The Sad State of the Catholic National Press

It is a shame that America magazine is the "Catholic" magazine that one finds in most public libraries. One has to wonder if most Librarians that pick these magazines just didn't hit the renew button it might not even be around. The only thing worse perhaps is U.S. Catholic that besides promoting error and illegitimate dissent is sort of fluff.

Father Z very well fisks this Op-Ed that pretty much shows that the America staff has a cartoon version of many American Catholics.

See America Magazine… climbing the invisbile ladder

A good response to this mindset is seen at an article in the Weekly Standard that Pro-Eccelsia links at Joseph Bottum: "God and Obama at Notre Dame"

There are some that get upset that Catholic opposition to such mindsets that are in constant attack mode occur in more secular venues. Such as the Weekly Standard and The National Review to name just a couple.

The problem is of curse the deck is stacked!! The big four United States Catholic publication all which are liberal and progressive are America, Commonweal, U.S. Catholic, and National Catholic Reporter.

For the most part , as we can see in the above Op-Ed we can suspect no serious balance. It is rare to see quality publications like The National Catholic Register or Catholic World Report in public libraries and various Catholic venues such as Churches even.

The one exception is of course Our Sunday Visitor that is in most parishes. It is a pretty good paper

But here we have a problem. OSV and the journalist in it if you noticed are rarely quoted or referenced by other reporters in the secular press.. Why this is not so I do not know. But there appears to be an attempt to marginalize to a certain extent OSV.

Further OSV by design and in part necessity can not really engaged many of the issues that lets say Commonweal or the more conservative side the ecumenical First Things magazine do..

It is a shame that Catholics in the United States do not have a Catholic Version of Christianity Today. Christianity Today is the main magazine one sees that represents the Evangelical World It is Orthodox but it often engages opposing views very well. The fact that this magazine is successful while having a readership that is quite diverse belief wise and yes even politics wise shows is doing something right. It is also widely quoted and it's journalist and writers have an effect.

Hopefully we U.S. Catholics will have something like that one day.

Sadly until then we shall have the problem that the Father Reeses , Americas, the NCRs , the Commonweals will the Catholic voice quoted by secular papers and media. A problem that will become much worse as we see the secular media cut religion reporting in order to save cost. See the shocking sevelopments at the Dallas Morning News to see an example of that