Guest Opinion: Why The New York Times Assault On the Catholic Church?

By David Hartline
7/12/2010
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

With all of her problems she perseveres and can't lose because Christ said she couldn't

The Church is gaining in the world, and unlike the dismantling taking place in many liberal Protestant churches, no such white flag is being raised from atop St Peter's in Vatican City. In my book, "The Tide is Turning Toward Catholicism", I note that in addition to the young embracing the teachings of the Church along with her devotions, the Church has experienced an uptick in vocations in the US and an onslaught of vocations in Asia and Africa. These seminarians and young priests share little in common with the dissidents that often taught at Catholic seminarians in the 1960s and 1970s.

David Hartline.

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COLUMBUS, OH (Catholic Online) - The New York Times full-fledged assault against the Catholic Church has many mystified and angered, some of whom haven't exactly been on the A list of orthodox minded Catholics such as Ken Woodward, the former Religion Editor of Newsweek Magazine. Woodward has said that New York Times Editor Bill Keller often referred to himself as a "collapsed Catholic." (If ever there was a hint.) Why now many have wondered, and why has a noted and respected writer like Laurie Goodstein taken part in such an odious display of yellow journalism?

Perhaps it is because the Church hasn't crumbled even with the devastating nature of the Abuse Scandal. Perhaps it is because unlike so many churches that have changed their doctrine, the Catholic Church remains true to the teachings of Christ, the Apostles and the 265 subsequent popes since St Peter. Perhaps it is because Pope Benedict XVI still uses the term, "The Dictatorship of Relativism" that so angers the Catholic Left. The first example of this being the theologically liberal lightning rod Father Richard O'Brien; who during CBS News' live coverage of the last Conclave Mass, presided over by then Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, stated that it is safe to say he would not become pontiff. Father McBrien went on to say, that if elected pontiff "Catholics would head to the margins of the Church," in response to Cardinal Ratzinger's homily about the Dictatorship of Relativism.

In my book, "The Tide is Turning Toward Catholicism", I note that in addition to the young embracing the teachings of the Church along with her devotions, the Church has experienced an uptick in vocations in the US and an onslaught of vocations in Asia and Africa. These seminarians and young priests share little in common with the dissidents that often taught at Catholic seminaries in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, these young men have raised the ire of not only the dissidents but those in the Church, including even some in the hierarchy who were influenced by those misguided souls from the Spirit of 1968.

Has the New York Times written about these young priests and seminarians? Has the New York Times written about the growing number of young women in orthodox minded new Catholic orders like the Sisters of Mary of the Eucharist or the Nashville Dominicans who wear the habit and joyfully take part in devotions that many of the older pants suit sisters long ago left behind? In the case of the Sisters of Mary of the Eucharist, their biggest problem is in twelve short years they have outgrown their motherhouse, something they didn't foresee happening for decades. No, the New York Times has not written about these events. Instead, they have seen fit to excoriate Pope Benedict XVI, a man they once praised for his active role in attacking the Abuse Scandal when he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Many of the articles are so devoid of facts that they read like a homemade publication one can read while visiting a leftist college campus or some urbane, politically left wing enclave.

The New York Times has seen fit to write favorably about liberal Protestant churches, their leftist voice on politics and liberal theological positions on doctrine, even though they are in a statistical freefall. When then presiding Episcopal Bishop of the United States, Katharine Jefferts Schori insinuated that Episcopalians were more intelligent than Catholics because they were environmentally conscious - unlike the Catholic Church's adherents who were pro life in their persuasion - nothing was made of it by the New York Times and much of their mainstream media counterparts. Only the burgeoning Catholic blogosphere cried foul over these remarks.

Already in 1934 the future Bishop Fulton Sheen in his book; "Life of a Galilean" outlined the disparate state of religion in the western world. Modernism was already taking hold of some Catholic thinkers, and especially so in many Protestant seminaries. GK Chesterton (who actually met and was quite impressed with then Father Sheen) spoke of this phenomenon even earlier. In 1907, Pope Pius X spoke extensively on the disastrous consequences of modernism. Yet, like Pope Benedict XVI of today, Pope Pius X was treated with scorn and derision by the self appointed intelligentsia. Sadly it seems many modern era pontiffs have received the same treatment for all too often predicting events that would soon occur.

The embattled Pope Paul VI warned of out of control sexual promiscuity and abortion when he issued his famous encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968, that fateful year when Europe and America experienced upheaval from forces that all too often wanted to destroy religion's place in the modern world. Sadly, it was all too often that some inside the Church seemed smitten with these modern day intellectual versions of the Goths and Visigoths. Perhaps ...

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1 - 7 of 7 Comments

Pax Christi of Bakersfield, CA
2 years ago
I once was a staunch Democrat as I had a soft spot for the marginalized folks. I still do, but the scales on my eyes began falling off once I began taking my Catholic faith seriously in the mid-'90s by signing up for a cable package that included EWTN, subscribing to Catholic periodicals and then devouring the news involving the faith on the Internet. That was then I started to wake up to what the Democratic Party is all about, which is to say the "Party of Death" that was the title of Ramesh Ponnuru's book.

It quickly became clear that the Republican Party was significantly more hospitable to Catholic values, as Dave Hartline shows why. After all, why is it that the U.S. Catholic bishops have been cracking down on mostly on those from the left for going down the morally bankrupt path in most cases? Those on the right, if anything, have hewed more to Catholic values while those on the left inexorably keep on going further left toward a deadly plunge over the cliff.
K.C.Thomas
2 years ago
I wish we have many David Hartlines to expose our catholic views and to analyse the hatred of our enemies
Bulbajer
2 years ago
Pete Brady, I admit, no. I guess I was just mad at the fact that this site contradicts itself; Deacon Fournier has said that neither conservatism or liberalism are what we need, but then there are articles like these which focus solely the faults of liberalism. Don't mind me, I'm still trying to believe that media can be unbiased.
Pete Brady
2 years ago
Bulbajer: Perhaps it would indeed help to clearly present the defining characteristics of what makes a person a "conservative" or a "liberal." No generalizations, just the things that make one a "conservative" or a "liberal." Can it be done?
jo
2 years ago
Liberals are the ones who easily succumb to the temptations of the world and when pitted against Catholics, they have much to compromise.And the press led by NYT attack the RCC thinking that one day it can be brought down.This hidden attack on then Church can be overcome by patience and sacrifices.
Nino Baldino
2 years ago
NYTimes attacks the RCC..shocking...not really boys and girls..in the play Arsenic and ole Lace...a black comedy about two ole biddies running a boarding house ,inviting lonely old men in then when they get bored with the gents,they poison them and call for their insane brother who thinks he is TeddY Roosevelt to bury them down in the celler..anyway in that cute play (they end up murdering some 17 guests)Peter Lorre portrays Dr.Albert Einstein,,yes and as a confused plastic surgeon kinda like Granpa Munester was ,anyway why did the establishment hate the good doctor...in the Dec.23 edition of Time Mag..Dr.Einstein had his letter published that extolled ,complimented the Catholic Church as the only institution in all Europe that is fighting nazism!!!!! He ends with the words that what he once hated he now loves and respects...and so he was paid back for that by being put into this outrageous hate play...........................Nino
Bulbajer
2 years ago
I agree that the New York Times is becoming anti-Catholic. I think it's partly because anti-Catholicism is still one of the major prejudices in America partly because the New York Times happens to be liberally-minded in many ways. Ah, but why do so many of the Catholics who recognize this generalize so much? From reading this article you'd think that the Church's official position in politics is the right. You are just as bad the liberals you hate if you think that being conservative is being Catholic/Christian.
Let me explain. Liberals like me have their faults. Most U.S. liberals today are pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-contraception, and pro-other things that the Catholic Church has spoken out against. We tend to picture conservatives as either wealthy, narrow-minded, change-abhorring bigots or hillbilly, narrow-mined, change-abhorring bigots. You know - conservatives trust corporations more than their next-door neighbor, they think gays aren't people; the usual nonsense. After spending a lot of time studying "the enemy," I realize you guys aren't that bad, and that we have a lot in common.
And then conservatives have their faults. I do not think it's too much of an exaggeration to say that most U.S. conservatives are pro-business, environmental skeptics, anti-feminist (I mean real feminism, not radical feminism), among other things the Church has spoken out against. You tend to picture us liberals as rich, narrow-minded, tradition-abhorring, socialistic atheists. Liberals admire Stalin, they hate Jesus; the usual nonsense.
At least, that's what generalizers think. Liberal generalizers think that, because their strongest convictions are liberal, that liberalism must be better than conservatism; that makes it much easier to focus exclusively on issues on which the Church and mainstream conservatism are divided (for example, the environment) and ignore the fact that most conservatives are just as loving, peaceful, and human as most liberals are. But it works the other way too; conservative generalizers tend to spend too much time focusing on the errors of liberation theology and moral relativism than the errors of traditionalism and ultra-orthodoxy.
Maybe I've just spent the last half-hour complaining over nothing. I hope people will take this as a protest against generalization and partisanship.

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