Pope Francis is walking on thin ice. He is in big danger. His credibility is on the line. I do not refer to the controversy about Francis’s appointment of Bishop Juan Barros and the string of unfortunate stories and incidents that followed. Neither is it because of the exclusive story by AP alleging that the victims had written to the Pope about it some two years ago, a letter which the Pope seems to have forgotten about. Archbishop Charles Scicluna has now been dispatched to sort out that mess.
It is true that the world’s main media outlets were agog about all this. But should Pope Francis really bother about the opinions of top-notch journalists and commentators? What he should really worry about are the ‘studied’ (sic) opinions of the Maltese luminaries who populate Facebook. They were irked by a speech the Pope made defending refugees. Francis dared to say that one cannot be a Christian and reject refugees.
Unheard of, the Maltese Facebook illuminati wrote, with great disdain. Then a string of insults and obscenities was directed at the Pope. Here I reproduce some of the milder comments. A man warned that the Pope’s words were making people leave the Church. Others said the Pope is a heretic, or an anti-Pope, or that he despises God’s Commandments. He was described as a mentally ill Jesuit, as raving mad or as a clown or as super-rich, and using golden toilets. Quite naturally, comments about paedophile priests there were aplenty. The crass ignorance and rabid hate of these ‘commentators’ beggars belief.
These same people, who regularly and savagely haul the Archbishop and the Church media over the coals, usually ask the Pope to dismiss Scicluna and those responsible for the Church media. Now they are at a loss who to report the Vicar of Christ to!
The attacks levelled against Pope Francis are very similar – in some cases word for word reproductions – to their regular diatribes against Scicluna and the Church media. The same anger and hatred addressed at the Pope are regularly directed on Facebook towards the Archbishop and the Church media.
When I recently interviewed the Archbishop on RTK he quite rightly described this strategy as one of delegitimisation. This literally means that the attacks aim at making the target of the attack seem non-legitimate. This is worse than saying that someone is not fit for purpose. This strategy is equally applied to people or institutions.
People are continually fed lies by those who with one hand embrace Church leaders on formal occasions and with the other hand stoke the fires of hate
During this process a concerted effort is made to undermine or marginalise an individual or group, denying them the right to express themselves or even denying them the right to exist. This process is an attempt to provide the moral justification to harm the individual or group delegitimised.
The authors Bar Tal and Oren mention several types of deligitimisation. One category is dehumanisation, or the viewing of the other as lacking basic human characteristics, such as by calling the Archbishop or leaders of Church media ‘patella’ or ‘Bovril’ or ‘imbruljun’ or much worse.
Trait characterisation, another type of deligitimisation, consists in attributing traits that are considered to be extremely negative and therefore unacceptable, such as equating priests with paedophiles. This is done to engender the feeling that the world would be a better place without the delegitimised target.
The comments about the Pope, the Archbishop and the Church media are a clear example of a delegitimisation strategy, mainly the categories of dehumanisation and trait characterisation. It aims to lead people to harbour sentiments of hatred, repulsion or disgust at those targeted and to nurture animosity, hostility and odium towards them.
What is happening now happened before but in a different guise. In the 1980s, bullies were set loose in the physical space to wreak havoc and spread terror. Adversaries of the regime were tarred as enemies of the people, thus justifying physical attacks as a fair retribution for crimes against the people. The Times was burnt down after a very long deligitimisation campaign. The Curia was ransacked following the publication of the most vile cartoons and articles about Archbishop Mercieca.
Today things are more sophisticated. Cyber space is the new battlefield. People are continually fed lies by those who with one hand embrace Church leaders on formal occasions and with the other hand stoke the fires of hate. They then say they have nothing to do with the effects of the venom spread by their followers. This strategy failed in the 1980s. History holds a place of shame for those responsible for all the dastardly acts then perpetrated.
This ‘refined’ strategy will cause a lot of hurt but it is also bound to fail in the end. Evil harbours in itself the seed of its own destruction.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt