When ainthood trumps Sainthood

11th July 2011   ·   1 Comment

By Fr. Jerome LeDoux
The Louisiana Weekly Contributing Columnist

Princess Diana’s star-crossed life was cut short by a rending automobile accident on August 31, 1997. Ironically, media coverage of her funeral on September 6 almost completely blotted out accounts of the September 5 death of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a woman whom Diana had met several times and whose work she admired.

The princess would have been to­tally mortified to see and hear that the paparazzi and other news hounds pushed Mother Teresa out of the way to get at the worldly baubles of her royal fun­eral. For all Diana’s failings, her sensibilities lay with hard-working, prayerful, austere Mo­ther Teresa whose total time and energy were given to the helpless.

With their usual shameless show of crass mercenary motives in their every move, the media convicted themselves of vain, money-related rating sweeps. Would anyone be deluded for a minute into thinking that the media had Diana’s and her family’s well-being in mind? Whether a given coverage made more money was their sole deciding motive. Naturally, as always, the main determining factor of how much money the media made was how many viewers tuned into the royal funeral extravaganza. Also predictably, many exaggerations and outright lies were told in the ensuing head-counting of viewers. After all, the head count in turn determines how much money advertisers pay per minute. Who says love makes the world go round? While that is true in refined and spiritual circles, isn’t it rather money/power that is the final word and factor in worldly, selfish circles, interests, aspirations and daily transactions? “Show me the money/power!” still reigns supreme. Together with that, we still have to say, “Can’t buy me love!”

Some folks on both sides of the pond were basking in the extravagance of it all. In Great Britain, a surge in electricity demand suggested a record for television ratings was in the making. Early indications of the royal wedding television audience leaned toward a viewership forecast somewhere well beyond 20 million, or a bit more than one of three Brits.

Invariably, some stretching of the truth tends to creep into network claims about the number of TV viewers. So, how far did lies reach into the hard number of those who actually viewed the funeral services of Princess Diana? Which rating system is reliable?

For political and chauvinistic reasons, the British surprised no one by anticipating huge numbers of TV viewers for Princess Diana’s funeral dancing in their heads. Oddly, looking back, 32.1 million viewers watched Princess Diana’s funeral compared to 28.4 million for her wedding to Prince Charles, according to the British Film Institute.

Almost 14 years later, TV folks are now toting up other kinds of viewers. How many more stream­ed the nuptials over the internet tubes? Enough to add some millions to the global scores of millions who watched the Char­les/Diana nuptials on TV. Considering all kinds of viewing facilities, some sources were predicting three billion viewers.

Claims that two billion people viewed the recent royal nuptials are disputed by cooler heads, one of whom said, “I too am skeptical that close to one-third of the total world population of 6.7 billion, many of whom do not own a TV set, watched the wedding.”

Coming down to earth, according to the Nielsen ratings, we know that 14.2 million American households tuned in to see Diana’s wedding, less than the 18.6 million American households (22.77 million out of 310 million Americans) that watched the more recent royal wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton.

However, in Britain, the recent royal nuptials had inferior ratings (27 million) to the July 29, 1981 Charles and Diana wedding in Britain (28.4 million). Go figure.

The hard truth is that no one will put up the money to validate the numbers of international viewers because there are no international commercials to pay the expenses of having it done. Whether it concerns something local, regional, national, international or truly global, money/power/prestige/fame/celebrity talks. Everything else walks.

In order to remotely approach any of those outsize figures being bandied about, you would have to get away from a purely television discussion and fall back on computer folks who do international streaming. Even then, how many people in less prosperous nations own a computer when so many have to forage for food?

This is beginning to approximate the kind of discussion we should have in speaking about the life and times of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Since money is actually the bottom line in everything, that is precisely why the wretched of the world are in their terrible situation and why people like Mother Teresa must come along and help them.

If you are not worn out yet, factor in the beatification of Pope John Paul II, and you will have a realistic picture of where we are going with all this. Is it possible that ainthood trumps sainthood? Yes it does beyond all doubt in worldly circles, even though a formidable live throng of 1.5 million souls viewed the Pope’s Mass of beatification.

Adding to that live audience on foot, how many others around the world tuned in to the televised version of Blessed John Paul II’s big day in Rome? Nielson and all the other counters agree that the Pope’s viewers fell quite short compared to the royalty’s. Without judging the personal lives of Charles, Diana, William and Kate, we can compare the baubles and trinkets surrounding them to what Ecclesiastes 1:1 says about empty human values, “Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity!” With regularity, the media and their feckless viewers clearly choose ainthood over sainthood.

We are not even remotely suggesting class warfare here. We covet neither the goods nor the power nor the fame of the rich. Ainthood sounds bad. Eccle­siastes even calls it vanity. Still, we must pray that William and Kate become one in love.

Ainthood gives us the invert message that we are aliens here, tenant farmers who use things but own nothing, for we have no citizenship here on earth, but only in heaven.

This article originally published in the July 11, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.