Church Militant
In the wake of the presidential election, various media have started some serious soul-searching — as they should. Most of them were so blinded by their own worldview that they never saw a Trump win coming. That happens when you are essentially dishonest in reporting, and biased in your thinking; reality hits you across the face.
When we turn to Catholic media outlets, all of a sudden the the same issues are present. The old Establishment Catholic media — meaning the long-standing diocesan papers, articles in parish bulletins, TV shows or radio broadcasts, announcements from the chancery and so forth — hardly constitute what could be imagined as journalists.
The vast majority of them never had any real journalism background to speak of, and didn't need experience in journalism because all they are are official organs of the hierarchy, dutifully "reporting" whatever they were told. Since the bishops ultimately have the say over what is covered or not covered, and even how a potential story may be covered. Stories coming from Catholic Establishment outlets are dubious at best.
Then came the internet, and for roughly the past 20 years, a Catholic alternative quasi-media has arisen. Comprised mostly of bloggers (some of whom are very good), the alt-right Catholic media is still finding its identity. Do they consider themselves to be journalists, advocates or just opinion types? It's a good question.
There has never really been any big presence in the official Catholic world, or anything even closely resembling a free press, a watchdog on the power structure. Heck, the notion of a free press itself keeping guard over the power structure is a relatively new concept on the world stage.
So the Catholic world now finds itself in a period of discernment over the role of a free and independent press. Should there be an independent group of people dedicated to actually reporting on misdeeds in the Church, or should there not be? If so, how do these groups make their living? How friendly can they be with the members of the hierarchy and the hierarchy's staff?
As an aside, think how differently the homosexual priest sex abuse scandal would have gone down had a responsible independent Catholic press corps gotten a hold of it first. While there are some notable exceptions, the great difficulty is the people doing the "reporting" are too dependent on those they are reporting on — never a good combination.
How can an entity or reporter accurately report the full extent of what's going on in the Church when his salary is directly or indirectly paid by the very people he is reporting on? For example, glaringly obvious owing to its absence from official Catholic reportage is the issue of the social justice scam going on across the Church. And yes, it is a scam.
No matter what good it may accomplish in the area of poverty, it is now a proven fact that the whole social justice scene has been used as a Trojan horse to get into the halls of power and subvert the Church's moral teachings. The revelations from WikiLeaks proved what good Catholic journalists have been reporting for some time.
Yet even with those revelations, not a word of apology from anyone in the Establishment Church — no bishops, no staffers and no so-called Catholic press. Nothing. Nada.
Beyond apologizing, there wasn't even an acknowledgement of decades of wrongdoing. The heart of the issue is that there is no accountability. Those who have access to the rarified air of the episcopate dare not ever publish or broadcast anything even slightly critical, or they are done with.
No self-respecting journalist can operate wearing those kinds of handcuffs. They should either divorce from the Establishment, man up and demonstrate some integrity, or stop presenting them as journalists and reporters — because they aren't.
As we have seen in the just-concluded election, reporters being too cozy with their subjects is bad news and distorts reality. It matters little if the reason the reporters are so cozy is owing to ideological or monetary reasons. Too cozy is too cozy. Period. A free and independent press needs to have an adversarial relationship with whomever it is covering — not mean or rude, but absolutely not comfortable and cozy.
There are numerous stories in the Catholic world not being told to you except by a very limited few outlets. There are bishops being disobedient to canon law regarding the distribution of Holy Communion to public sinners. There are bishops who are out and out hostile to the Traditional Latin Mass. There are bishops who are pushing fake catechism/evangelization programs in the name of the New Evangelization. There are bishops who sit back and allow powerful homosexual clergy free reign over their dioceses. The list of stories that are not being covered is gigantic, and the failure to cover these stories is costing souls.
This week, the U.S. bishops are meeting in their semi-annual meeting and publicly discussing none of this. And not a single Catholic reporter is there to question them on everything. Why isn't the disobedience of bishops a newsworthy item? Well, the truth is, it is, but too few in the Catholic Establishment world see it as their duty to follow up — which begs the question: Just what exactly do they consider their duty?
It was the free and independent press of the internet that brought down Hillary Clinton and called out the "too close" relationship between her and the Establishment media. But there is a much larger enemy inside the Church, and no Establishment media gives a hoot about covering it. It appears that a very valuable lesson from this election season about truth and full disclosure in Catholic "reporting" still has not been learned, nor is there any desire to learn it.
Until the Catholic Establishment — which continues to shrink — refuses to be transparent, Catholic internet media will continue to be the only source from which "the other side" of the story can be reliably gotten.