\nAn op-ed piece in this morning\u2019s New York Times <\/em>reminds me of my sainted father railing against the liberal media. Back then, as recently as five years ago, I thought Dad was off his rocker. Now that I\u2019m a Catholic, it\u2019s more like, Dad rocked. Witness today\u2019s NYT.<\/p>\n
What does disturb me and what I think is worth taking issue with is the choice of David Gibson to weigh in on this issue and his choice of \u201cauthorities\u201d to buttress his point of view. Here is a clip from the Publisher\u2019s Weekly <\/em>review of Gibson\u2019s \u201cbiography\u201d of BXVI:<\/p>\n When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger\u2019s name was announced as the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church on April 19, 2005, Gibson, a journalist and Catholic convert, was among the throng but not cheering.<\/strong> The author of <\/em>The Coming Catholic Church considers himself part of \u201cthe silent majority of Catholics, who were hoping, praying, for the vibrancy and openness that would herald a new chapter in the history of the church.\u201d Instead, he writes, they got a \u201cpolarizing figure\u201d<\/strong> with a well-publicized past, a man known for his heavy hand with liberation theologians and others deemed to veer toward heterodoxy<\/strong>. . . .<\/em><\/p>\n I hear Dad railing. The NYT runs an editorial on the canonization question and they pick this guy? <\/em>I canceled my subscription to the Boston Globe <\/em>in the past week (don\u2019t ask), and if I had a subscription to the NYT, it would be history too.<\/p>\n And who does Gibson choose to back his POV that BXVI is guilty of undue haste in beatifying his predecessors? If you were Gibson and you needed buttressing, you couldn\u2019t do better than (1) a Notre Dame professor of theology who states bluntly that John XXIII is \u201cthe only one of the recent batch of papal candidates for canonization who is at all credible\u201d (like, you\u2019re qualified to say?!) <\/em>or (2) Hans K\u00fcng, whose feud with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and falling out with the Church is very old news. Admittedly, Gibson did call the Vatican press office for (3) an anonymous official counter-opinion (from a \u201cpapal spokesman\u201d), but after giving this statement three lines, he immediately marshals a rebuttal from (4) Christopher Bellitto, \u201ca church historian at Kean University in Union, N.J.\u201d That makes it three named \u201cauthorities\u201d against one anonymous papal flak. Well, I guess that settles that!<\/p>\n To paraphrase an irate Wendy Hiller in the final prison scene of A Man for All Seasons,<\/em> \u201cIf anyone wants to know my opinion of David Gibson and his thesis, he only has to ask me!!\u201d<\/p>\n Which is to say, Gibson really might have asked a faithful Catholic\u2019s opinion. And this is mine. I believe that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, lived on this earth two thousand years ago; that he entrusted his teaching to Peter, the Apostles, and the Church they founded; that he promised them that their actions would be guided by the Holy Spirit (\u201cuntil the end of time\u201d); that the Holy Spirit still acts through the Catholic Church today; and that if there seems to be a rush to canonization, begun during the Papacy of John Paul II, we owe it to ourselves to push beyond the typical academic and political arguments endorsed by the NYT and other mainstream media and ask ourselves,<\/p>\n \u201cIsn\u2019t it remotely possible that something else is at work here?\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n What do you think? Posted by Webster\u00a0 An op-ed piece in this morning\u2019s New York Times reminds me of my sainted father railing against the liberal media. Back then, as recently as five years ago, I thought Dad was off his rocker. Now that I\u2019m a Catholic, it\u2019s more like, Dad rocked. Witness today\u2019s NYT. The article,\u00a0Pope Quiz: Is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_dmDaLWNETzg\/S1M5hrogzzI\/AAAAAAAAA48\/NSIFR5xnGVI\/s200\/PiusXII**\")
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