When did the Media Research Center decide to make pronouncements on behalf of all Catholics? We’re not sure, but an April 20 MRC Culture & Media Institute item definitely went in that direction.
Paul Wilson uses the item to attack Washington Post columnist Melinda Henneberger for being insufficiently critical of of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, a support group for Catholic religious women whom the Catholic Church hierarchy has denounced for allegedly deviating from church doctrine. After denouncing the group for “grave dissent” and Henneberger for taking “jabs at the Church,” Wilson takes issue with Henneberger’s statement that the Vatican “knows a lot about scandal – to the point that the nuns are the only morally uncompromised leaders poor Holy Mother Church has left. Keep right on like this, your excellencies, and before you know it even more Catholics will be ‘moving beyond the Church.’” Wilson retorted:
Henneberger has it precisely backwards. The rapid decline in vocations in the Church since Vatican II was the result of members of the hierarchy rebelling against the teachings of the Church in the first place, causing massive confusion in the Church.
Wilson offers no evidence to support this view of Catholicism — let alone that it’s any sort of official view of the church — which itself seems to be the kind of diversion from official doctrine (which Vatican II is) that he’s criticizing in Henneberger and the LCWR.
Wilson becomes even more of a spokesman for right-wing Catholicism with another attack on Henneberger for issuing “a typical feminist rant/apologia”:
Feminists like Henneberger ignore the Church’s worldview, that men and women are complementary beings with different roles. Instead, she and her ilk constantly seek to pit men and women against each other to enforce a version of sexual egalitarianism – a common trait of “religious” liberals, who consistently place religion at the service of ideology.
What does this have to do with anything? Wilson seems to have some issues that perhaps he’d be better off discussing with his pastor instead of ranting about it at his employer’s website.