On the National Catholic Reporter

So the other day, Bp. Finn made one of those announcements that made me go, “Wait. This is news? Didn’t this happen years ago?” Namely, he declared that the National Catholic Reporter isn’t Catholic.

Mkay. Perfectly obvious, of course. And the Reporter’s reaction of an upraised middle finger to the bishop was perfectly predictable too.

As was this note from a reader:

Really?? I never would have known the National Catholic Reporter was heterodox if this pedophile-hiding, lip-service-to-truth giving bishop hadn’t said anything.

As I mentioned the other day, the failure of our bishops creates unpaid bills. This is one of them. Bad teachers and demagogues step in from both right and left to assure distrustful members of the flock that they have the answers and will keep them safe and all the rest. The Reporter is doing this as much as ChurchMilitantTV. And my reader’s note makes clear why: namely that we find it very hard to trust that the Holy Spirit keeps working through the office of the bishop when the person of the bishop behaves like a fool or a criminal.

Recovering (or in many cases, discovering) that the Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church and not any mortal man (including, especially, ourselves) is one of the crucial things that has to happen if we are to learn how to become discerning Catholics.