The Worst Possible Voice

Tom Roberts writes in today's NCR about the Wuerl Proposal, saying that the American church "has no national voice."

I'd beg to differ on that. The American church does have a national voice -- but, as opposed to the bishops as a whole excercising it constructively and with discretion, the divisions in the Conference have made it such that the press has been given the power of choosing who speaks for the national episcopate. And who gets chosen, of course?

Well, with the exception of the media-savvy (Deo gratias) McCarrick, the pack usually hones in on the prelate making the most controversial, "burn-the-heretics" statement possible. And, as Wuerl and Roberts both note, everyone else is held up against that arbitrary standard and, comparatively, seems less Catholic because of it -- or at least divorced from what media coverage has anointed as the "authoritative" statement. (Don't even start me on how confused many reporters who are thrown church stories get on even the simplest of things Catholic; I could go on for weeks.) But, bottom line, that kind of reality serves to divide the church against itself.

And is that really a productive state of affairs?

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