Over the last several years I have noticed increasing numbers of a certain kind of professional Catholic. These are people engaged in Catholic media in a wide variety of formats and specializing in a broad range of subject areas. They all, however, share one thing in common: Each has pretty much spent his or her career studiously avoiding one particular, serious problem within the American branch of the Catholic Church. This problem is not abortion. It is not the shameful rate of divorce among Catholics. It is not even the push for same-sex “marriage,” so called.
No, the problem these people with the EWTN television shows, the radio microphones and the book publishing contracts all treat like a third rail is the scandal of American bishops who have betrayed the Church and have effectively left their flocks to wander in the wilderness. And it is not just those bishops who have done so in the past, but those who continue to do so today.
I was reminded of this situation this morning while listening to Teresa Tomeo’s Catholic Connection show on Ave Maria Radio. The subject was the Obama administration’s recent health care mandate and what our reaction as faithful, lay Catholics ought to be. Early on in the show Teresa offered the following, obviously unscripted comments on that topic (my transcription from the podcast beginning at the 10:55 mark) …
This is our time to stand up and back up the bishops and be their foot soldiers and engage the culture in a loving way. I can’t stress this enough. And, again, as I said yesterday on my show when I had a long talk with Al Kresta and Nick Thomm about this, I’m hearing, still, a lot of angst with people saying, you know, it’s the bishops’ fault we’re in this mess in the first place, yadda, yadda, yadda, because of the lack of teaching over the years.
If you have that frustration, again I’m going to caution you greatly, that that is very damaging and that is also what the devil wants. We are under such grave attack right now from the culture, from our own administration, and now we’re going to attack each other and eat our young?
You know, Al and I have certainly not been shy in mentioning when we think there’s issues, when there’s lack of teaching. EWTN is not shy about that. Mother Angelica began this network because she saw what was happening in this country, that she needed to re-catechize a country and prevent it from falling over into the deep end completely.
We are here to evangelize but we are also here to catechize and to re-catechize and it does no one any good to spew any anger or frustration we have toward what has happened in the past.
Now, do we learn from our mistakes? Absolutely. Do we do things differently and better? Absolutely. But now is not the time to sit there and say, “He should have done that, he should have done this, he needs to do this.” What are you doing to help the bishops who are doing a great job right now? And the sad thing is the bishops who are running this right now are not even the ones who caused the problems in the first place: the Bakers, the Chaputs, the Vignerons, the Cordileones, the Carltons. I mean, we have amazing leadership right now. And if you allow yourself to get caught up in anger and frustration about something that’s hap… I’m not saying that we deny that we, all of us, have done a poor job in the past. But I just really want to encourage you to stand up for the truth and back the Church right now. And if you’re upset then go and kick a garbage can, scream into a pillow, but tell your bishop you will support these efforts to stop what is happening. Because I’ll tell you right now, if this mandate continues and if this is allowed to stand, we’re not going to be able to teach about anything. Who knows what they’re going to try to do to EWTN. Who knows what they’re going to try to do in the churches.
So we need to stop the infighting and we need to love our bishops and to love our Church. We are all imperfect. The only two people who ever existed, Jesus, being fully God and fully man, and Our Lady. We all have planks in our eye that we can pull out. And this is not minimizing anything that has happened in Church history. But the infighting is not going to help us, it’s only going to hurt us and it’s what the devil wants: Divide and conquer.
Halfway through this commentary I emailed the following to Ave Maria Radio…
We have amazing leadership right now?
While that may be the case in some dioceses, it is far from a universal truth.
You don’t live in upstate New York, do you? Have you ever heard of Matthew Clark or Howard Hubbard?
I wish you and the majority of the “professional Catholics” out there would get your collective heads out of the sand and take a good look at what is going on in some dioceses in this country, not in the past, but RIGHT NOW!
We are living in a wilderness here and most of you people with the microphones and the publishing contracts couldn’t care less, as is evident from your collective lack of attention to our plight.
Sorry, Teresa, but some of our bishops are currently doing Satan’s work and I and my friends refuse to be silent about it, no matter how much you would like us to have a united front. We have consciences, too.
Needlessto say, I was a bit surprised when Teresa mentioned my note on the air (my transcription, same podcast, beginning at the 44:24 mark) …
I just received an email from a Mike. I don’t want to say where he’s from because I don’t know if what he’s saying about his bishops are true and I would want to give, with all due respect to the hierarchy, them a chance to explain, but he’s saying that we have our heads in the sand and that we think everything is wonderful – I’m paraphrasing here – wonderful and hunky-dory because there are a lot of bishops who aren’t doing anything and my response, and I’m writing him back right now, is, what’s the point of this, how is your whining going to help anyone. If your bishops aren’t doing anything, do something yourself. Sitting there complaining is only going to make matters worse. What have you done and what are you willing to do?
That was some paraphrase. How she got that out of my email escapes me. I said nothing about the response of area bishops to the Obama mandate, but that’s what she chose to read into it. Very telling, however, is that my assertion that some “bishops are currently doing Satan’s work” seemed totally invisible to her. And this is not the first time that Teresa has ignored negative comments about sitting bishops. Within the past year I have heard her effectively cut off two callers who had critical things to say, and I only catch her show once or twice a week.
So now I am faced with this question: Should I listen to someone who has, over the years, willfully or otherwise, turned a professional blind eye to much of the episcopal misfeasance and malfeasance that is largely responsible for the mess we face today? Should I stop my “whining” about ongoing heterodoxy and heteropraxis for what she believes to be the greater good? Does her record in this area give her the credibility, the moral authority, to even make that request?
If it were someone like Michael Voris asking, I’d have to give it serious thought.
Teresa Tomeo? I think not.
