God Save Us From Catholic "Experts" When the Pope Visits

We are going more into POPE USA TOUR 2008 around here. The media stories we have had so far have been good and many very bad. However it does not help matters when the media uses the same ole so called "experts" that pretty much have a bone to pick. It makes as much sense as having someone from the Catholic Latin mass Society giving their input on the Anuual Shriners convention.

Amy Welborn has a great post Thanks, Carl on this subject. In the USA Story that ran today we see this nugget:
But Benedict, however “charming,” is still stifling theologians who challenge ideas about Catholicism, says Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and former editor of the Jesuit-owned magazine America. Reese lost that job just after Ratzinger was elected pope; conservative Catholics had long complained that America gave too much voice to dissenting views on sensitive issues from sexuality to salvation.
Reese, now a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, says Catholic theologians are concerned that “the Vatican insists we continue to explain the gospel in the language of the 13th century.”

What? As Amy says:
A couple of weeks ago, I penned a post in which I wrote that those with criticisms of Benedict should be asked to be specific in their criticisms. (A post which was bizarrely picked up by Andrew Sullivan to make essentially the opposite point, somehow. Mark Shea remarked on this and I wrote to him, saying, “Well, at least he didn’t quote me out of context to berate me” (which would be par for the course) and Mark wrote back saying, “No, he just took you out of context to ignore you.” True!)

These remarks from Reese are a good example. Reese should be asked to give specifics - names, positions, incidents of stifling - of “theologians who challenge ideas about Catholicism.” As far as I know, the major cases that have come to public notice via the CDF and bishops’ conferences have centered on the divinity of Christ and the unique role of Christ in the redemption of humanity. The logical follow-up question is, “So, then, what are the boundaries for a self-proclaimed Catholic theologian? Are there any? Why is it not okay for the Church to draw boundaries?”
And yet another follow-up might be, “What does it mean to “stifle? May these theologians no longer publish with any publisher on the face of the earth? May they not teach in any educational institution? May their books not be read by any human beings ever again?”
Simply: Why shouldn’t the teaching office of the Church draw boundaries as to what is authentic Christian teaching?

And this “language of the 13th century” business is, frankly, disingenous. It’s either also ignorant or dishonest, and in either case, it’s hard to see one who makes such a statement as being actually suitable to comment on Benedict’s own theological trajectory, either on his own or in terms of his influence on the CDF for the past decades. As Carl notes, Ratzinger/Benedict is known for his interaction with non-Catholic and non-Christian thinking, both personally and in his work. And if part of the point is that Benedict wants Thomism to rule, well, that’s wrong too because Benedict is no Thomist.

Again, reporters - when a source says something about the Vatican insisting that theological language be that of the 13th century - push . Ask what exactly that means. Request specific examples. Be conversant enough with recent documents - say, the last few encyclicals, from both Benedict and John Paul II - to question that statement in light of those documents. Know that Benedict’s encyclicals sell in the hundreds of thousands when they are published, his books are best sellers for any publisher who gets them and the Vatican website gets millions of hits a day.
Are all those people conversant in 13th-Centuryese?

In other words do real reporting!!!