What would you expect in such a story?That bishop being, of course, Bishop Donald Trautman of Erie, Pa.
* A quote from the omnipresent Father Thomas Reese of Georgetown University, the patron saint of mainstream journalists in need of a quick quote that is, roughly 90 percent of the time, critical of the Vatican.
Check. In fact, Reese is granted the first direct quote in the story.
* Defenders of Rome are allowed only bland, vague, dull paraphrased quotations in defense of their actions.
Check. The story does not contain a single direct quote from a Catholic expert who defends the new Roman Missal.
* Material produced by an outspoken bishop who was on the losing side of the ecclesiastical wrestling match that produced the new texts. If possible, he should be cited in a way that identifies him as an expert on the topic, yet without clearly identifying his partisan role in the debate.
Check. Check.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Anti-Missal defense
Terry Mattingly at Get Religion examines this basic Associated Press story on the upcoming revised liturgical translation and declares it AP’s tour de force on the Roman Missal.
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LOL! In short Vatican "experts" oppress Americans into use of pig-English. Women and minorities affected the most.
ReplyDeleteWell I lived through the sturm und drang of the initial Mass In The Vernacular back about 1969, the endless wrangling over what the meaning of ‘is’ is – or was - the prolonged catechesis on the Kiss of Peace, Mass versus populum, Communion under Both Species, uselessness of Altar Rails, Statues, popular devotions etc. etc.
ReplyDeleteHuh? Oh, that’s right. There was no prolonged catechesis, no justification from the documents of Vatican II for much of this. It was more like: “Here it is. Trust us, we’re liturgical experts - so deal with it.”
Amazing that back then we didn’t need endless discussion and catechesis to introduce something that was wrong from the beginning, but now we need to be led by the hand to correct it.
That said, the AP’s anti-Catholicism has become increasingly evident of late. You may recall that it was the AP that announced that proponents of womens’ ordination had “descended on Rome” to demonstrate in St. Peter’s Square awhile back. The number of ‘descendents’ at the demonstration? Twelve. (Actually I expected the AP to draw a comparison between the twelve demonstrators and Our Lord’s Twelve Apostles, presaging a similar ‘doctrinal’ expansion in futuro, but then I don’t expect knowledge of Scripture or religion in general is the strong suit of the AP hacks).
This was news - worthy of a special bulletin from the AP? Of course the bulletin was duly parroted by the Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel - no friend of the Catholic Church or Catholic values either. Birds of a feather.