Spot on!

Carson Holloway delivers a stinging rebuttal to the MSM. This is why I don't trust the news to bring me information and facts impartially reported. I get all the important headlines by reading blogs, and where I find the bloggers getting too conservative, I try to find balance by listening to NPR and PBS Newshour and reading Commonweal, just to ensure I don't live in a bubble:

At any rate, such treatment of Francis demonstrates something that we already knew but that is also worth remembering: there are powerful elements in the American media that are utterly partisan.  The partisanship shows itself in several ways.  First and most obviously, those who are writing these stories would never treat their own favorites according to the same shoddy standards.  Also, it is worth noting that the complaint here is always that Bergoglio “knew about” but “failed to prevent” abuses by the right wing government in the Dirty War.  Why no complaints that he “knew about” but “failed to prevent” abuses by left-wing revolutionaries?  Because in the minds of many liberal American journalists a right wing government’s use of force is necessarily illegitimate, but the resort to violence by socialist revolutionaries is not to be questioned.  Finally, from this behavior we can see that the function of much liberal journalism is not to engage with and criticize non-liberal positions.  It is rather to delegitimize those who hold such positions so that liberal readers won’t have to trouble themselves with any rational attention to ideas with which they disagree.

I still find more rationality in the Catholic blogosphere than anywhere else. For example, Tom Hoopes:

The best thing about conservatives is that they hold on to important principles and won’t let got. The right to life is absolute, for everyone and for always. It must not be compromised. The definition of marriage is the bedrock of society. Don’t change it. Jesus Christ is the one way to the Father. We may like that or it may bug us; in either case it’s true.

The best thing about liberals is that they embrace all people. They accept the world bent and broken and they embrace its inhabitants:  Strange people from strange cultures, people who are gay, Catholics who are getting divorced, lovers living together out of wedlock. The good liberal loves them all (and the really good ones even love conservatives, too).

These false divisions are even more lamentable especially since this Pontiff will continue in the vein of his predecessor Benedict, as a Pope of Christian Unity:

The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I will attend Pope Francis’s inaugural Mass. The Ecumenical Patriarchate Press Office informed AsiaNews about the decision, noting that this is the first time such an event occurs since the Catholic-Orthodox split in 1054, an important sign for Christian unity.
The ecumenical patriarch will be accompanied by Ioannis Zizioulas, metropolitan of Pergamon and co-president of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Church, as well as Tarassios, Orthodox Metropolitan of Argentina, and Gennadios, Orthodox Metropolitan of Italy.

Relations between Catholics and Orthodox have been improving since the Second Vatican Council through mutual visits, acts of friendship and theological dialogue.
Under Benedict XVI, the dialogue picked up in earnest after a lull. In trying to promote it, the pope suggested ways to express the primacy of Peter’s successor that could be acceptable to the Orthodox, finding his inspiration from the undivided Church of the first millennium.

Pope Francis is just as critical of the media. After criticising society for its indifference to the poor, he had this to say about the MSM (just in case you think Mr. Holloway is alone in his opinions):

The Cardinal, who battled with the government of Argentina quite regularly, had some harsh words for the media as well. He said:

“This exclusion [of love], truly a social anesthesia, is reinforced, in part, by the identity politics in the media discourse which denigrates all who do not agree with the contemporary ideology and fashion….”

That sums up the attitude of the mainstream media alright. Those who do not conform are to be ridiculed.

 What's at stake? Emily Stimpson says it well:

We should rejoice at the election of our new Holy Father. We should rejoice at the example of charity, humility, and love of the poor that his ministry makes manifest and follow his example in all that.

We also, however, should follow the example he has set for us in courageously speaking out against the evils in the culture. This Francis no more thinks his witness is sufficient for evangelization than the first Francis did. He has proclaimed the full Gospel through his words as much as his actions. He has said the unpopular things. He has engaged in the uncomfortable conversations.

So must we. We must live the Church’s teachings, and we must speak them.