Friday, March 1, 2013
Why would any Catholic (of any stripe, brand, or variety) support the NYT?
Today, the NYT -- in keeping with its usual pattern of reporting and commentary regarding the Catholic Church (which, in my view, is one that involves providing and generously stocking a forum for people to complain, sometimes in an informed way, sometimes not, about the Church) -- ran this op-ed by Paul Elie (the author of a wonderful book, The Life You Save May Be Your Own), "Give Up Your Pew For Lent," which contends that "if the Pope can quit, Catholics can, too."
Because I so admired Elie's book, this piece made me sad (when a similar bit from, say, Maureen Dowd would have been just irritating). In several places, Elie purports to be speaking for "American" Catholics and about how "we" feel about "our" church, and about the many ways in which ("we" think) it has let us down. So, for example, for "us", "it has been 'all bad news, all the time' since Benedict took office in 2005." Well, this is just nonsense. Re-read Deus caritas est and Spes salvi. Watch again video from his visits to the United States, or his address in Parliament. There's been bad news and there have been challenges, for sure, and big ones -- though I imagine different Catholics would come up with different lists of what those challenges and bad news have been -- but, "all bad news, all the time?" So much so, in fact, that we're urged to "resign" -- if only for a time? I'm sure Mr. Elie is accurately reporting his own state-of-mind, and it is what it is, but it isn't mine, and it isn't all, or -- I suspect -- even most "American Catholics'".
Particularly off was Elie's citation of Flannery O'Connor -- about whom he certainly knows more than I do! -- in connection with his suggestion that taking a "time out" from the Church would "let us begin to figure out what in Catholicism we can take and what we can and ought to leave." I'm pretty sure that O'Connor would have had some tasty and tart responses for the suggestion that this "figuring out" -- depriving the pews of the honor of our presence so that we can decide what in Catholicism is worthy of a people like us -- is something that Catholics go in for.
But, putting all that aside . . . there's no avoiding the fact, it seems to me, that the Times thinks it's part of its job to keep the complaints about the Church flowing and visible (without, at the same time and in similar ways, serving as a complaint-conduit about other communities and institutions). So . . . why should any of us (liberal, conservative, whatever) support it? Even if we agree with the complaints?
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2013/03/why-would-any-catholic-of-any-stripe-brand-or-variety-support-the-nyt.html
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Fiddlesticks. There's been more good news in the last eight years than we've had in a long time. The bad news has either only existed in the mind of people such as those who write for the Times or was beyond Benedict's control, such as news of events that occurred decades ago.
And I daresay Miss O'Connor would rather have given up her pea fowl than be turned into a prop of this sort. The quote is from an essay "Novelist and Believer," available at http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=9114, in which O'Connor discusses one of the chief themes of her entire body of work: expressing the world of belief in stories of, and for, the world of disbelief. Having read a not small quantity of O'Connor, and having read the essay, I think she has been treated most shabbily by being quoted in this fashion.
O'Connor is emphatically not speaking about belief and disbelief, about the adherence to or rejection of dogmas. She is, rather, talking about experience, perception, and understanding: observing that examining the fruitless search for meaning carried out by the unbeliever can enhance the believer's, and particularly the believing author's own understanding of his faith, as well as his understanding of the world about which he writes. Nothing in the essay suggests that O'Connor is countenancing the sort of make-it-up-as-it-suits-you nonsense that the Times routinely peddles as Catholicism.