The New Oxford Review has a revealing post on the former (Vatican removed) editor of America Magazine Thomas Reese, The Heretical Mind Finds a Home.
The author had the misfortune of experiencing Thomas Reese.
Among other things, Reese referred to St. Paul’s passage that women obey their husbands and husbands respect their wives as “stupid”.
Fr. Reese and his liberal audience were of one mind. But his implicit message as he continued was that we have our work cut out if we are to keep on watering down the faith. The Pope is a conservative, as are many of the younger bishops….
In the question period Fr. Reese was asked who among the bishops seemed, well, more promising. Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Arizona, is the leading liberal hope, and “in the Bernardin mold,” Fr. Reese replied. Currently he is vice president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Reese said later that Bishop Kicanas would be “a real coup for Milwaukee,” as a replacement for Archbishop Dolan, who was promoted to New York.
I recently found my way over to “America Magazine” in a “USCCB” “John Carr” google search.
At first, I couldn’t put my finger on why I found it more disturbing than the National Catholic Reporter. After a week or so of reading, I got a clearer picture.
There’s a good summary of the essence of what they’re doing at America Magazine near the end of the NOR piece on Reese:
Fr. Reese illustrates the heretical mind in action. I was reminded once again that the heretic is almost always a more dangerous adversary of the Church than the outright atheist. Most atheists pay little attention to the Church. They think religion is nonsense but they don’t usually mind because they know they are free to ignore it. Many of them also think that religion is harmless, although that is now changing with the coming of Islamist terror.
The heretic, in contrast, is interested in Church doctrine and wants to change it. He tampers with texts, nibbles away at doctrine, changes wording wherever he can. We have seen how successful the heretical mind has been in recent decades. The goal has been to water everything down — to “add too much water to the wine,” as African cardinal Francis Arinze put it a few years ago…
The heretical mind is imbued not with a disbelief in God but with a resentment of God; and what the heretic resents is that God made the world in one particular way rather than another.
America Magazine actually posts to incite others resent Christ’s Church (and anyone teaching It’s tenets).
For instance, in this subtle antithesis to the USCCB funding proaborts at CCHD:
And the scandal over wh0’s funding to correct dissent by religious would be….what?
Be sure to check out the incited malice against Christ’s Church in the comments section here.
This post by James Martin,S.J., is typical of the subterfuge they plant to confirm their readers in their sins.
“Welcome to the Cafeteria, EWTN”
“Liberal” Catholics are often said to twist the church’s teaching (or disregard it completely) to suit their own needs–particularly on matters of sexuality and church authority. (We are sometimes accused of that here at America, and on this blog.) …For a recent example of the Cafeteria Catholic on the right, witness EWTN’s offering a very friendly airing of the views of a person who supports torture–or at least the “enhanced” interrogation techniques–that have been thoroughly discredited, as well as roundly condemned by the church.
First of all as others have pointed out across the internet, there is nothing in any Catholic doctrine that defines dripping water as “torture” and therefore Mark Thiessien (and many other Catholics) are not holding positions contrary to the Catholic religion if they support waterboarding.
To dishonor men and women defending our country in the military when these same “men” support decapitating infants in the womb alive is:
1. Hairbrained.
2. Despicable.
They will rail against dripping water on
More importantly, with all the indignity and fuss, there were only three terrorists who were waterboarded.
And, I ask you, what kind of spineless “men” would prefer thousands of American women, children and their countrymen be “tortured” in an act of terrorism to getting information to stop it by dripping water on their heads until they cry uncle?
Another coward takes a pot shot on America Magazine here.
The characters at America Magazine are going beyond dissent. They’re even going beyond baiting and trapping others into sin. They are igniting malice against Christ’s Church .
If clarity comes from the Vatican about dripping water on terrorists, it will be another story but as of right now, the Jesuits, National Catholic Reporter types can’t feel any better about crawling between the sheets outside of the Sacrament of Marriage than they did before Thiessien’s interview.
America Magazine, Catholic My Eye 