyone is a Catholic. Not everyone is a Christian. Not everyone believes in God. Not everyone thinks religion is a force for good. A large majority of the world's people, I'm sure, are sorry to see an old man dying, but a great many don't think kneeling and whispering will make things better.
Most examples of this kind of presumptuous writing are less profound than coverage of a papal deathbed. Breezy references to "taking the kids for hamburgers," for instance, assume that everybody's a parent and nobody's a vegetarian. I'm not saying that we must screen every sentence for possible offense to transsexual nudist vegans, but we do need to avoid writing with a smug sense of "everybody's like me."
7 comments:
Thank you. As an atheist I'm tired of reading headlines about what I'm praying for these days. When the CBC tells me "CANADA PRAYS FOR POPE", either I'm not a Canadian or the headline is wrong. You'd think the fact checkers would have caught that.
Incidentally, in Canada's two biggest cities, they estimate that "visible minorities" will make up half or more of the population by 2017. In Canada, that means mostly central or south-east Asian and African immigrants; the Christian component of our immigrant mix is quite low. Despite the news media's extensive reporting of this incredible development, they seem to be ignoring its practical impact on their editorial work.
I think you're right, Bill. "The nation mourns" is okay for events where one might expect the average citizen to mourn (9/11, say) and where a paper might even be taking to suggest that nation *ought to* mourn (the death of a monarch, perhaps). But this is a step too far, especially considering those who pray will be far outnumbered by those who do not!
I totally agree. Although looking through the heds of the big U.S. papers, I'm finding that I like the simpler heds a lot more than the ones that try to pack some sort of emotional wallop. Yeah, "Requiem" or "The People's Pope" sound nice, but for me it was all summed up nicely with "John Paul II dies" (I think that was the Chicago Tribune's).
I tend to lean towards the idea that it is a figurative term, just as if a nation's leader said so-and-so nation was praying for someone, that leader would not literally mean every citizen.
But I think "The World Prays" is just a bad headline regardless; it's vague as to make it meaningless. Even something like "The World Remembers" would be better, just because it implies noticing the pope's passing, something that certainly most people did at some point.
A Roman Catholic here (ooh, scary!) who could also stand to see less presumptuous headlines than "The World Prays," since it patently does not.
What we have here is secular media trying to address something that has deep meaning to (those strange and inexplicable) religious people. It's no surprise that they will misstep in what is doubtless an honest attempt to be respectful to Catholic feeling (for a change).
"Pope John Paul II Dies" was a fine headline.
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