The opening to Adele Stan's report on the Vatican's decision to bring Fox into its house says it all:
Let's say you're at the top of a large, right-wing institution; one with such a patriarchal bent that only men are allowed into leadership. Imagine that, in recent times, your once-powerful worldwide conglomerate is losing oodles of clout, thanks in part to media coverage of the scandals that have beset you: the leaking of your CEO's private correspondence to a reporter, that pesky decades-long epidemic of child sexual abuse by your branch managers, mutiny amid the ranks of the service wing of your organization, and the perception that you have played dirty with one of your competitors.
Where would you find a really savvy player in the media world with legendary message discipline on a range of issues that serve the interests of the moneyed, exclusionary, patriarchal elite? Who ya gonna call?
Why, Fox News, of course.
Why Fox, in particular? For Stan, there's significant overlap between the "brutal agenda" the current pope has pursued in his direction of the church, and Fox's "brutal political ideology." Like those running the Vatican, the leaders of News Corporation, Fox's parent company, are "secretive, vindictive and sneaky."
Both organizations trust in furthering their "brutal agenda" by "snookering" people.
Throw in the Opus Dei thing--the cilices and radical, gross subordination of men to women, the secrecy, misogyny, and elitism--and the Vatican thinks it has a winner in Fox-cum-Opus Dei journalist Greg Burke.
Stress: the Vatican thinks it has a winner.
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