When Catholic Apostolates Give Platforms to Socialists/Communists/Dissent

Of late, there is a movement afoot to give John Allen, the National Catholic Reporter, Commonweal and other smooth-talking agents of dissent, socialism, communism, etc., platforms.

Aside from misleading spiritually or intellectually challenged readers, once you posts links to the National Catholic Reporter or their wizards, or post stories pushing Marxist reforms within Catholic politics - how do you then go out and criticize Obama for considering their dissenting viewpoints legitimately Catholic?

When you host people with imprudent ideas, it's implied you're saying you approve of those ideas and you think others should approve those ideas too. Then, people start applying those ideas to their personal lives.

When you take it upon yourself to guide discernment in any way, shape or form, there are responsibilities that go along with it. One of those responsibilities is knowing that not everyone has good discretion, intuition or the faith formation to navigate through malarkey. You have the responsibility of presenting information in a way that protects people from being hoodwinked into stupid ideas.

It's especially important to have the depth of intellect to recognize what I call "projecting what this idea leads to" category.

Many moons ago in our neighborhood, one of the neighbors took up walking their dog on everyone's lawn. You know when your lawn, plants and shrubs start to get those yellow spots and die? Well, people working hard on their lawns and plants in my neighborhood asked her to stop. Her response was, her dog wasn't doing the damage because her dog was just sniffing.

That's right. It was all innocent. When she got home from work after an eight hour day and put the leash on her dog and walked around the neighborhood, she was taking her dog out to sniff. That sorry excuse didn't go very far because after many years of living, having dogs of our own and homes with lawns, some of us knew what comes after the sniffing.

That same intuition has to be in high gear if you've taken up a post to teach the faith. You've got to have to have your antennae up for ideas that, on their face, seem innocent.

For instance, four or five years ago, when my youngest children were in middle school, came the mandatory reading of Harry Potter. Those of us with spiritual intuition who could see the subterfuge were able to get it knocked off the list. Several really good parents who are trying to be well-formed Catholics but simply cannot find their way through the dissent here in Massachusetts just couldn't see the subterfuge thought I was being ridiculous when I projected that some day we'd see the feminist agenda, rights to promiscuity, contraception and/or other philosophies Catholics oppose, after they were roped into the Pottermania.

Not everyone has the instincts, intuition or spiritual depth of field.


Father Z is among a group who maintain that we have a friend in John Allen - i.e., Allen is fairminded and even-handed but sometimes, he derails.


First of all, Allen is on board the National Catholic Reporter, the tool leading people away from salvation. He's not derailing when he shills for dissent, he's showing his true colors. We don't latch onto evenhanded people writing for Planned Parenthood and then get indignant when they write something offensive, do we?

What does the idea lead to?

In another example today, Inside Catholic gave a platform to Marxist Joe Hargrave.


Of course, Joe has never admitted he's a Marxist but if your mother didn't raise an idiot, you can draw the conclusions. (Just like the National Catholic Reporter, Commonweal and others have never admitted the name Catholic and their obvious repudiation of it's tenets don't jive - but we all know their shtick.)

Yesterday, Joe cracked the code of Caritas in Veritate to advise Catholics that the encyclical was a secretly coded message intending to promote distributism.


Today, Inside Catholic puts up a Marxist agenda and asks us to swallow it as an interpretation of the Pope's encyclical.

Can these ideas gain popularity among conservative American politicians? Few may realize that a conservative Republican congressman, Dana Rohrabacher, proposed the "Employee Ownership Act" back in 1999. The act would have established a new type of corporation known as an Employee Owned and Controlled Corporation (EOCC) and provided tax incentives for those who start them. The EOCC would be defined by the following characteristics:

· Employees would own at least 50 percent of all voting stock in the form of an employee trust. At least 90 percent of employees who worked more than 1,000 hours a year would have to be allowed to participate in this trust.
· Employees would be allowed to vote on all corporate issues, including board elections.
· Distribution and valuation rules would correspond to existing Employee Stock Ownership Plan rules.

Sure, sure.

The curiosity is killing me. Does this guy have a real job? A career where you work hard and build your gifts, are rewarded with advancement and salary increases?

Because it sounds to me like a birdbrained idea from somebody who never gets around to applying for a job or can hold a job so he's sitting by his computer and on the beach, dreaming of the day when people will study and work their fingers to the bone building a business and when they finally get it to the point where it's successful, people lacking ambition can finally benefit from it. When a doctor finishes medical school and passes his boards, they'll tweet Joe's twitter so he can sign stock certificates to own 50% of the practice and the like.

What does this idea lead to?

Putting up the communist agenda is beneath the dignity of faithful Catholic apostolate.

You wouldn't see Hargrave's trash on EWTN and we all know the reasons why.

We've got to do better than this.