It’s a job somebody has to do
Watching the media and commenting on how they’re doing their job is now the domain of anybody with a blog, and there are vast numbers doing it.
But not so many doing it well, with clarity, applying reason and making the appropriate argument in response to mis-reporting. Carl Olson does it well, over at Ignatius Insight.
I’ve read this February 29th Los Angeles Times editorial written by Michael McGough, the Times’ senior editorial writer, three times now and am still uncertain why, exactly, he wrote it.
This post begs to be read. The LA Times article, as you can see, is an attempt to analyze Catholics in the culture today, which winds up elevating cultural Catholics as the more Christian Church that has….evolved.
Here’s a snip from that Times piece:
“Here’s what I make of it as a Catholic whose life spans the pre- and post-Vatican II church: As the church in the United States became less Roman and more catholic (with a small c), it became easier for Catholics to leave the faith of their fathers and embrace the faith of their spouses, co-workers or golf buddies.”
To which Olson replies…
It must have also made it easier for them to leave the logical thinking and writing of their fathers and embrace the vague ramblings of their “catholic” golf buddies. But, to be fair, McGough is onto something. So let’s try to put it into plain English: As Catholics became less Catholic—that is, less observant of Catholic doctrine and practice—they became more like their non-Catholic neighbors. Brilliant.
And many of them read pieces like this one in the Times and are led even further astray, misrepresenting as it does the pre and post Vatican II Church.
Even worse, McGough labels as “rad trads” those “radical traditionalist Catholics who cheer Pope Benedict XVI when he says Mass facing the altar instead of the congregation and unmothballs the jeweled miters of his pre-Vatican II predecessors.” Does this mean, for example, that Ignatius Press is “rad trad” because it publishes books such as Turning Towards the Lord, as well as Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy?
Probably, but that assumes he follows his own logic, which isn’t really evident here.
Perhaps McGough is unaware that most radical traditionalists have little or no affection for Joseph Ratzinger, not to mention Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Yves Congar, and other Ressourcement theologians whose books are published by Ignatius Press (as well as by others).
Carl, you’re likely way over his head here.
Equally cognitively-confused is his brief take on Vatican II, which concludes with the remark, “Why be a Catholic if you’re no longer sure that it’s the ‘one true church’?” Has McGough read Lumen Gentium, chapter 8? Or has he been too busy playing golf with his buddies?
It might be helpful to McGough and readers like him to state the obvious (though I know you have the link there) that Lumen Gentium was one of the key documents of Vatican II. On chapter 8, here’s what papal biographer George Weigel noted in Witness to Hope:
For sixteen years, John Paul II’s ecumenical activism had embodied the vision articulated by Vatican II in Lumen Gentium, 8-the Catholic Church was necessarily involved with all Christians, who were in some fashion related to Catholicism by their baptism. No matter what they might think of the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church thought of them as brothers and sisters in Christ.
Too bad some of the news media, with reach and influence, don’t tend to have a base of knowledge about what they write. At least some of the bloggers do.
