US Bishops: Bloggers play ‘critical role’ in defending the Church

LifeSiteNews ^ | 04/12/12 | Patrick B. Craine

[Brian Kopp DPM]

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US Bishops: Bloggers play ‘critical role’ in defending the Church

by Patrick B. Craine

Thu Apr 12 9:06 AM EST

Relations between Catholic bloggers and Church officials have at times been quite strained as the new media has developed in the last couple years. Some prelates, clergy, and chancery officials have expressed strong reservations about the Catholic blogosphere, with some even speaking quite derogatorily.

Church leaders have been angered by the penchant of many bloggers to call them out on their failures to expound and defend controversial Catholic teachings on moral issues like contraception, homosexuality, and abortion.

The difficulties got to the point that last year the Vatican convened a special conference for bloggers to try to build bridges and learn more about this new method for advancing the Gospel.

But now even the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is saying Catholic bloggers have a “critical role” in defending the Church.

In a new statement on religious freedom released today they write:

The Catholic Church in America is blessed with an immense number of writers, producers, artists, publishers, filmmakers, and bloggers employing all the means of communications—both old and new media—to expound and teach the faith. They too have a critical role in this great struggle for religious liberty. We call upon them to use their skills and talents in defense of our first freedom.

[Brian Kopp DPM]

I think we can safely include Catholic FReepers in the bishops' endorsement ;-)

[loveliberty2]

All citizens, Catholic and non-Catholic, who can assist in an effort to "snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze" (Edmund Burke - "Conciliation" Speech) from so-called "progressive" impositions on their liberties must unite to a new call for enlightenment and understanding of the ideas essential to their liberties.

In the course of his research for "Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile" (Harper Collins), Joseph Pearch traveled to Moscow to interview the writer. The excerpt below is from that interview:

Solzhenitsyn: "In different places over the years I have had to prove that socialism, which to many western thinkers is a sort of kingdom of justice, was in fact full of coercion, of bureaucratic greed and corruption and avarice, and consistent within itself that socialism cannot be implemented without the aid of coercion. Communist propaganda would sometimes include statements such as 'We include almost all the commandments of the Gospel in our ideology.' The difference is that the Gospel asks all this to be achieved through love, through self-limitation, but socialism only uses coercion. This is one point.

"Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both capitalism and socialism are repulsive."

Does anyone doubt that mandates, taxation and regulation are means of the "coercion" Solzhenitsyn so eloquently describes?

Further, does anyone doubt that recent attempts by the President to link the teachings of Jesus to his coercive policies, as he did at the National Prayer Breakfast, are not consistent with what Solzhenitsyn described as "Communist propaganda" in the above-quoted interview?

[Salvation]

**I think we can safely include Catholic FReepers in the bishops’ endorsement ;-)**

Did you all catch that?

Hooray!

[philman_36]

I'm glad to see this being posted.

But now even the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is saying Catholic bloggers have a “critical role” in defending the Church.

Aren't some of these bishops the very liberals within the Church that need exposing.
So is this a 'call to arms' to devoted Catholics or to subversive, implanted liberals to step up their actions?

[JCBreckenridge]

Cool! :D

[Brian Kopp DPM]

What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, polkers, or whatever else was at hand?

Part I The Prison Industry, Ch. 1 "Arrest" (p13, The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Collins 1974)

[Gumdrop]

Happy to join the fray. Bring it on!

My current project is making sure the elderly nuns at their local retirement home become aware of the Bishop’s concerns, and all the politics behind the HHS mandate and the problems with the Obama administration’s anti-christian attitudes.

I have 6 months to move them into the conservative voting column. Wish me luck. I am shooting for at a minimum, a 50 % GOP vote out of these old (and gracious) ladies.

[daniel1212]

Related: http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&entry_id=5053

[thecodont]

The Church militant, triumphant, and online!

[Salvation]

Definitely a lot of good luck with the older nuns.

[sayuncledave]

Oh, I don’t know, Salvation. Maybe they didn’t get rid of all their good habits.
(Badum Ching!)

Seriously, this is wonderful to hear.

Gumdrop,
I wish you well. Do your best, let Him handle the rest.

[Salvation]

Good pun,, there uncledave. I got it!

[annalex]

U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is saying Catholic bloggers have a “critical role” in defending the Church.

Catholic lay folk have a critical role defending the Church inside and outside the Internet simply because the bishops are not able to. Their job is to ordain priests, teach the doctrine and pray.