I am so tired of hearing that Life Site News (a conservative Catholic media outlet) lies and is anti-Catholic.

The reporters on Life Site that cover the Vatican are just doing their job – reporting what is going on. If people don’t want to know the inner workings of the Vatican – don’t read the news. But don’t dismiss an entire Catholic media by calling it a “liar!” That is slanderous and definitely not Catholic.

I read many Catholic media (as well as secular media) every morning. These media share stories especially those from the Catholic News Agency.

What is striking for me is what the different Catholic media include and what they leave out.

For example, the NCR-National Catholic Reporter (a liberal Catholic media outlet) never publishes an article on the House Democrats voting against a bill to save aborted babies lives – but the conservative media cover the story. The NCR, however, frequently headlines a Trump bashing article. None of the conservative media spend time bashing Trump.

Catholic reporters who cover the Vatican, and have covered it for years, have an insiders knowledge the rest of us don’t have. Many are multilingual. Their job is to report what is going on. To call them “anti-Catholic” for reporting the news, is disgraceful, unkind and distinctly UN-grateful.

Thanks to the internet we get Vatican news quickly where before we had to rely on our Diocesan newspapers (or the radio) to tell us what was going on and that depended upon whether our bishop was conservative or liberal. (My pastor prefers that I used the term “orthodox” instead of “conservative.”) We got the news our bishop wanted us to hear.

Today we have the advantage of reading the news for ourselves. We are blessed to have both conservative and liberal Catholic news media on the net. We need to read both, every day, to have a balanced view. Partisanship always creeps in, so reading another POV highlights where the partisanship lies.

We are also blessed to have secular news media reporting Catholic news – again both conservative and liberal. We need to read both POV there too. I don’t expect the secular press to be as respectful as our Catholic press. Many are anti-Catholic with an axe to grind, so are well worth reading.

But to be a Catholic ostrich, with a head in the sand, so as not to read anything that disagrees with “my point of view” is to be irresponsible.
If we don’t know what is going on, how can we pray for our church adequately?