Mail I Have a Hard Time Sympathizing With

A reader writes:

I read your ponderings on what constitutes a neo-Catholic and found them interesting. [Nota bene: I think she means this and this.] What disturbs me about the post Mother Angelica EWTN is the following and perhaps the spirit there, the one that I perceive anyway, can be described as neo-Catholic.

1) Raymond Arroyo and his world over program should be called the world according to Raymond: he pitches the books of his well-heeled Republican friends and puts his politics before his religion, in my view. He disrespecfully and childishly imiitates the voice of Mother Angelica, the woman who built that network on trust in God.

2) Father Mitch Pacwa has built his own cult of personality around JPII, giving him (without authority) the honorific of “Great”, before he was beatified, someting beyond his purview and dangerous to my view.

3) The show “Crossing the Goal” where old boys attempt to be serious about the role of Catholic husband and father and fail miserably. They also ignore the sad reality that sports is an idol for many a person, for many a Catholic, who will miss Mass to attend a GAME.

4) The general tone of many EWTN hosts, those to whom I refer to as goody-two shoes larks; they chirp that all is well when clearly it is not. Johnette Benkovic is the first amongst these, I believe.

5) The Life on the Rock show that has accomodated the worst of youth culture and claim to be able to make it Catholic. The spiriti there is fun, fun, fun! The reality that many of the teens and twenty-somethings have inherited a corrupt culture and will be lucky to find a menial job in a broken economy is a subject they studiously avoid.

6) Alllowing the letter of a priest: Father Frances Mary to be broadcast where he claims he has left the priesthood to “discern his vocation”. He discerned his vocation when he took final vows, a process that takes at least 8 years. He broke his vows, he needs prayer and those are the facts that should have been broadcast on Life on the Rock.

7) The rumor that some of Mother Angelica’s archived programs have been edited to remove all those statements that are too challenging to modernists or to what I call “ecumenists run amok”.

I don’t watch this network anymore and haven’t for years. It is a sad loss because Mother Angelica’s straightforward responses to the challenges of being a faithful Catholic consoled and challenged me.

Now, I simply pray the Rosary and the Divine Mercy chaplet and I urge all who try to be good Catholics to do the same. I also have to sadly realize that my parish is not orthodox but I believe that Christ works through it and his priests, good or bad. I have to believe that; Jesus can and does trump everybody and everything and as long as I am disposed to receive his grace, I will.

Sorry, but I think if you are too pure even for the earnest and devout folk at EWTN you simply are a Protestant who happens to like smells and bells. Reactionary Catholics spend far too much time retreating from contact with 99.999% of the Church. You’ll just end up sad and alone. I hope you rethink your Puritanism masquerading as Catholicism. I don’t think EWTN is perfect. But I also think they have good and true hearts and are trying to serve the Church as best they can. Most of your complaints are, frankly, catty and small–or merciless and founded on rumor and gossip. The notion that cutting off all contact with devout brothers and sisters on such a flimsy basis as yours is “real Catholic faith[TM]” is, in fact, deeply un-Catholic and loveless, a classic example of the tendency of reactionaries to bayonet their own troops. I’m glad to hear you at least say that you have not rejected your parish. Consider looking for the glass half full instead of half empty. Heck! Consider looking for the glass nearly full in EWTN’s case. These are good folk. Why scorn them as you do?

Sorry if this sounds harsh, but Catholics have to man up and face the fact that the Church is not and never has been perfect and stop falling for the Protestant solution of cutting off the Church in order to maintain the illusion of purity. If you do these things when the tree is green, what will you do when it is dry?