Catholic News Service Provides a Followup Article...

...of the recent National Catholic Reporter hit piece on "conservative Catholics" undermining "Faithful Citizenship".

Karl Keating, in his most recent "E-Letter", commented on "Faithful Citizenship":

There were two chief problems with "Faithful Citizenship."
First, at 8,000 words it was verbose. If you want people to take action, give them a guide, not a treatise.
Second, "Faithful Citizenship" was not structured as a voter's guide anyway.

A voter's guide helps voters narrow down their choices. Some guides name names and recommend particular candidates. The "Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics" didn't do that. Instead, it gave the Church's official teaching on five key moral issues and left it to readers to apply those teachings in the voting booth.

"Faithful Citizenship" was not designed to help voters eliminate unacceptable candidates. It did not indicate what to do if a candidate was wrong on one issue (such as abortion) and right on another issue (such as housing, assuming there is a "right" position for Catholics on such an issue). It did not make clear whether some issues were to be given more weight than other issues.

Instead of being a true voter's guide, "Faithful Citizenship" was a backgrounder, useful for small-group discussions but not for deciding how to cast a ballot.

Not only these, but the fact that this document comes from an administrative committee, and not the body of Bishops, is something which must be acknowledged as well.

Getting back to the CNS article, we now find that William A. Dinges, a professor of religious studies at The Catholic University of America, in his recent address at a national gathering of about 100 diocesan social action leaders stated that the U.S. Catholic community reached a new peak in the 2004 election season and that a

"more ominous" element of the election-year divisions was the "vitriolic and escalating" rhetoric and "uncivil behavior, characterized by confrontation, harassment and attempts at intimidation."

I'm not certain where these cases of harassment and intimidation occurred but I do not recall any stories of these "ominous" elements engaging in any such behavior, although I will admit it that such things could have happened. That being said, however, I believe that "vitriolic rhetoric" was used, to a large extent, by those who did their utmost to blur the distinctions of intrinsically evil acts with those issues for which legitimate disagreements of positions can occur. There were a number of email groups which were especially hostile to anyone who tried to 'dialogue' with them.

Mr. Dinges goes on to state:

"We have a 'blue faith,' if you will, and a 'red faith' as much as a community of faith. In significant ways our church remains a house divided against itself as interest groups, ideological factions and in some cases individual Catholics compete to control the narrative of the Second Vatican Council, to act as a de facto magisterium (teaching authority), to fill or exploit leadership voids and to define Catholicism on their own terms or in terms of single-issue politics."

Once again, while his statement(s) are partially correct (it appears that he sees things upside down or from an inverted perspective), he again points his finger at the wrong group of people. Those who are faithful (which I assume to be those of the "red faith") to the teachings of the Church are not the cause of the dissension within the Church.

The Second Vatican Council has been misinterpreted, it seems to me, not by those of the "red faith" but by those of the "blue faith", generally speaking. And to be blunt, the Magisterium "controls the narrative of the Second Vatican Council", despite attempts by those who seek to undermine or subvert its teachings. I have yet to hear of a faithful, orthodox group trying to "nuance" the documents of the Second Vatican Council to promote or teach things which are not in the documents or contrary to the perennial teachings of the Church.

He said his talk focused on Catholic groups of the right because it was from there, not the center or the left, that the social action leaders experienced opposition and contentious challenge during the election campaign.

Perhaps some people "from the right" questioned the social action leaders' fidelity to the Church?

Perhaps the time was ripe for Catholics to exercise the graces and gifts they received at Baptism and Confirmation to fight heterodoxy?

Perhaps this demand by the faithful for the fullness of the truth was, after so many years of apathy or fear, unexpected by the social action leaders.

Perhaps, concerned and faithful Catholics are becoming tired of the ambiguity and fluff from those who have engaged in 'teaching' their interpretations rather than what the Church teaches?

Dinges said the polarization among Catholics "mirrors polarization in our country at large, along with the general climate of rancor and incivility, coarseness, recrimination and name-calling" found in much political and social debate.

Again, I suspect that any instances of "name-calling" or such by any faithful Catholic group was extremely rare, and more than likely non-existent. However, one only need look at other groups (the "blues") to see the incivility, name-calling, and other acts of verbal violence...many examples could be cited, which is more than that which Mr. Dinges or CNS provides.

It seems to me that Catholic News Service, once again, does all of us a disservice by publishing this article.