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RUPERT MURDOCH
AND ROMAN CATHOLICISM
(Updated and Expanded - November, 2020)
On the NEWSCORP SCANDAL page of this website there is acceptance of
reports that Rupert Murdich was born and is a Roman Catholic. This
appears to be factually incorrect. It emerged during his testimony
before the Leveson Inquiry in the United Kingdom that he has strong
Presbyterian roots, and apparently is still connected to the
Presbyterian Church. However, the picture is more complicated.
His close association with prominent Roman Catholic opinion makers and
causes has been well documented. The following was a page that has
disappeared from the worldwide web:
Fox News Channel
TEA PARTY UNITED™, FOX
News IS The CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY.
As originally published, the content proudly boasted the connections as
displayed in the name, with photos of the many program hosts included,
and specifically identifying them as Roman Catholics. The web page may
have disappeared; but the connection of the Fox News network with Roman
Catholics remains readily apparent, and there is no
denying the identification of Murdoch's media empire with the rightwing
political agenda of the Roman Catholic Church in America.
There is
mounting evidence of Murdoch's Roman Catholic affiliation.
A footnote to an article on the website, NNDB - Tracking the entire
world, titled "Rupert Murdoch," subtitled "AKA Keith Rupert Murdoch"
quotes an interview with the subject as follows:
Asked if there is any truth to
recent press describing his newfound piety, Murdoch replies: "No. They
say I'm a born again Christian and a Catholic convert and so on. I'm
certainly a practicing Christian,
I go to church quite a bit but not every Sunday and I tend to go to
Catholic church -- because my wife is Catholic, [since divorced]
I have not formally converted. And I get increasingly disenchanted with the C of E
or Episcopalians as they call themselves here. But no, I'm not intensely
religious as I'm sometimes described." Interviewed in 1992. Nicholas
Coleridge, Paper Tigers (1993), p. 487.
Some further insights into the religious influences on Murdoch's
thinking are provided on RadioNational Religion and Ethics Report -
"Rupert's Religion" as follows:
David McKnight: Well if you study
Rupert Murdoch as I’ve done, you soon realise that
he has a kind of Calvinist sense of mission. He brings it to everything he does. He’s always
been a great believer in newspapers campaigning and really when you look
at it, these are political crusades. If you look at what his mass media
did around the world after 9/11, they really trumpeted and campaigned
and went on a crusade to invade Iraq.
There’s been many many crusades in the Murdoch era. I mean probably
beginning with a campaign to elect the Whitlam government in Australia
in 1972. But then the same style but a different political allegiance,
over to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher where his media really did
campaign in the most extraordinary way, particularly for Thatcher.
. . .
Andrew West: The other thing about
Presbyterianism is that
running through it is a streak of Puritanism. I mean to what extent is there that in the Murdoch
family?
David McKnight:
Well if we can mix Puritanism with social
conservatism yes there is. I mean Rupert Murdoch has always been an
opponent, as far as I can tell, of abortion. And it’s very interesting
today his favoured candidate in the nomination for the Republican
nomination for President, is Rick Santorum who is on record not only as
opposing abortion but also opposing birth control. And Rupert said of
him he has a ‘great vision for America.’ . . .
Andrew West: One of the really
great apparent contradictions David is that
about 10-15 years ago Rupert Murdoch was given a
papal knighthood. How did this reward from the Catholic Church come
about?
David McKnight:
Well of course it’s hard to know. These…there are truths of these kind of things but
commentators at the time—and it was 1998—said that
he’d been a very generous donor to the Catholic
Church. This was almost certainly because of his then wife Anna who was
a devout Catholic. I think he gave a considerable amount of money to a
cathedral in Chicago and several other things, so I think the
knighthood…while Rupert refused knighthoods from the British government
he did accept a papal knighthood and I think this was to some degree a
quid pro quo. (Underscored
emphasis added.)
Whatever the true reason(s) for the knighthood from the Roman Catholic
Church, there is more than enough proof that in America at least Murdoch
and Rome are soulmates, and his
propaganda machine moves in lockstep
with the Catholic hierarchy.
RUPERT MURDOCH AND THE EUROPEAN
UNION
It came as a shocking revelation from the United Kingdom Leveson Inquiry for this
writer, that Rupert Murdoch and Newscorp are and always have been
opposed to the European Union, which is a major path of the Papacy
towards world domination. Nevertheless in his "libertarian"
ideology at least, with its emphasis on limited government and as few
rules as possible, he serves Rome's purpose even in the United Kingdom.
This is documented in the next section on his identification with
"Subsidiarity."
RUPERT MURDOCH AND SUBSIDIARITY
The website SOURCEWATCH makes the following statement in an article
titled "K. Rupert Murdoch":
Murdoch told William Shawcross,
who authored a biography of Murdoch, that he considers himself a
libertarian. "What
does libertarian mean? As much individual responsibility as possible, as
little government as possible, as few rules as possible. But I'm not saying it should be taken to the
absolute limit."
The following observation and a curious comparison is made in a
CATHOLICA.COM.AU Editorial Commentary titled "The trouble with Rupert":
So what is Murdoch's great skill?
As argued two paragraphs ago,
Murdoch's great skill is not going to be found in his management styles
nor his personal sincerity and integrity.
We think Murdoch's great skill is in an uncanny ability to "read the mind"
of the average citizen. Murdoch understands what is called the "lizard
brain" or "reptile brain" cravings of the ordinary person whose main
interests in life centre around "eating, roots and leaves".
Page 3 "tits and bums" sell newspapers by the tens of millions. The
ordinary person is not interested in the lengthy philosophical and
theological conversations we have in places like Catholica — their
attention span is limited to about the 140 characters allowed in a
tweet.
They crave entertainment and distraction far more
than they crave information and enlightenment. Rupert Murdoch really
does understand the mentality of the average Jo and Sally Blo in the
suburbs in any of the major countries of the Western world. Rupert
understands how to feed their needs for "entertainment and distraction" in ways that attract massive readership numbers, or
massive electronic media audiences, and through that, massive
advertising revenues. The question is: is that good for the overall
health of human civilisation? Is there a question of "balance" involved
here?
In many
ways it might be compared to the philosophy of Joseph Ratzinger who said
back in 1979:
"The
Christian believer is a simple person: bishops should protect the faith
of these little people against the power of intellectuals."
(Allen,130)[1]
Rupert
plays the same game in the secular sphere of society.
And he has become without peer at doing it.
Just as Pope Ratzinger seems to believe that if the
"ordinary person" wants miracles, weeping statues and simple devotions
and pieties he will deliver it to them; Rupert has worked out if all the
average citizen craves in life is celebrity and sporting star gossip,
tits and bums titillation, political scandal, and acres of massage
parlour and dating advertisements he'll deliver it to them by the
truckload and denuded forest. It's a great way to make money.
One cannot help but note that here is an excellent description of the
science of propaganda distracting minds from the serious issues of life
- Pope Benedict XVI subscribes to it, and Rupert Murdoch practises it.
In the paragraphs immediately preceding the above quotation, the
Catholica Editorial Commentary states:
Listening to the evidence last
night I couldn't help thinking how much
Murdoch's style seems almost to be taken from the very Catholic notion of
"subsidiarity" — allowing people to take responsibility at the lowest
level as possible in an organisation. Murdoch's management style is very
much a "subsidiarity" management style.
While this quotation is applied to Murdoch's management style, it is an
undoubted fact that his political ideology as quoted in the SOURCEWATCH
article above is precisely in harmony with the Roman Catholic principle
of "subsidiarity." Here may be the greatest affinity between him
and the Roman Catholic agenda, and a reason why the Papacy may tolerate
the vociferous opposition of the Murdoch empire to the European Union.
After all, Rome has Europe under control both in terms of demographics
and the very advanced stage of the Union. Moreover, the Papacy is
inflexible in its relentless drive towards world domination; but there
is flexibility in its inflexibility as pointed out in this website's
essay titled
SUBSIDIARITY - THE PRINCIPLE AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION.
CONCLUSION
This website seeks to draw attention to the danger of entrapment by the
religious power of which the Bible states: "And I saw one of his
heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and
all the world wondered [followed] after the beast" (Rev. 13:3.)
When one surveys the broad range of snares set by Satan in the
political as well as the
spriritual realm, and the exclusive
focus of some Seventh-day Adventists on Sunday legislation - others on
the Trinity dogma, while ignoring the climactic, earth-shaking, events
occuring in the political realm, these words spoken by Jesus Christ seem
to be an appropriate prescription: ". . .these ought ye to have done,
and not to leave the other undone" (Luke 11:42.) Professing
Christians can receive the Mark of the Beast as well by falling prey to
the Papacy's political agenda as by willingly submitting to Roman
Catholic theology.
MOUNTING
EVIDENCE OF MURDOCH'S CATHOLIC CONNECTION
(Added November, 2020)
The
fascinating relationship between the Murdoch family and the Church...
The following comes from Alex McKinnon's
article:
"Rupert Murdoch is not a Catholic, although
he has flirted with the church in the past. In 2010, Murdoch and Wendi
Deng’s two daughters were baptised in the River Jordan, at the same spot
where John the Baptist is said to have baptised Jesus Christ.
But
Murdoch’s relationship with the church is best illustrated by an episode
in 1998, when Murdoch was made a Knight Commander of St Gregory in Los
Angeles. American Catholics expressed indignation that Murdoch, who was
best known at the time for the topless page 3 girls in News of the
World, was given a title apparently reserved for people of “unblemished
character”.
Perhaps Murdoch’s on-again off-again piety
explains The Australian’s curiously selective brand of Catholicism: in
particular, its antipathy towards Pope Francis. In 2015 the national
broadsheet responded furiously to the Vatican encyclical Laudato si',
with Kelly branding Francis and his advisers as “environmental populists
and economic ideologues of a quasi-Marxist bent”. Francis was “blind to
the liberating power of markets and technology”, Kelly lectured, and was
pushing “reactionary dogma” such as “limits on private property rights”.
No one tell Kelly what Jesus said about the wealthy’s chances of getting
into heaven.
But only certain people are allowed to
criticise. The Australian’s Catholic tribalism showed itself again in
July, when the paper rounded up church leaders to condemn ABC presenter
Julia Baird’s exposé of domestic violence in Australian churches. Hart
said “we are seeing many of the very good things the Christian churches
are doing being minimised”, while Brisbane Catholic Archbishop Mark
Coleridge accused the ABC of perpetuating “an antagonistic, one-sided
narrative about the Catholic Church in this country”. The Australian’s
deference to an institution that has long forfeited any right to moral
authority goes a long way to explaining the church’s belligerence in the
face of its own failures."
That Papal Knighthood has certainly turned
out to be one of the best investments JPII ever made in terms of the
publicity dividend it has returned in the Church's favour. Murdoch's
wife at the time, Anna (nee Torv now Anna Murdoch Mann), is a Catholic
and she is the mother of the three most prominent Murdoch children when
succession to leadership in the Murdoch empire is discussed, Elisabeth,
Lachlan and James. The Papal Knighthood it is speculated principally
came about because of a large donation ($US10m from memory) the
Murdoch's made for the upgrade of Los Angeles Cathedral when Cardinal
Roger Mahony was the archbishop in charge of the rebuilding.
The support of
The Australian, and other
Murdoch media (The Telegraph gave George Pell a weekly column for a long
time while he was the archbishop in Sydney) for the Catholic Church has
been intriguing ever since. Does it stem from some particular affection
for the Church on the part of Rupert? Is it more associated with
Rupert's general support for all sorts of conservative, capitalist and
reactionary causes? Is it more a quirk that at one time The Australian
simply recruited a long line of "Captain Catholic" types — for a period
before he entered politics, Tony Abbott was an editorial writer for The
Australian – and what we see today is merely some kind of legacy of that
and not necessarily associated much with what Rupert thinks or believes
at all these days? The other intriguing question
is what the attitude of the three aforementioned Murdoch siblings,
Elisabeth, Lachlan and James might have towards the Church today? Have
they followed more in the wake of their father today or are they more
influenced by their mother, and does any of
that play any part in the Murdoch empire's general support for
conservative Catholicism and conservative Catholic episcopal leaders?
(Underscored emphasis added.)
Fox News Coverage on Pope Not All That Fair and Balanced
Yesterday, while waiting for the new pope to
be announced, Fox News Anchor Megyn Kelly made the comment that “Jesus
elected the first pope.” Likewise, Executive Vice President and
Executive Editor at Fox News John Moody referred to God “choosing this
pope” as if the Catholic faith represents all of Christianity.
Watching Fox News, one would think that the
Roman Catholic view is the only Christian view in America. It isn’t:
51.5 percent of Americans self identify as Protestants — that’s more
than double the number of Catholics.
Protestants reject papal authority over the
church for both historical and biblical reasons.
(Underscored emphasis added.)
Fox News: How the right-wing network became one of America's most
influential political voices
Rupert Murdoch's Fox News has grown steadily
to become one of the most influential right-wing media voices in the US
since it first aired on 7 October 1996.
Known for its
unabashed Republican bias,
pro-Donald Trump rhetoric, blurring of fact and opinion, flashy graphics
and pairing of stentorian middle-aged men with steely blondes, the
channel caters expertly to white Middle America's anxieties and
grievances about the state of the nation. . .
Fox had arrived on the scene just in time to join
the emerging 24-hour rolling news cycle and make hay from Monica
Lewinsky and the Bill Clinton impeachment. "Monica was a news channel's
dream come true," executive John Moody would later reflect. "Their dream
was my nightmare," she countered in a New York Times editorial last
year. "My character, my looks and my life were picked apart mercilessly.
Truth and fiction mixed at random in the service of higher ratings."
Under Alies' guidance, Fox also used bolshy
opinion shows to create compelling, urgent TV, typically centred around
its star signings like The O'Reilly Factor, The Crier Report hosted by
Catherine Crier and Hannity & Colmes, hosted by its longest-lasting big
beast and token liberal Alan Colmes.
O'Reilly, Hannity and opinion editor Bill Shine
formed a trio of tough Irish-American Catholics who together shaped the
tone for which Fox has become known and which was so superbly sent up by
Stephen Colbert in Republican hawk mode: pugnacious, patriotic and
scornful of lily-livered Democrats. . .
(Underscored emphasis added.)
WHAT IS REVEALED IN THE EDUCATION AND CAREER OF RUPERT MURDOCH'S
SON LACHLAN
Newest Murdoch scion baptised
Friends and family of
Lachlan Murdoch and his wife Sarah gathered
at St Mary Magdalene Catholic Church in Rose Bay,
Sydney, yesterday for the baptism of their
daughter, six-month-old Aerin Elisabeth. . .
The Murdoch patriarch, Rupert, stayed close
with his eldest daughter, Prudence. Elisabeth was joined by her brother
James Murdoch, heir apparent to the global media juggernaut after
Lachlan famously quit the family business and Manhattan to raise his
family in Sydney.
(Underscored emphasis added.)
The Lachlan ascendancy: is News Corp heading for a cultural change?
Since Rupert Murdoch’s
accident on Lachlan’s yacht, Sarissa, in January, [2018,] the power
structure inside News has finally tilted toward his son Lachlan,
even if Rupert’s recent visit to Sydney and his role in the Coalition’s
leadership changes suggest he’s still a force to be reckoned with.
Lachlan and his brother, James, have been
running the global entertainment and news empire comprised of News Corp
and 21st Century Fox in a complex power-sharing arrangement since 2015.
But insiders say Rupert still has the last word.
Lachlan is executive co-chairman of both companies with his father at
the helm of News Corp. . .
James, the younger son, was once seen as the
most likely to step into his father’s shoes after Lachlan withdrew from
the family business and moved back to Australia. But the UK phone
hacking scandal took the gloss off James and now his part of the empire
– 21st Century Fox – is being sold to Disney for $US71bn, which would
seem to leave him without portfolio in the family business. The parts
the Murdochs are keeping will be parked in New Fox, a company also run
by Lachlan.
The empire, it seems, will be his.
“I hope my son Lachlan
will be CEO,” Rupert said in an interview just before Christmas on the
News Corp-owned Sky News Australia, as he discussed the future of News
Corp after the Disney deal. . .
The Murdochs also
will hang on to the top-rating Fox News channel in the US and Fox
sports cable channels after the Disney sale.
The Murdochs had also
hoped to keep the UK satellite TV service, Sky, and take full control
but met resistance from UK regulators
concerned about the extent of the Murdochs’ media influence, and
was ultimately outbid by Comcast. . .
Lachlan is said to be
very close to his father. Insiders say he regularly exits
meetings with “I love you Dad,” even in front of other executives. . .
During Lachlan’s time in Australia he also
established some of his own political connections.
Said to be even more conservative than his father, Lachlan gravitated to
that side of politics. . .
Both brothers have faced questions in the US
about the role of Fox in the election and subsequent support of the
president, Donald Trump, and whether the channel’s “fair and balanced”
slogan is apt.
Whereas James is prepared to characterise its
overtly conservative leanings as a business decision, Lachlan appears
more passionate in his support of the Fox News agenda.
“Is the New York Times
fair and balanced?” Lachlan retorted, when asked by Business Insider’s
Henry Blodget about balance.
Both brothers insist that at Fox News there
is a clear distinction between news reporting and commentators, and that
the news content is indeed fair and balanced.
As for the
unadulterated diet of rightwing commentators during prime time – Sean
Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham – Lachlan maintains it’s
smart business.
“There was a gap on the centre-right in the
media,” he told Blodget. “Fox News serves that audience.”
He rejected
Blodget’s suggestion that Fox had become “state TV” under Trump, adding
that media had to get behind ideas and concepts.
And no wonder he defends it. Fox News is the
most watched cable news channel in the US, with nearly 2.4m viewers on
average during prime time. The Trump era has seen
its ratings surge and it’s a big money-spinner for News Corp. . .
Whereas Rupert Murdoch’s exercise of power
within the company depends on close personal relationships with his
editors and executives, with whom he relishes sharing news tips and
gossip, Lachlan and James have demonstrated that they approach
management differently.
Lachlan has promoted women to executive
positions. Siobhan McKenna, his representative on the Ten board, is now
in a key executive position in The Australian operations at
Foxtel.
But it remains to be seen how far any
potential cultural shift in management will be reflected in the tone of
News’s coverage and campaigning.
Will politicians come to no longer fear an
organisation that is run on more conventional lines?
(Underscored emphasis added.)[Arguably, fear of Fox News is
fear of the Church of Rome.]
Power Transfer
How Lachlan Murdoch Went From Studying
Philosophy at Princeton to Exploiting White Nationalism at Fox News
In 1994, a philosophy student at Princeton
University submitted a senior thesis that began with a famous passage
from Lord Byron, the Romantic poet. The passage reflected the student’s
apparent uncertainty about who he was and what he would become after
college.
Between two worlds life hovers like a star,
’Twixt night and morn, upon the horizon’s
verge.
How little do we know that which we are!
How less what we may be!
The thesis was written by Lachlan Murdoch,
the eldest son of Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch. In the 57-page
thesis, Lachlan tried to develop a system, rooted in German philosophy,
for leading a life guided by morality and love. His thesis was titled,
“A Study of Freedom and Morality in Kant’s Practical Philosophy,” and he
salted it with spiritual inquiries. It even concluded with a striking
Sanskrit line about yearning for the purity of infinity.
A quarter-century
later, this document is strangely relevant because its author has become
one of the most important yet least-known
purveyors of white nationalism.
Until recently, the Murdoch who most
dominated Fox News was Rupert, the craggy billionaire who created the
network in 1996. But with Rupert nearing his 90th year, the Murdoch who
now oversees the network — who in the past year has presided over some
of the most racist and conspiratorial programming it has ever broadcast
— is Lachlan. The tattoo-flecked chair and chief executive of the parent
company of Fox News is now 47 years old and lives in a mansion in Los
Angeles with his wife and children.
Lachlan Murdoch
represents an archetype of extremism that
often escapes scrutiny, because he is not an on-the-barricades
provocateur. Instead, he is a behind-the-scenes proprietor. He
doesn’t publicize his views — there is even a polite guessing game about
them. At a recent conference, he had to be asked
whether he agreed with the ideas on Fox News. “I’m not embarrassed by
what they do at all,” Lachlan replied. His general practice of
gilded silence stretches across the decades and has been the opposite of
the foot-in-mouth bluntness of his infamous father.
Lachlan’s emergence as
the Murdoch in charge of Fox offers an opportunity to assess the family
for what it truly is. In America, the Murdochs are usually treated as a
financial success, not as a political plague. Rupert and his
sons, Lachlan and James, regularly attend exclusive business conferences
where they are celebrated like royalty; media coverage tends to be
congenial. The anger that exists toward Fox News
is mostly directed at the network’s on-air barkers, notably Sean
Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, and Jeanine Pirro. But these
far-right shouters wouldn’t be on our screens without the approval of
the Murdochs. Just as the Sackler family owns the pharmaceutical firm
that created and marketed OxyContin, at the center of the opioid
epidemic, the Murdoch family is behind Fox News and
the far-right sludge that has been injected
into America’s political bloodstream.
The friendly narrative is showing signs of
fraying. Earlier this month, Jane Mayer wrote an investigative story for
the New Yorker, “The Making of the Fox News White House,” that
detailed the network’s conspiracy-mongering
and the connections between Rupert Murdoch and President Donald Trump.
As Mayer noted, “A
direct pipeline has been established between the Oval Office and the
office of Rupert Murdoch.” Fox is not just a trumpet for Trump, though.
A recent book co-authored by Yochai
Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts examined the spread of extremist
ideas in America and identified Fox News as “the central node of the
online right-wing media ecosystem.” The authors wrote, “Repeatedly we
found Fox News accrediting and amplifying the excesses of the radical
sites.”
Lachlan Murdoch has
become the new boss of this far-right node.
As with most tales about men in power, there is an interesting twist to
his life. Unlike Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh or Virginia Gov.
Ralph Northam, Lachlan does not appear to be an upstanding citizen
hiding a terrible secret in a sordid past. His trajectory has been the
opposite of the usual corruption arc — the decency was in his early
years, before he slid into dishonor as a
loyal son laboring for the approval of an imperious and reactionary
father. The tale is so ripe with intrigue
and pathology that it seems stolen from Shakespeare. . .
Despite bouncing from school to school and
graduating from a tiny one in a winter ski resort (there were just six
students in his Aspen graduating class), Lachlan, like his siblings,
landed quite well in college. While he was accepted to Princeton, his
sister Elisabeth got into Vassar and his brother James went to Harvard.
These Murdochs were either remarkable students or, as can happen in
families of wealth, remarkably fortunate. The doors to elite
universities often have magical openings for the offspring of the rich
and famous.
Trinity holds a clue to
the political bent that would set Lachlan
apart from his siblings, who are not believed to share their father’s
arch-conservative views. In 1987, Lachlan was a member of Trinity’s
“Conservative Society,” a club that, according to the school yearbook,
was created to respond to “a definite imbalance of political ideology in
the school community” and was open to “those with a clear conservative
conscience.” A club photograph shows five students, all of
them boys dressed in jackets standing side by side, with Lachlan wearing
a tie, his head tilted, the makings of a slight grin on his face.
(Underscored emphasis added.)
The progression of the Murdoch media empire management from
arch-conservative to "archetype of extremism"
reflects a similar progression of Roman Catholicism over the last forty
years, from
Reaganism to
Trumpism. The two are allied. What comes next?
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