Cologne's auxiliary bishop Ansgar Puff speaks out clearly against "fake news" and misleading reporting. One should not accept news reports as given truth, not even when it comes to the bishops.
Neither the baseless statements of ex-US President Trump on alleged election fraud in the US should simply be believed, nor the reporting on possible misconduct by bishops. Cologne Auxiliary Bishop Ansgar Puff said this in his daily video impulse on our site.
He said misleading reporting in the U.S. was responsible for, among other things, the violence at the Capitol in Washington on 6. January responsible because the lie of electoral fraud would have been repeated so often that people would have believed it. "The tragedy: Millions of people believe that. That's how the storming of the Capitol with five dead and a deeply divided American society could happen," Puff criticized.
Acting in the spirit of Goebbels?
In this context, the suffragan bishop recalls a quote from the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. "You only have to repeat a lie often enough and it will be believed". Repetition would program the brain, and thus become an "effective weapon of disinformation".
He had therefore decided to always question news reports and to check them for their truthfulness. This is true not only in the world of politics, but also in the church. Puff: "Repetition alone does not automatically make a statement more true, even when it comes to the alleged misconduct of bishops."
Bishops criticized
Some media criticize, among other things, the abuse clarification in the archdiocese of Cologne. For months, Cologne Archbishop Rainer Maria Cardinal Woelki has been criticized because the diocese has not published a commissioned report on sexual abuse. On Boxing Day, Puff had admitted in his sermon in Cologne Cathedral to "mistakes made by the diocese leadership" in dealing with sexual abuse in the past.
On our site, Auxiliary Bishop Ansgar Puff expresses himself daily from Monday to Friday with a video impulse, in which he often also takes a stand on church and social debates. On the radio program, he prays the night prayer every day at 10 p.m.
Information from the editorial office: In the meantime, Auxiliary Bishop Ansgar Puff has commented on his video impulse and wants to clear up any misunderstandings with an explanation. The statement can be found here.