N T Wright, theologian and research professor at St Andrews University, tells the British media a few home truths about hypocrisy and faux moral outrage.
I listened in disbelief as John Humphrys interviewed Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor on Radio 4’s Today programme this week. Surely, he said, like a headmaster addressing an errant teenager, if highly placed people knew about the behaviour of Cardinal Keith O’Brien, somebody in authority should have done something rather than covering it up? I waited for the former archbishop of Westminster, who sounded weary of the whole thing, to come up with any of the phrases that might have stopped the interview in its tracks: “Jimmy Savile”; “BBC”; “people in glass houses”. Perhaps he was too polite. So Humphrys pressed on: the church claims it can tell people how to behave, so surely it has to live up to those standards itself?
The joke here is that it is usually the media that tell people how to behave. Yes, the church sometimes “speaks out”. But if it’s moralising you want, turn on the radio. Or pick up a newspaper. And the institution the media especially love to attack is of course the church. There is a logic to this. The media want to be the guardians of public morality, but some people still see the church that way. Very well, it must be pulled down from its perch to make way for its secular successor.
Don’t be fooled when “religious affairs correspondents” look prim and solemn and shake their heads at the latest clerical scandal. They are enjoying every minute of it. It keeps them in a job (did anyone imagine that the real “religious affairs” of this country, the prayerful and self-sacrificial work that goes on under the radar every day of every year, would ever make headlines?). More: it makes it easier to sustain the fiction that the journalists have taken over as the nation’s moral police.
Until there’s another scandal – in the media themselves. Savile at the BBC. Phone hacking at the News of the World. Try suggesting that these were isolated, maverick one-off lapses, and listen to the hollow laughter echoing round the country. The church has rightly been attacked for hypocrisy. But is nobody else guilty? If the church is hypocritical about sex, the media are hypocritical about hypocrisy.
The whole article in the Guardian is well worth reading. Wright goes on to make some astute points about virtue, moral failure, morality and hypocrisy.
Tags: Hypocrisy · Jimmy Savile · N T Wright · Virtue Ethics7 Comments
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Forgive me, but isn’t this article (including the excerpt) a flagrant exercise of the Tu Quoque fallacy? “Yeah, we covered up child sexual abuse, but what about the fact you guys did too!” Despite the BBC’s wrongdoings re. Saville and the media’s wrongdoings re. wiretapping, that doesn’t let the Catholic church off the hook.* **
* Although, FWIW, the accusations leveled against the BBC re. Saville are of a significantly lesser order than those against the RCC. My understanding is the BBC is accused of 1) binning a documentary which was going to bring these accusations to light because they wanted to do hagiography for Saville after he died, and 2) not taking seriously the rumours about Saville’s paedophilia. These are bad (although there is a case that their behaviour re. 2 was defensible – one shouldn’t act against people on *rumours* they had done something wrong). There is no suggestion the BBC 1) deliberately covered up evidence of Paedophilia, 2) did not forward accusations/evidence they recieved to the police, 3) instead of dealing with accusations of paedophilia, moved suspected paedophiles to different areas, which are the charges levelled against the RCC.
** The implied principle of ‘hypocrisy’ here also seems daft. The media did something wrong, and therefore cannot inquire and accuse others of wrongdoing? Surely not! One of the good things journalists do is expose people doing wrong things, and bring people and organisations to account for their behaviour to the public. *Not* doing that because your colleagues have done wrong things just compounds the harm.
I don’t think hypocrisy is well defined as failing to live up to your standards, everyone does that except the man with no standards.
Hypocrisy is best defined as having standards you claim do not apply to yourself. You excuse your behaviour as legitimate for (invalid) reasons and condemn others for the same things.
@Thrasymachus,
Wright: “The church has rightly been attacked for hypocrisy.”
(emphasis mine)
Thrasymachus,
A ‘tu quoque’ argument is fallacious just if it attempts to establish that ones interlocutors argument is invalid. Notice that Wright doesn’t actually deny the fact that the Church has been hypocritical on this matter. So evidently, his intent isn’t to try to invalidate the argument made by the media that the Church has been hypocritical.
Rather, his purpose is just to show that the media can’t pretend, as they do, to be lily white.
Andrew, I agree, with both you and WMF.
In fact I am inclined to see the argument as establishing a certain incoherence in the position of media critics. They want to impugn the moral authority of the church and esthablish there own, yet the reasons they provide for imugning the churches authority if sound would undercut their own authority, which of course would invalidate there authority to criticize the church for hypocrisy.
I also see him as arguing that although the church is correctly criticized for hypocritical this does not discredit the church or its moral teachings, as failing to practice what you preach is actually an essential feature of human moral development and one actually has to go through a stage of hypocrisy if they are to develop robust character and virtue.
I also agree with Bethyada that the article uses a mistaken account of hypocrisy. However, I think Wright is simply using the definition the media in question are operating with.
Wilson has an excellent article addressing the new morality of the media: http://www.dougwils.com/On-Scandal/snarls-and-snarling.html
One of the greatest hypocrisies of the media in general, and the BBC in particular, has been their negligence in covering any case of sexual child abuse other than in the Catholic Church: rabbis, Protestants, scouts, teachers, hospital staff, council staff, children’s home staff, environments in which we know, through studies that have been conducted, that sex chid abuse incidence was just as high or higher than in the Catholic Church.
Regarding Islam, then, the internal, profound relationship that does exist between that pseudo-religion and paedophilia is well documented:
http://www.enzaferreri.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/there-is-link-between-islam-paedophilia.html
And this is about the BBC hypocrisy and cover-up:
http://www.enzaferreri.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/never-say-muslim-paedophile-on-bbc.html