Yahoo Watch: Raymond Arroyo

by Michael Sean Winters

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Everyone is entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts, as the late, great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said.

This past weekend, on his show "The World Over" on EWTN, host Raymond Arroyo spoke of the Pope's speech at the Synod in Rome.

There was much he could have focused on in that speech, but Arroyo chose to focus on the thing that jumped out at me too. The Pope said, "Let us remember all the great powers of today’s history, let us remember the anonymous capital that enslaves man, which is no longer in man’s possession, but is an anonymous power served by men, by which men are tormented and even killed. It is a destructive power, that threatens the world."

In explaining this, Arroyo said the Pope was refering to foreign capitals.

No he wasn't. I will grant that the Pope's reference was a bit opaque, especially for someone as clearly spoken as Pope Benedict. But, he was clearly not refering to capital in the plural, to cities that house governments, he was refering to the capital in capitalism.

Arroyo's commentaries are always tendentious, but this was during the opening segment, when he at least pretends to be reporting news. I have seen Mr. Arroyo twist the Church's teachings badly before, but I have never witnessed him try to put into the Pope's mouth a meaning that was clearly not intended. For anyone who relies on EWTN as a news source, you need to find a better source.

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