The Simple Faith of Satan, Appendix A

The late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus once observed that, "As far as the New York Times is concerned, the only good Catholic is a bad Catholic."  It seems strange that those people in the Church but not of her, though their numbers and relevance dwindle geometrically with each passing year, remain the heroes/victims of the modern media narrative, while the institutional Church, livelier, healthier, and better organized than it has been in years, gets painted as the Host of Mordor, out to destroy all that is gentle, just, and good in the world.  Where on earth did all this nonsense come from?

George Weigel traces it to a series of articles covering Vatican Council II, some fifty years ago, which happened to dovetail nicely (as it still does) with the way postmodern society looks at the world:

 In a culture in which people imagine that religious conviction is a lifestyle choice of no more intellectual or moral consequence than the choice of a pet, it takes serious effort to grasp that what the Catholic Church teaches about the nature of God or the requisites for ministerial ordination is entirely different from the choice between a schnauzer and a dachshund. And in a secularized culture in which “choice” is the one sacred word, a Church that insists that its leadership teaches authoritatively is going to be easily portrayed as ham-handed, insensitive, out of step.

Read the whole article here.  It's worth your time.  And I'm not just saying that because it says many of the same things I've said in these pages.