Customer Reviews

National Catholic Reporter

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

NCR has been around for a long time and they have some top notch reporters. Over the past 10 years, though, they have been more and more vigorous in their misrepresentation of the facts. There's an agenda. Of course, no one is free of some bias, myself included. The problem with NCR nowadays, though, is that they are ignoring central facts in order to create a particular impression. Any given issue will have an article about the Ordination of Women as Catholic Priests but will neglect to mention that the Church has a definitive and infallible teaching on the matter and that the pope couldn't rescind it if he wanted to. The same kind of problem arises when discussing the sex abuse crisis. The statistical data is definitive that the vast majority of the cases (80%+) and almost all of the abusers (95%+) were not children but adolescents. That doesn't change the horror, but it does make it a deception to describe the crisis as pedofilia. Their treatment of bishops who do not agree with and loudly support abortion, euthanasia, contraception in Africa, environmentalism and every other cause celebre is simply not Christian and often omits central facts of the incidents and the general disdain for the authority of the Church is rampant in almost every page. Even bishops they "like" in one article are promptly slammed in another for failure to be up to date on this or that. Of course, the Pope - no matter what he is saying or doing - is viciously abused in almost every issue.

There was a time when NCR was as good as it got. There was a time when it was a sincerely liberal publication that welcomed all views and let the reader decide for him or herself, but that age is passed. Today, NCR is a deceiver which writes the story and chooses which facts best fit that story. I highly recommending something like the National Catholic Register or Our Sunday Visitors publications for middle of the road Catholic news from the US, Rome and around the world. Those publications will tell the story as it is and if the author has an opinion, the author will admit that he or she is biased, you can't get that kind of honesty from NCR anymore. It's sad that this once great publication has lost its way.

The National Catholic Distorter continues to subvert a hermeneutics of continuity by reinterpreting everything from the Catechism to Papal initiatives in terms of rebellion rather than submission. There is no such thing as a "liberal" Catholic. You are either faithful to the Magisterium or you are not. Increasingly blogs are exposing this dying hippie dinosaur for what it is: a wolf in Cope clothing. Don't waste your money with a subscription, or endanger your soul reading it, and let it fall into silence and be forgotten as the obscure Gnostic heresy that inspired its founding. It shall be sucked into a Vortex.

The only thing this is good for is to see what old and dying liberals in the Church are complaining about. This will not increase your Faith or your love for God. It only has bad things to say about the Pope, Magisterial teaching, and T/traditions of the Faith. The National Catholic Register is an infinitely better choice for faithful Catholics.

Research shows the majority of American Catholics supports women's ordination, the end to celibacy, birth control, and other progressive causes. I believe the Church we so love has to change to survive; for now its a dying church in contrast to the Muslim faith that will likely be the world's dominant religion and pervasive in the United States too, in our lifetimes....IF the Catholic church fails to modernize.

The National Catholic Reporter supports change in the church and, reading the NCR makes me feel like I'm doing something to help the Church I love. We should be marching in peaceful protest, asking more overtly for change....though likely we'd be excorciated by resistant Catholics and higher-ups in the Church...but we'd be doing the right thing for the right reasons, with wisdom and most likely, with support from Our Lord who loves truth and justice and light.

The NCR makes me feel connected with other brave individuals who recognize, diversity is good for any system, and the stifling of dissent in systems, any systems, causes harm. In sum, the NCR enables me to continue being Catholic, though the Catholic leadership functions in ways that are sometimes offensive to me and grate against my values as a Christian who cares deeply about social justice issues.

NCR is not financed by the Catholic church and never has been. It is currently in its 46th year of publication and yes it has a decidedly liberal viewpoint. I would like to point out that NCR was the first newspaper to publicize the abuse scandal. NCR is unfortunately usually the first to let people know about the so called bad in the church. It also is one of the first to write about the good being done in the church as well. Check out [...] and search for Paul Wilkes' article on the nuns of Secunderabad or the NCR Today blog or John L Allen's All Things Catholic and this is just the surface. I think that the paper as relevant now as when it started in 1963. I can say this because besides reading NCR I also work for the paper.

I remember reading this newspaper with amazement and joy at my father's table over forty years ago and feeling my family in the Catholic Church. I remember reading then articles by still Catholic Michael Novak daring to question the morality of our nation's military invasions and occupations in the light of Roman Catholic tradition and Pope John XXIII's Pacem in Terris and Mater et Magistra. I recall first meeting gratefully the Brothers Berrigan within these holy pages, and their smiles and warmth and courage and peace and prayers and poems.

This newspaper continues even now its fine tradition of Catholic and courageous journalism, bringing to the forefront the eagerly concealed issues of our nation and Church, out into the light of our Faith and morality.

Important for any thinking and praying and Catholic household to have. Essential to overcome the constant barrage of our corporate and monopolistic media, in order to understand our world and nation and our Church in the light of our Faith and reason.

Please deny yourself this consolation and grace no longer. A worthy and strong and gentle companion upon our lonesome exile within this tormented world of warfare.

Can you read her now?

I'm grateful to the National Catholic Reporter. I was reaching the end of the line with the Catholic church and it's preference for the status quo, for example it's stance against the ordination of women. By reading the NCR, a newsmagazine that supports modernization in the Church, I feel connected again, to those who feel as I do about social justice issues. For example, I just learned that a group of 300 Austrian priests are peacefully demonstrating in favor of women's ordination. My heart sings when I read stories like that. They give me hope the Catholic church will recover from it's long decline. Also, I feel okay about going to Mass when I haven't sat passively by, watching the only Church I've ever loved be hamstrung by the views of men who are wrong.