Kristof and the Church: A response to Steve

A few thoughts in response to Steve, whose recent postcriticizes one of mine.  I did not expect, of course, Steve to agree with my view that Kristof's op-ed was misguided and presumptuous in places.  (Recall here my link yesterday to Steve Smith's post about "wrong-headed friends".  Steve Shiffrin is one of mine. [Insert here smiley-face emoticon.]  Certainly, I hope that Steve's forcefully expressed disagreement with me about this matter does not tempt him to exclude me from his group of such friends!).

Steve writes:

After citing Woodward, Rick says that almost “on cue” (not sure why it was on cue), Kristof, according to Rick, offers the "yes, the institutional Church and its old, out-of-touch, male leaders are no good, but the real Church is out there, in the trenches, doing things I like" story that one often hears.  Actually, Kristof’s claim is not that the people in the trenches are doing the “things he likes,” but the works of Jesus and, he maintains, that the leaders of the Church have drifted from the message of Jesus.

It was "on cue" because, just a few days after Woodward wrote a piece characterizing the Times in a certain way, Kristof wrote an op-ed, in the Times, that (in my view) reflected some of the aspects of the Times' coverage and writers that Woodward had highlighted.  And, as for what Kristof's "claim is", I understand (obviously) that Kristof characterized the things that the people discussed were doing as being the kind of things that Jesus did and that Jesus's followers should do (and they are!).  They are also, though, things that Kristof likes (and are unlike the things that the Church Jesus established does that Kristof does not like), and they are, I think, being praised because Kristof likes them.  (This is not surprising, right?  Of course we all all praise things we like.)

Steve writes:

Rick says, “To be clear, the people in Sudan whom Kristof describes, and admires -- but does not, I think, I understand -- are doing good work.  But, when Kristof imagines himself competent (or inspired?) to declare that so-and-so would be "a good pope" (how does Kristof know this?), I cannot help thinking of Woodward's "rival magisterium" observation.”

I wonder what Rick supposedly gets about the Sudan that Kristof doesn’t[.] . . .

 

I'm not sure what Steve is getting at.  I didn't claim to "get" anything about the Sudan that Kristof doesn't.  My question, instead, was how Kristof knows that the (wonderful) people in question would be "good pope[s]."  What are his criteria?  Kristof's statement that these very good people would be "good pope[s]" reflects a (magisterial?) confidence that he (a non-Catholic journalist) knows what is required of the person whom God calls to shepherd, teach, and inspire His Church.

 

Finally, I realize that David Bonagura was responding to a different Kristof piece (another piece in which the latter invoked the "two Churches" idea), and I suppose I should have made this clear in my post.  Still, the Bonagura (which was, as I said, responding to Kristof) was relevant both for his discussion of the "two Churches" meme, and because he discussed -- in the passage I quoted -- Pope Benedict's work (as I had just done in my own post).