Lisa Graas doesn't care for AP article about Catholic bloggers & NEITHER DO WE!
AP Claims Catholic Bloggers Want to “Purge Dissenters”
by LisaGraas
2010 October 25
A new article by Associated Press [AP] writer Rachel Zoll claims “Catholic bloggers aim to purge dissenters” and includes a quote comparing us to the Taliban because we use “stark language.” The leftist media shows here a disturbing inability to distinguish between (a) the use of speech to debate ideas and (b) burning heretics. Do Catholic bloggers really want to kill people who disagree with them?
As a Catholic apologist for many years, I am somewhat accustomed to claims, both open and veiled, that bold disagreement with non-Catholics, dissenting Catholics, and the Left at large is somehow equivalent to “purging dissenters.” My mother is not used to it, though. A Baptist with an unshakable belief in Sola Fide, she said she was “shocked” to read this headline at the Washington Post: “Catholic bloggers aim to purge dissenters” which she reads as a charge that we want to “burn people.” She wasn’t so shocked, however, when I showed her an article written by the same writer, Rachel Zoll, in 2008 that smeared Baptists who were doing basically the same thing in their ranks. It appears that Zoll may have a personal agenda against religious fidelity itself.
Catholic activists featured by name in the article include Michael Voris of RealCatholicTV and St. Michael’s Media, Brian Hehir Exposed, Boston Catholic Insider, Bellarmine Veritas Ministry and Thomas Peters whose blog American Papist recently moved to CatholicVote. Others who might as well have been named are myself, Deal Hudson of Catholic Advocate and Inside Catholic. In the mix, as well, are countless smaller blogs like Te Deum Laudamus, Causa Nostrae Laetitiae, and Catholic Mom in Hawaii who daily and joyfully respond on their own initiative to provide back-up to counter the leftist media’s distortion of authentic Catholicism. This movement which some have called the Catholic Tea Party, is the Catholic version of the Taliban, according to one National Catholic Reporter analyst quoted.
John Allen, Vatican analyst for the National Catholic Reporter, has dubbed this trend “Taliban Catholicism.” But he says it’s not a strictly conservative phenomenon – liberals can fit the mindset, too, Allen says. Some left-leaning Catholics are outraged by any exercise of church authority.
NCR, referred to more simply as “Fishwrap” by blogging priest Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, is quite “left-leaning” itself and frequently uses very strong language to describe conservatives, both Catholic and non-Catholic. Examples include the accusation that Newt Gingrich is guilty of “spreading hysteria” and that Glenn Beck is a “hop, skip and a jump” from being a Marxist. Calling us “Taliban” which suggests we might kill people may be the strongest language yet.
Read more Lisa Graas at NewsRealBlog here>>>
Editor’s Note: Lisa Graas is a good friend and colleague to us here at AlwaysCatholicBlog. Lisa sent us the AP article for today’s post, “Finally, we’re kickin’ some CINO (Catholics in name only) butt… “. Of course, the LAME-STREAM MEDIA ‘s print buddy, WaPo, decided to set the standard using the National Catholic (Fishwrap) Reporter as mainstream. Yeah, right….
Hey Lisa, your are absolutely right, we didn’t care for the article either…but then what did we expect from WaPo? Fairness? Naaaaaaahhh…