Of Things Periodical

I was just reading the latest issue of Our Sunday Visitor, perhaps my favorite Catholic periodical of all the ones I regularly read and certainly the best source for unbiased coverage of Church news & such. Actually, Zenit.org provides the most unbiased reporting, but it's really only reporting. It doesn't cover the news. I can go to Zenit and get an exact quote of what the Pope said, but OSV will cover the story in a journalistic way. The OSV is a newspaper and Zenit is a mimeograph. So, unlike Zenit which gets sent to my email inbox each Saturday, I can sit down in a comfy chair with the latest issue of OSV and read the news in CatholicLand.

Which is what I just finished doing. This issue's cover story was about the Year of the Eucharist. JPII has already made a declaration that 2004 will be the year of the Eucharist, but it won't officially start until October (the 11th, to be exact, at a Eucharistic Congress) so as to coincide with the Month of Mary. My birthday is October 10th, so I find it exciting that such an historic moment will inaugurate my twenty-fourth year.

This all got me thinking I should probably post links to some good Eucharistic-related material I've found on the web, such as the latest encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia. But I'm going to save all that for the big day. Rather, I think it's high time I listed some of the best Catholic periodicals I've found. I may even review them in later postings. But a list will do for now:

OSV as I've already mentioned, tops the list. I prefer it's moderacy to the strident tones of the two NCRs, National Catholic Reporter and Natl. Catholic Register. What the Reporter lacks in orthodoxy the Register overcompensates for in acrimonious triumphalism. I shun both.

This brings me to an interesting sidebar: the problem of factionalism. I like to believe that an essential component of being catholic with a lower-case "c" is taking the middle way, avoiding the extremes to left or right, wherein we find the Truth. But some people have become extremists in their effort to prove to the world how right they are. We're polarizing ourselves and losing credibility in our Christian Witness. There is neither slave nor free, neither Jew nor Greek, neither conservative nor liberal. There is only Christ who is all in all. If we keep taking polar opposite views, we cannot hear the Christ or feel the Love in one another. The Reporter and Register represent for me this polarization-cum-factionalism hindering the Church in its mission of evangelization. We must be stewards of the Truth, bearing Light to the world, but we should never let that keep us from Love. The Golden Mean and the Golden Rule are not far removed. But I am far removed from my point, which was making a list.

There are many Catholic Periodicals out there, and they are not all equal. I like the OSV for its coverage of the news, but there are plenty of other things in CatholicLand to consider than headlines. Some periodicals deal with culture and politics. Others are less-scholarly magazines. of the former, I would set Crisis and Envoy up against America and Commonweal, all very excellent sources of intelligent journalism. Of the latter I would set Ligourian and St.Anthony Messenger up against USCatholic. The contrast between the former pair is more perceivable than the contrast amidst the latter three mostly because the former pair deal with high-profile, political themes while the latter group is more cultural. It's like the difference between Atlantic Monthly and Time, Newsweek, USAToday, or People magazine. If I want intelligent journalism I turn to Atlantic Monthly.

Anywho- Crisis and Envoy are more apologetical while America and Commonweal are more critical of the Church. They clearly fall in opposite camps. But how does one articulate the nature of this opposition? I detest using the terms liberal and conservative, but there doesn't seem to be any other way. I would say there's a greater degree of orthodoxy in the first two, while the other two hardly keep fidelity to the Magisterium high on their priority list. Of course these are sweeping generalizations, but what do you expect from a survey list?

The other three- Messenger, Ligourian, and USCatholic- represent for me a separate genre of Catholic periodical than those just mentioned. They are magazines about being Catholic, not academic repartee. They have some news clips in the initial pages, but they focus on providing interesting articles on a host of Catholic miscellany. I suppose they fancy themselves right up there with the big dogs, but they're just too fluffy. That's not to belittle them; they're excellent means to explore CatholicLand. But they're more feel-good. I stopped reading USCatholic because it departs too frequently from orthodoxy. The other two aren't much better, but again- it's not their stated intention to be apologetical; they simply want to roam CatholicLand. I like Messenger because it sends Saint of the Day to my inbox and provides e-cards. Ligourian has some excellent articles, especially the cover ones.

I've probably gone into far too much detail, but I love digressing about stuff like this. If you only take away one thing from this lengthy post, please remember: to get the latest news about the goings-on in CatholicLand, do not rely on secular media. They know diddly-squat about church teaching, its governance, or religious observation in general (which only becomes more painfully obvious as we near the election). In fact, it's not always benign ignorance. The secular media has a clear agenda in many cases to discredit the Church and its doctrine. Beware! Look to the Good Shepherd. He will never lead you astray!