The anti-Catholicism of the "National Catholic Reporter"

[heyheyhey]

In my opinion, the NCR (different from the National Catholic Register and from the Catholic World Report) appears to be classic type of a wolf in sheep's clothing. It is the most anti-Catholic weekly publication that I know, and yet it continues pretending to be "Catholic." The evidence of NCR's anti-Catholic and anti-Christian agenda is somewhat camouflaged, so let it be dug up and brought to daylight in this thread.

- Why, and who cares? Under normal circumstances I couldn't care less, but very many American priests and religious read the NCR, and it has poisonously influenced a generation or two of priests. When we see the sorry state of affairs in our Church we should know, for our own protection, where the devil dwells. Many screwy things (most of all the disdain for the Teaching Magisterium) originated and/or have been, or continue to be, sponsored by the NCR.

There is only one FReeper, as far as I know, vigorously defending the NCR, so he is rare and dear - let's be respectful to him.

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

Dear OP, thank you for such a straight forward and heartfelt post. I can certainly identify with your sense of conviction and loyalty to the faith.

Humph. We do have different convictions, you and I.

I truly am an old-school Magisterial Reformer. I meant what I said about a "Man being Judged by the Caliber of his Enemies".

I have profound disagreements with Traditional Catholicism, very much informed by the teachings of Saint John Calvin and the blessed Martin Luther.

However, at least back then, Rome knew what it was talking about, and the Protestant Reformers knew that with which they were in disagreement.

I would very much prefer to get BACK to that, before we proceed. As I said somewhat jokingly (but also meaningfully) to Sinkspur --

"A Roman Church" that claims to be the One True Church, and yet denies its own Salvific Uniqueness and Importance?! Yeah, somebody sign me up for that immediately!! I'm SO IN AWE!!

As promised, I have all the cited materials in front of me and will post them in time. No worries. The Church has done the homework for me, been here all along.

Do so, if you please. It would be nice, as a Reformation Protestant, to once again be debating against The Roman Catholic Church.

I can't seem to find her anymore.

She's everywhere... and she's nowhere....

In short, basically it will boil down to if sinky will eat Humble Pie and affirm Rome's teaching whether he likes it or not. At the same time, when you see a book with Nihil Obstat, you can count on it Rome means business.

Well, then -- Do it, dude.

You tell me that a Vicar-General's "Nihil Obstat" means that "Rome means business", and Sinkspur tells me it's "Pure Speculation". What am I supposed to believe?

At least here, in the Orthodox Presbytery, a Presbyter's Endorsement (which is not even "Nihil Obstat") can be Censured if it does not conform to the Confessions of the Church.

And we're not even "the Guardians of the Deposit of Faith", supposedly.

So just suppose that I wanted to come "Home to Rome". What does that entail?
How does one define it? "A Roman Church that claims to be the One True Church, and yet denies its own Salvific Uniqueness and Importance?!" Yeah, somebody sign me up for that immediately!!

I'M... JUST... NOT.... IMPRESSED.

God bless.

You also, and us both. God bless you and yours.

best, OP

[StAthanasiustheGreat]

Don't we live in a great state?

[sinkspur]

Post the definitive magisterial teaching about the fate of unbaptized infants. Today. Otherwise, one has to assume you can't back up your assertions.

[BlackElk]

Actually the libs (Kumbayas, Gaia worshippers, intrinsically offended elderly failed revolutionaries, abortion lovers, same sex lovers, metrosexuals, anti-Polish bigots, Richard McBrien, Frances Kissling, Rembert Weakland, the lavender "rights" crowd, NAMBLA, VOTF, CTA, Radical Nuns Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything, Roger Cardinal McPhony of LA Pagan Temple fame, "small e" episcopal lavender canoodlers and cover-up artists, worshippers of ecclesiastical "uncertainty" and lying antiCatholics who claim to BE Catholic while trashing every Church doctrine known to man or beast) won't be satisfied until the AmChurch has fully emerged as an odoriferous parody of Roman Catholicism, a parody which is really America's latest version of Universalism and hooking up place for swinging singles or marrieds or whatever who want to feel good in having their bird-brained materialistic and politically correct liberalism affirmed weekly by Fr. Lance who will be your presider this week or by Sister Resentful Leftwing Nannynag who will be your parish pastoral coordinator from now on when she is not off attending meetings of Saul Alinsky groups for her "spiritual" and political edification.

[BlackElk]

In order for the National antiCatholic Reporter to be the largest Catholic newspaper in the world (planted axiom????), it would have to be not only large but also Catholic.

Since a birdcage liner (apologies to innocent caged birdies everywhere) or fishwrapper (so little respect for the dearly departed piscene community) that promotes abortion and homosexuality and the likes of radical ex-nun Frances Kissling and the Mad Monk of Milwaukee Rembert (the lavender seminarian and cathedral and truth and Mass molester) Weakland, in its pages can hardly be described as Catholic, q.e.d. the NaCR is NOT the largest Catholic anything.

Overseas distribution is just a phenomenon of these rank heretics trying to go international.

This post is written on the potentially false planted axiom that NCR has such a circulation as to justify the claim. The actual circulation of NaCR or of actually Catholic publications It certainly is not even vaguely Catholic so the claim fails in any event. I also do not know whether the average subscriber is 68 years old, but it seems likely since that is the appropriate age for he average "spirit of Vatican II" phony posing as Catholic. Of course, not all 68s are phonies but their age group has suffered an unusual percentage of formerly breathless revolutionaries overwhelmed by the spontaneity of it all in youth and gargling sulfuric acid in their collective (ooooh!) frustration over the failure of their project of deCatholicizing Catholicism now that they know that it will not come to pass even as they are about to pass in that other way.

[BlackElk]

Bob Woodward claimed that Bill Casey told him all on Casey's deathbed. We need not believe that either.

[BlackElk]

Martin Marty is the head of the left-wing of Lutheranism, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America aka ELCA. As a general proposition, one may assume that if there is an earthquake anywhere near Luther's grave, that will be proof that Luther has heard of Martin Marty and his ilk. Whatever we Catholics may have against Luther, he should not suffer guilt by association with a dishonest left-wing squishball poseur like Martin Marty (Marty squared?).

The Lutheran Church's Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Synod are among the very few remaining actually Lutheran churches here in the US. Disagree with them though we may and do as to numerous matters of theology, we can, as actual Catholics salute the heroism of their Christianity in these essentially Godless times. Like Westminster Presbyterians, hard-line Southern Baptists, Good News Methodists, various Anglican groups resisting the ECUSA nest of leftist agendaed bishops including Vicki Gene the New Hampshire Queen, and many Evangelicals and Pentecostals burning with love for the Lord, those Missouri and Wisconsin synods are fighting in the armies of the Lord against the secular evils besetting our civilization. We should not allow our relatively few differences to be so magnified as to negate the broad areas on which we agree.

It is these good and decent and Christian Protestants who will figuratively encamp on the other side of the Tiber to resist encroachment by the "NaCR pseudo-Catholic" types as well as the various other Universalist and Kumbaya morally relativist virus carriers posing as Christian.

[BlackElk]

Of course, as actual Catholics well understand and some AmChurch enemies of Catholicism as well, the doctrines and dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church are what they are and not what the heterodox would be-destroyers of Roman Catholicism, "right" schismatic or "left schismatic, might want them to be.

The Roman Catholic Church is the Roman Catholic Church and not subject to the "democracy" or the anarchy of its enemies. Abortion is ALWAYS wrong outside of imminent, physical threat of the death of the mother that can be avoided in no other manner. Homosexual sex is ALWAYS intrinsically wrong and intrinsically disordered. Just two of thousands of examples of why the National antiCatholic Reporter is, well, antiCatholic.

The argument that those who are reasonably outraged at the abuse of the common law trademark of "Catholic" in the fraudulent title: National (anti)Catholic Reporter should simply not read it is quite analogous to the argument that those who do not like Islamofascism as practiced at the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 9/11 should not enter big buildings. Whether the enemies are those who libel Catholicism by calling themselves "Catholic" while promoting abortion, homosexuality, Fr. McBrien, Frances Kissling, Archbishop Weakland, et al., or Islamofascisti who fly airliners into WTC and Pentagon,. the appropriate response is the same: Hang 'em High!!!!

While the Islamofascisti seek to very visibly kill the body, the AmChurchians seek the more stealthy and permanent spiritual death of immortal human souls.

[ninenot]

Actually, there was a partial resolution.

You recall that there were two different issues (which lent to some confusion.) First, in the case where the priest deliberately resolves NOT to 'do what the Church does' in confecting the Sacrament, what grace is received by the Faithful at Communion?

Secondly, is any of that grace which IS given to the Faithful under those circumstances a result of "ecclesia supplet?"

As to the second question, I have learned (inquiring of a friend in a very solid Chancery) that "ecclesia supplet" is a jurisdictional item: ie, that a priest can, eg., validly forgive sins outside their Diocesan boundaries.

The first question, unfortunately, remains unresolved. I have placed a few calls and emails to a VERY solid systematic theologian who, for whatever reason, has not returned them. However, WHATEVER graces are afforded the Faithful in the example cited are NOT the result of "ecclesia supplet."

[BlackElk]

How is "bishop" Fellay?

[Barnacle]

Paul and Augustine were Calvinists.

I don't think St. Paul nor St. Augustine ever heard of John Calvin.

Don't you have things bass ackwards?

[ninenot]

Nice post. You've actually picked the correct position re: NCR. It's good for kittylitter containers and recycling--that's about all.

As to the doctrine and speculation: for the RC Church to hold, definitively, that 'unbaptized souls of infants DO enjoy the Beatific Vision' would be untenable based on the defined doctrine of Original Sin and its effects.

At the same time, it is (humanly) difficult to hold definitively that these souls are condemned to Hell without having committed mortal sin.

Thus, the Church MUST state that such souls do NOT enjoy the Beatific Vision. At the same time, the Church allows that the Holy Spirit is THE 'final arbiter.'

It is reasonable to speculate, for example, that the Creed's affirmation of Christ's 'descent into Hell' before his Resurrection included bringing such souls to the Beatific Vision.

But it can only be speculative. We do not KNOW, in the strict sense of "moral certainty."

Thus, there ain't no answer to the HUMAN question, although there is one, definitively, to the question of the effects of Original Sin.

[ninenot]

I'm still waiting for Abp. Dolan's response to my letter regarding the Archdiocesan Jewish-Catholic dialog mistress' mis-statement of FACT on the Gibson film. (She stated, for the Milwaukee Journal, that the historicity of the Gospels was questionable.)

Dolan's burdens are significant. I suspect that the Racine advocate of priestettes is about 90th on a list of 10 priorities for him.

[BlackElk]

Only if Baptiste was Jean Cauvin's middle name. Let's not lose a sense of history so far as to imagine a pre-Luther protestant church, much less one that included St. Augustine or St. Paul himself.

[ninenot]

Dr Steve is being a bit playful. He's a member in good standing of the TTGC (see my tag) and still thinks he has an outside chance to be elected Pope next time around.

[StAthanasiustheGreat]

What was said? I go to school in Chicago, so I miss a lot of the news in Milwaukee.

[drstevej]

John Calvin was certainly not a baptist, then. He is now.

*** Let's not lose a sense of history so far as to imagine a pre-Luther protestant church***

I'll give up the notion of a pre-Luther Protestant church when EITHER you give up the notion of a pre-Gregory Roman Catholic Church OR I become Pope.

*grin*

[jude24]

give up the notion of a pre-Gregory Roman Catholic Church

OUCH.

[BlackElk]

Ninenot: Whatever may be true between now and the final judgment as to the existence or non-existence of limbo, does the Last Judgment not divide all mankind into those accursed and damned and those who are His children in whom He is well pleased, leaving no room for those who, though affected by Original Sin, were murdered in utero and deprived of any chance at normal baptism? Does God allow to the murderers not only the opportunity to murder the unborn (by His customary reserve in directly interfering in human affairs) but also to allow the murderers to bring about the eternal damnation of their victims who had literally no chance to be baptized or to love, honor and serve God? When an adult in a state of mortal sin is murdered, at least that adult had previously the opportunity to repent and to avoid mortal sin subsequently via God's gift of free will or to abuse that gift and continue in sin. I don't claim a dogmatic basis for the question and admit that I am speculating.

OP: You deserve credit for your insight on the Nihil Obstat which certainly is not what it used to be. If the likes of Rembert Weakland and Howard Hubbard and Roger Mahoney can issue a Nihil Obstat, we ought to wonder what the contents of the publication are not standing in the way of. Likewise your Godly nostalgia for those good old days when it was easy for a Calvinist to to tell the actual Catholics without a score card. We will be back. It will just take a little while longer to send the heterodox packing. Be patient.

[BlackElk]

I guess you will still believe in a pre-Luther protestant church, then.