Friday, December 30, 2005
BLOG WARS--NOR VS. MARK SHEA
Well not exactly since NOR is a magazine website and not a blog, but I liked the title anyway...
Mark Shea has a blog on the Internet. Shea doesn't like the NOR. He is a columnist for the Legionaries' National Catholic Register, he still writes for Crisis (he thought Deal Hudson's sexual predation should not have been made public), and he's a great pal of Scott Hahn. So he has many reasons for being hostile to the NOR.
On his blog of October 13, he says that the NOR has declared Hahn "a closet feminist who is (I'm not making this up) lobbying for gay marriage." Well, yes, he is making it up. Hahn is not lobbying for "gay marriage," but he is, whether he knows it or not, validating it, and we are not the only ones who think so. Hahn regards the Holy Spirit as feminine or female. Here's what we said in our New Oxford Note, "Burn, Baby, Burn" (Sept. 2002): "Now, Mary was female, and if the Holy Spirit is female or feminine, then Jesus had two mommies, and presto, 'gay' is good and so is 'gay marriage.' Dr. Hahn goes so far as to say the Holy Spirit is 'bridal' and that 'Mary's maternity is mystically one with that of ...the Spirit.' The imagery here is blatantly and scandalously lesbian. Feminist theologians and the Queer cheerleaders have been campaigning for a feminine Holy Spirit for decades. How odd --how depressing, actually -- to see Dr. Hahn jump on the bandwagon."
But this is just the prelude. Shea jumps on us for publishing an article by Robert Sungenis (Oct. 2005).
Continue reading...
(I don't suppose I would need to comment on my position on the sex of the Holy Spirit....No, I didn't think so.)
Mark has a rebuttal blogged.
What I'm wondering about now is whether the band is playing and Catholic journalists are circling the chairs wondering where they will all be sitting when the music stops. But let me be more specific...
I was as amazed to find Robert Sungenis in an issue of NOR as Mark seems to have been; but not for the same reasons. Is NOR going to take seriously the people behind groups like Novus Ordo Watch? IMHO this will be a breakthrough in Catholic reporting. Until this fall, those who were on the extreme right have been personna non grata in the mainstream Catholic press, or so it seems to me; and NOR is certainly mainstream.
It's going to be interesting to discover which publications will support "My pope right or wrong," and which will take a more balanced view. I'm assuming that "The Catholic World Report" will reject any submissions that are critical of the Pope, or if they are run, there will be a rebuttal, given the fact that Fr. Fessio is the Pope's editor now. I expect NOR to be in the Pope's camp as well, based mainly on the Pappa Razi blog, but the Sungenis article is giving me second thoughts. Mostly the people from Steubenville are pro-Pope, pro-charismatics, and traditional in a uniquely liberal way--that liberalism being centered mostly in visionaries, approved and otherwise. This is the pattern I would expect from Catholic Exchange, but admittedly I'm not a lurker there, so don't quote me.
Anyone else care to wade into this commentary and venture an opinion on some of the other publications?
