What are your 'go to' Catholic news websites?

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Polak

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Okay so another topic stemming from a discussion in a different thread. I seem to be doing that a lot, getting ideas for threads from discussions in other threads.

I’m pretty sure we have had topics like this on the forums before, but they’ve closed now, so let’s go again.

What are your go to Catholic news sources/website?

Personally, I try to look at as many as possible. Catholic News Agency is one I often check first. Then others I will look at might includes Crux Now and The Tablet and Catholic Herald (the latter two are UK website because I live there) although the Catholic Herald only allows a limited amount of articles to be read before having to pay, so I don’t ready much from them. I did used to sometimes look at NCR in the past, but having heard about how they refused to take the ‘Catholic’ part out of their name, even when asked to by the Catholic Church, I’ve gone off them a little. EWTN I have also browsed but I wouldn’t consider them a ‘news website’, although they have news on there. I so also check out LifeSiteNews and Church Militant from time to time. I noticed in another thread that people have some strong negative opinions on Church Militant (and in other threads I see that same sentiment expressed about LifeSiteNews). I know those two websites have a general theme, and that is, they are very critical of the current Pope and their articles generally focus on critiquing the Catholic church. Tbh my feeling on that is, if you’re going to see clergy criticised for their actions, you’re better off getting it from a Catholic website, that a non-Catholic one, that may have an agenda to show the Church as bad. I don’t go to them for ‘hard’ news and I do take a lot of what they say ‘lightly’, particularly when I see opinions creep into the pieces, rather than facts. I don’t write them off completely though, as some people have, just because there might be stuff in there that people find unacceptable (such as the recent piece on Archbishop Gregory), there is also information there you might not find so easily on other Catholic websites. I think you can be selective about what you read from websites like Church Militant and LifeSiteNews, without abandoning them completely.

How about you folks?
 
Don’t confuse National Catholic Register with National Catholic Reporter. The former is a news source for me, as well as a very good source for meditative articles/features. I also like the Catholic Herald.
 
Outside of Catholic Answers I don’t really follow any religious website or news source.
 
If anything big happens in the Catholic church then usually it will be posted on here, on social media, on blogs etc. I don’t need to go read a Catholic news source daily to find out about it.

If you want a more balanced/ less biased Catholic media outlet, then Catholic News Agency, National Catholic Register (not “Reporter”), Crux, Catholic Herald, and any Diocesan-sponsored news outlet (like Wilmington Diocese has the “Dialog”) are usually pretty good.

Outlets with progressive bias include America Magazine and National Catholic Reporter.

Outlets with conservative bias include LifeSite News, Church Militant, and OnePeterFive.
 
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I like the National Catholic Register which is EWTN’s news website. I also love The Catholc Thing and Crisis magazine, but they aren’t news sites, more articles, but usually commenting on current Church and world events in a way that is more intellectually satisfying than just straight news. I really don’t like America magazine or the National Catholic Reporter as they are left wing. I went off Life Site News years ago after reading stuff by John Henry Weston. It’s a long time since that so I don’t remember what he was saying, but I know I didn’t like it. Life site news is sensationalist at times (which I’m not totally against, sometimes you need appropriate levels of reaction against such evils as abortion) and tends to get a traditionalist crowd. You’ll see comments like “Bergoglio” on there, which is a dead giveaway.
Oh and Church Militant someone else mentioned, yeah it’s awful, stay well away.

Last word: Two things that are essential when consuming any media or news - being a faithful Catholic and critical thinking.
 
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National Catholic Register, Detroit Catholic, the front page of New Advent. For a traditionalist take, OnePeterFive.
 
Big Pulpit. They pull articles together from a variety of Catholic sites, mostly conservative and traditionally-oriented, so it’s kind of one-stop shopping. I also check out Fr. Z, Fish Eaters, NC Register, Rorate-Caeli, The Catholic Herald and a few others (though these all appear on Big Pulpit frequently anyway). I used to rely on CA, but it has become so political recently that it’s no longer enjoyable.

I should add that when I want the real deal, I go to the theological and scientific studies posted on Eye of the Tiber…
 
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Thanks for the responses folks and particularly @Tis_Bearself for your breakdown of the political leanings of some of the Catholic media websites.

I am trying to broaden my spectrum of Catholic meda, that’s why I try to at least browse through most of the fairly big sites I know of. Whilst Catholics may have different political leanings, we do have one very important thing in common, and that is faith in God’s Holy Church.

I actually didn’t realise there was so much bickering between different Catholic media and journalists. I just saw it recently between LifeSiteNews and America Magazine.

I also note that in other threads, people are very quick to label right-wing Catholic media such as Church Militant and LifeSiteNews as trash and gutter journalism, but there is much less criticism for instance, aimed at the left-wing Jesuit publication America Magazine (that I am just looking into), who have a gay journalist on there that constantly pushes for Vatican reform on gay-marriage.
Limoncello4021 said:
Don’t confuse National Catholic Register with National Catholic Reporter. The former is a news source for me, as well as a very good source for meditative articles/features.
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Thanks, will keep that in mind. I thought there was only one Catholic news site with the initials NCR. I might have confused them. Not sure.
 
I don’t think anyone has mentioned yet Sandro Magister’s blog, now titled Settimo Cielo. (His earlier blog, up until three or four years ago, was called Chiesa.)

Try this blogpost for starters. Since you’re in the UK, you’ve probably been following the case of the multi-million-pound luxury apartment building somewhere in the Knightsbridge or Sloane Square area, I forget the exact location. Sooner or later the case will come to court, though I gather that no date has been set yet. When the bomb goes off, which it will, several top cardinals are going to be in trouble. The one man who could have saved the Vatican from this further embarrassment, according to Magister, was George Pell, but he was never given the chance to carry through his proposed administrative reform:

 
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Polak said:
I also note that in other threads, people are very quick to label right-wing Catholic media such as Church Militant and LifeSiteNews as trash and gutter journalism, but there is much less criticism for instance, aimed at the left-wing Jesuit publication America Magazine (that I am just looking into), who have a gay journalist on there that constantly pushes for Vatican reform on gay-marriage
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So true. Church Militant was all over the McCarrick situation before it was a story. They have like 1 gear and that is exposing modernism and wickedness in the Church. So it get’s tired easily as nobody wants all negativity. You need more sources. You need balance.
 
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I check Church Militant for that reason. They recently broke a story days before the Archdiocese of Detroit. I take them with a grain of salt but I do check them every now and then. Lifesite I check less frequently but not because people here bash them.
 
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We all should be checking our state/diocesan newspapers, either online or print. Local Catholic news can sometimes have a bigger impact on our lives.
 
Lenten_ashes said:
So true. Church Militant was all over the McCarrick situation before it was a story.
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StudentMI said:
I check Church Militant for that reason. They recently broke a story days before the Archdiocese of Detroit.
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I never paid much attention to Church Militant until quite recently, when Jules Gomes moved there. He is an Anglican priest, originally from India, who lived and worked in the UK for many years until he fell out with the Anglican hierarchy a few months ago. He has said he is in the process of converting to the Catholic faith. He now lives in Rome and began writing for Church Militant as its Rome correspondent. He previously had his own blog, called Rebel Priest.

https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/author/julesgomeschurchmilitant.com
 
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Someone already mentioned Crisis, which I love. I’d also add First Things, which interests itself in culture and the arts primarily but not necessarily from a Catholic viewpoint.
 
My “go tos” are the National Catholic Register & Catholic Philly (catholicphilly.com) for local news.

From there, I might follow a link from the National Catholic Register to another news source for a good article, etc.

What I really like about the National Catholic Register is that they will link articles from other Catholic news sites & blogs to their website. So it’s a good starting point for me.

God Bless
 
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Lenten_ashes said:
Church Militant was all over the McCarrick situation before it was a story. They have like 1 gear and that is exposing modernism and wickedness in the Church. So it get’s tired easily as nobody wants all negativity.
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That’s true. If you only looked there you would think there wasn’t anything positive going on in the Catholic Church.

When I do occasionally read a piece or watch a video by them I don’t pay any attention to the ‘sources say so and so is known as/known to’ stuff. That’s just hearsay.
 
Catholic Answers (obviously), Fish Eaters, Reddit (Catholic, Orthodox and Christian forums). The Irish Catholic. Various people on Twitter and YouTube.
 
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