Why liberal "Catholic" media can't understand the Church

A representative sampling from the letters-to-the-editor department of the liberal, anti-Vatican National Catholic Reporter after the election of Pope Benedict XVI, collated by Karl Keating for his newsletter, includes the following:

1. Mike Coverdale of Nevada, Iowa:

I turned the TV on just before noon, at the very moment Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was announced as Pope Benedict XVI. "No!" I screamed from the depths of my soul. I hit the speed dial to my wife's cell phone. "They not only shut the doors with this guy, they locked them!" I shouted. "I don't know what to do now," I cried, feeling physically ill.

2. Mark Summit of Portland, Oregon:

I am deeply saddened and distressed by the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to the papacy, so much so that I sat outside the Portland cathedral the afternoon of the "Mass of the Holy Spirit," holding a sign that said "The Spirit Was Asleep."

3. Michaeleen Swanson of Lakeville, Minnesota:

The morning headlines may as well have read instead: "Cardinals to Catholic Women: Go to Hell." We Catholic women have been told for so many years, just hang in there, we are only one death away from change. Well, some of us have hung in there, but every day the handhold is slipping.

4. Pierre LaPlante of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia:

Since Cardinal Ratzinger has been elected pope, I guess I won't be returning to the Catholic Church too soon. This man is the most undesirable of all the candidates and a reinforcement of all I would have hoped could have been modified.

And what's the moral of this sampling? Simple: You can't expect to learn the truth about the Catholic Church from liberal, anti-Vatican sources like NCR. They will ultimately let you down. Every time. And the reason why? They assume that the Church is nothing more than a human organization that can be understood adequately on the level of power politics and rival interest groups jockeying for position, and they assume that Church policy is ultimately vulnerable to revisionism in terms of whoever happens to be in charge in any pontificate.

You have to feel sorry for these people who are given a vision of the Church that does not match the reality. For example, why are liberal Catholic women led to expect that the Church will reverse its policy on an all-male priesthood and open the door to the ordination of women priests? Why were they told, as Michaeleen Swanson (above #3) was told, to "just hang in there, we are only one death away from change"? On whose authority? Why did Ms. Swanson believe she could trust whomever said this? Why should anyone have believed this self-appointed authority? Only because these women, as well as their self-appointed authorities, have been taken in by the myth that the Church is ultimately no more than a human organization, which, like any other human organization, will ultimately yield to the pressures of history and the lobbying of political interest groups, and will relent in her traditions and accommodate herself to the ideology of the current prevailing consensus of opinion. Pity the poor souls who believe that!

Reading recommendations:

• Peter Kreeft, "Gender and the Will of God: The Issue of Priestesses is Ultimately an Issue of God."
• Peter Kreeft and Alice von Hildebrand, Women and the Priesthood
• Donna Steichen, Ungodly Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism