The National Schismatic Reporter’s Michael Sean Winters continues that non-Catholic site’s onslaught on orthodox bishops.
Here is a sample:
My colleague Brian Roewe reported yesterday on an interview given by Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois. There is much that is – how to put this as kindly as possible – jarring about the bishop’s comments. His comparison of the situation of the Church today in America to that of the early Christians in imperial Rome was histrionic to say the least: Whatever one thinks of Obama, he is not Nero or Diocletian. [Indeed. He is not. Nero and Diocletian were already living in a pagan culture of death. Obama is actively promoting the conversion of our nation to a pagan culture of death.] Paprocki’s comments on homosexuality exhibited a fifth grade understanding of the issue. [What did Paprocki really say? “Homosexuality and same sex relationships have been around for centuries. There is nothing new in that. What is new is argument that somehow that it is a good thing and that it somehow should be celebrated rather than it being seen as somehow sinful.” Is is that MSW thinks that it should be celebrated?] But, what was most alarming were the bishop’s remarks about the sex abuse crisis. Those who criticized the Church’s handling of the issue are dismissed as anti-Catholic bigots. [What did Paprocki really say? He was was asked about a mendacious and nasty jab at the Catholic Church made on TV by David Letterman, namely, “I am telling you if there is anything kids can’t get enough of it’s a 76-year old virgin. Come on, world youth day, or as the Vatican calls it, a salute to altar boys.” Paprocki said in reaction to that: “You ask what else could it be other than anti-Catholic bigotry – well, it certainly is that. What else could it be? It certainly is ignorance. Profound ignorance for anyone to make comments like that. For one thing it shows the ignorance of someone who identifies the Catholic Church and, particularly the priesthood, with sexual abuse. Certainly, we have had our unfortunate share of scandals and sin and the church is dealing with that.” He goes on to say that the Church has addressed the sexual abuse issue well and that there are other institutions that need yet to address it. In the interview he shifts the interviewer’s proposal that “bigotry” causes such nasty remarks over to “ignorance” as the probable cause.] Many bishops have forthrightly confronted the issue of clergy sex abuse, to be sure. Others, not so much. And the Holy See has so far failed to establish a procedure for removing bishops who do not enforce the canonical norms that have governed the Church’s response since 2002. Bishop Robert Finn is still the Bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph. Archbishop John Myers is still the Archbishop of Newark. [Remember that MSW defended LA’s former auxiliary Gabino Zavala. “Nothing we learned yesterday, nor anything we are likely to learn in the days ahead, can detract an iota from Bishop Zavala’s record as one of the outstanding bishops in the United States. “] By refusing to admit any wrong-doing, [?] but sweeping everything under the proverbial rug, [?!? Did he actually do those things?] by blaming the media for its coverage, Paprocki looks like no one so much as the tobacco executives who once insisted that smoking cigarettes had nothing to do with causing cancer. Paprocki is an embarrassment, not to me, but to his brother bishops and his cavalier comments and histrionic casting of aspersions [Look in the mirror.] on everybody else undermines the hard work of those bishops who really have tried to right the wrongs that were done and put the Church on a better path. He is like a character out of an opera – “the gods are against me!” – except, of course, this is not an opera, or even a stage, it is the Church. [Yes, the image of the diva does come to mind.]
Read for yourselves the interview Bp. Paprocki gave. HERE
Make up your own minds.
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His insulting reaction to Bishop Paprocki’s remarks about homosexuality smacks of personal interest.
Bishop Paprocki’s interview was excellent. If Winters needs proof of anti-Catholic bigotry, he needs only to look in the mirror.
e.davison, I was thinking the same thing. It seems that in certain “catholic” circles, the only way to make a name for yourself is to attack the hierarchy.
And now our very own bishop has an advertisement in his very own diocesan newspaper to subscribe to the National “catholic” Reporter. I suspect the “fishwrap” will here, find a worthy defensible prelate.
Woe is me and our naive fellow diocesan Catholics who follow our bishop blindly.
Wow.
MSW seems a tad… drama-queenish in this piece. <:^/
MSM
Hi folks – This may be a stupid question so I apologize ahead of time. How in the world does Fishwrap continue to be able to use the word “Catholic” in their paper’s name? I was on a Church Militant TV video, and they were strong-armed to change their name from Real Catholic TV (and remove all reference to the word Catholic).
Who makes up the rules for one (more orthodox) CMTV and totally ignore the rag named NCR??
Salvelinus, the Fishwrap has been instructed to remove “Catholic” from their name for decades by more than one of the Bishops of KC.
The difference is that Michael Voris and Co. (RealCatholic TV) are FAITHFUL and OBEDIENT, and thus changed their name when so directed by their ArchBishop; The Fishwrap, obviously ISN’T and HASN’T!
Salvelinus, Fr. Z has some posts on that topic, if you do a search you should find them. Short answer is, bishops have asked NCR to stop calling themselves “Catholic,” and they refused. Whereas Church Militant, in my understanding, were asked and agreed to change their name. I believe the bishops do not have any (civil) legal standing to prevent people from using the word “Catholic,” at least without some long drawn-out, expensive lawsuit. (And in my opinion they were not in the wrong to ask Voris to change the name of “Real Catholic” — it makes a suggestion about other people who call themselves “Catholic” that could be interpreted as uncharitable.)
Always important to know what the enemy is thinking, no matter how vile.
If you look into the history of Fishwrap’s founding you find evidence that their raison d’etre is to attack and dismantle the Catholic Church. It’s was never intended to be in communion with the Church. Some of its commentators happen to profess Catholicism, albeit firmly dissenting, and some just are not at all, and all maintain a stance of “critiquing” the Church or delivering commentary based on non Catholic assumptions or values such as Marxism, the dictatorship of relativism, queer theory, radical abortion based feminism a la Margaret Sanger, etc. Its mission is to conform the Church to the ideals and agenda it holds dear, not to spread the good news of the Gospel. It has the word “Catholic” in its name which makes it particularly vile and dangerous as it foists itself upon unsuspecting or non catechized readers in order to gain a toe hold from within the Church which unfortunately has reaped them some “rewards” at great cost to the faithful.
Interestingly, this writer must have some personal animus against Bishop Paprocki in particular. The Bishop’s comments read like pretty much every other Bishop in the country as far as one can tell, whether supposedly “liberal or conservative”. Fishwrap wants you to think that there is something really disturbing about this Bishop singled out for the treatment however its agenda is to infect your thoughts with anti Catholic hatred towards all Bishops.
It did some damage in its day but the reality is that most young Catholics pretty much laugh at this publication. No one takes the opinions seriously and they are not any sort of force for good, for evangelizing, for encouragement in the faith. A real downer.
I’m not surprised by MSW’s partisan ‘journalism’ on behalf of the Fishwrap. He is,
among other things, an utterly predictable hack. Of course his piece would be a hatchet job.
What astonished me was the ‘joke’ from David Letterman. This man has the chutzpah
to throw stones at the Church based on the sexual misconduct of some clerics– after he himself
has been publicly exposed as a serial sexual predator among the female staff in his employ.
I’m referring to the events of 2009, when it came out that Letterman had long been sexually
harassing/sleeping with various female staff. Eventually, there were court proceedings, and in
October of that year Letterman gave an on-air “mistakes were made” statement and apologized
to his wife. If, as Letterman put it, WYD is the Vatican’s “salute to altar boys”, then Late
Night must surely be Letterman’s salute to personal assistants and interns.
I’m not referring to Letterman’s hypocrisy simply to score an easy tu quoque. I point it
out because I think that, as with most of these “Brights” shaping our decadent pop culture,
his outrage over the Church’s sexual scandals is put on only because it’s a convenient stick with
which to beat the Catholic Church. I suspect he doesn’t see much wrong with the notion “if it
feels good, do it”, even when “it” includes sexual exploitation of others. He isn’t the only Bright
whose hypocrisy is a matter of public record. Richard Dawkins, the professional atheist, has
often used the clerical sex abuse scandals to attack the Church Herself. However, he recently
revealed that as a child, he and other schoolmates were molested by a teacher– but that he felt
that the abuse did him no harm, and referred to it as just ‘mild pedophilia’. Whoopi Goldberg,
referring to the Roman Polanski case, where the director drugged and sodomized a 13-year-old
girl, insisted that somehow that wasn’t really “rape rape”. Yet Goldberg has often
availed herself of the sex abuse scandals for cheap shots at a Church she openly despises.
That play, The Vagina Monologues, so often produced by Catholic colleges looking to
polish their free-thinking bona fides, presents the statutory lesbian rape of a 13-year-
old girl in an approving manner. The Brights just love that play, don’t they?
Someday, the sex abuse scandals of ten years ago will lose their effectiveness as a stick with
which to beat the Church. And then, count on it, the Brights in our decadent culture will drop
their ‘fauxtrage’ and tell us what they really think about so-called ‘intergenerational sex’.
Oh, and then you can count on being called a bigot if you don’t agree.
The trouble here as with any article which criticises something the pope, bishop or priest said or wrote is that the person criticising usually doesn’t provide a link to what the pope, bishop or priest actually said and this person usually has thousands more readers than the above. Sterling websites such as WDTPRS and media such as The National Catholic Register will explain what was actually said and link to the original but their readership is very small compared to e.g. National Catholic Reporter, Telegraph, Reuters etc and so the biased interpretation becomes the truth which enters into the Anti-Catholic history and the truth is read only by believers who are ignored because they are Faithful.
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I don’t think that Michael Sean Winters realizes the degree to which Roman persecutions of the Christians was not “a personal thing” or that it wasn’t all carried out by people who were personally like Nero or Diocletian. The Romans didn’t care what anybody thought or believed; they cared what people did, and what they wanted people to do was to follow the laws and edicts of Rome. They also did not understand why the Christians could not perform some actions for the Roman gods and then just forget about it and get on with their lives. Many of the Roman judges apparently expressed regret for having to punish Christians for failing to follow the laws requiring the offering of sacrifices and were puzzled that they couldn’t just go along with the prescripts of what the government demanded. Some hated Christians as outsiders, but others just didn’t get what the law-defiance was all about.
You see many of the same attitudes when there are discussions about including abortion and other actions forbidden by conscience that they want to include under the heading of “health care.” People cannot understand why Catholics feel conscience-bound to avoid having anything to do with these things, why they can’t just avoid what they find personally repugnant and let everyone else be. They just do not understand what they are asking, or why it is a violation of a Catholic’s conscience.