If NCR is so bad, why do Church leaders continue to grant them interviews?
Just last month, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia sat down for an interview with John Allen, Jr. while in Rio (See:
Right wing ‘generally not happy’ with Francis, Chaput says).
I like NCR, because as one priest in my parish put it, “They are the ants in the pants of the establishment!”. Good! The Holy Spirit guides the Church in many ways and one of them may be to make sure our all to imperfect Church leaders have someone looking over their shoulders with a critical eye.
I am sure they will do a great job covering women religious - they have already demonstrated great respect and a keen sympathy for them.
I am convinced that the conniving and instigating that the majority of NCR writers do–excluding the good John Allen–is not the work of the Holy Spirit, but, more often, of the Enemy Himself. God is looking over the bishops’ shoulders. Having some conversations with your acquaintances is different from blabbering all sorts of half-heresies and silly leftist platitudes on a nationally distributed publication. Their fiery tongues–fingers–are like snakes, not because they are rude–they usually aren’t–but because they are supremely sneaky and they implant little packets of addictive poison in their readers’ minds.
When bishops do things that are positively destructive, or are publicly shameful, the dirty garbage will be aired out eventually. It always is, quite naturally. We do not need “concerned Catholics with very strong feelings!” pretending to be bishop PIs; the last time I checked, Inspectors General were limited to the government.
Why are they granted interviews? I suppose it is better to try to control the destruction as much as possible; it’s not like they can just go shut them down.
When their bloggers (Jamie Manson) pine about the priesthood and say, “Oh, I’ve been discerning the priesthood [sic] for twenty years,” or things like that, they feed a massive wildfire that is engulfing the minds of Catholics and is no better than secularism. Then they have articles written that say things like, “The status quo with priesthood assignments is not working, we need something more,” that so clearly mean, “Oh gosh, let’s ordain everyone!” In fact, several months ago their editorial was some Communist-esque utilitarian garbage in which the editors argued that “the lack of women’s ordination [sic] is an injustice” or some other such nonsense.
It is easy to see right through them. Whether they are nefarious or they are just so fabulously misguided that they cannot possibly be guilty of anything is not for me to judge, but their actions have done irreparable harm to generations of Catholics, and that must stop.
Their coverage of the women religious is not, “Let us pray for the sisters that they fulfill their vocations fruitfully.” Rather, they are more like, “The bishops are SO MEAN! ZOMG, if we just had lesbian women bishops the world would be a utopia!” Of course, their first false tendency is that they seem to believe that there can be such a thing on earth as a utopia, “if we just___, if we just ___,” but meh.
So much of their -]literature/-], er, propaganda seems to boil down to a sort of militaristic flower-power Age of Aquarius nonsense. That has thankfully run its course, and it is a dying monster that I shall not miss.
