Richard Spencer

July 03, 2008

A Takimag reader, Kevin Michael Derby, has submitted this report on the goings on in Catholic cyberspace: 

Earlier this month, the Faith and Reason Institute set up The Catholic Thing, a webzine created, as Robert Royal states in the inaugural column, to ?cast a steady and invigorating Catholic light on what is otherwise a superficial and dull world.”

Royal assures us that ?the Catholic thing – the concrete historical reality of Catholicism – is the richest cultural tradition in the world.? One only wishes that Royal would back up those words at the new site. While The Catholic Thing provides a forum for a number of Catholic writers to touch upon various subjects, the site also includes many non-Catholic writers touching on distinctly non-Catholic matters. For example, in the ?Commentary? section, The Catholic Thing links to the works of a number of distinctly non-Catholic writers including Victor Davis Hanson and Ben Stein on topics ranging from why America needs to drill for oil to Tony Blankley?s assuring us that Barack Obama is a radical getting a free ride from the media and, of course, the standard article once again letting us know that we have turned the corner in Iraq.

While the likes of Father Richard John Neuhaus and George Weigel are missing, the Faith and Reason Institute is only dressing up neoconservatism in Catholic garments. Apparently the efforts of First Things and the EPPC are not enough. Predictably, Michael Novak, the neocon theologian tapped by the Bush administration to sell the Vatican on the invasion of Iraq, was the second contributor to the new webzine.

Royal is certainly correct that a new webzine from a Catholic perspective would be invigorating. What his organization has produced though is just another neocon journal, God?s good servant perhaps but the Grand Old Party?s and the state?s first.