It used to be the case that you had to apply your critical reading skills to find the anti-religious bias in the Washington Post. These days, you only have to look at the pictures. Taking out the Outlook section yesterday readers saw this above the fold:
Emerging from a darkened past of church and family, the modern woman steps into the sunlight at last to take on color and put on shades, for coolness is the crown of all human flourishing. Not that I doubt for a moment that many women can and do find fulfillment outside these institutions. But the secularist implication is clear enough: "saying goodbye to" all that—the strictures and obligations, the burden of history—is the very meaning of progress. And freedom—that which lies beyond the white picket fence—is the absence of constraints.
Clearly it is emancipation that ought to most occupy our thoughts this Easter Sunday, the sermon runs. Our young lady has emerged from the tomb. Death, where is thy sting? And Death, where are thy brains? Behold the church, an armless trunk, dunce cap, empty eyes. What can it do but frown and look on in disapproval?
But, to take a cue from recent Post articles spotlighting—whom else?—Walter Kasper and Gary Wills, those thing at the bottom just might be legs. "After the conservative pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, Francis has placed the church back on the path of change", we are told. Forget for a moment that the categories of 'right' and 'left' are children of the French Revolution and as such postdate the deposit of faith by many centuries. We can and must shoehorn anything the church does into these two categories, and hope for the latter. For the church, too, might eventually jump the fence.
But, to take a cue from recent Post articles spotlighting—whom else?—Walter Kasper and Gary Wills, those thing at the bottom just might be legs. "After the conservative pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, Francis has placed the church back on the path of change", we are told. Forget for a moment that the categories of 'right' and 'left' are children of the French Revolution and as such postdate the deposit of faith by many centuries. We can and must shoehorn anything the church does into these two categories, and hope for the latter. For the church, too, might eventually jump the fence.
But ultimately, who really cares?