Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

Have you heard of this relatively new apostolate? I had not, and but for an e-mail from one of the founders I might still be ignorant. After looking around a bit, this is what I found out. Catholic Radio International is a content provider for Catholic radio stations that started last May with an initial offering of three programs. They have now doubled this to six.  I do not know who if anyone is yet broadcasting these, but you can listen to their content online.

Here is more on CRI from Tim Drake’s column from the June 3-9 issue of NCR:

Jeff Gardner, formerly of Relevant Radio, and Catholic journalist Tom Szyszkiewicz have created Catholic Radio International as a way to provide content for Catholic stations.

“Historically, the Church has been at the forefront of communications,” said Gardner. “Whether the printing press or Vatican Radio, the Church has been about the business of spreading the Good News.”

Yet, says Gardner, when it comes to modern communications, the Church has had little if any involvement in television or motion pictures.

“Those have been the bulldozers for popular culture,” said Gardner. “The Internet, as a delivery platform for media, changes that. It’s a great social leveler and presents an opportunity to communicate with an audience at an economy never before seen.”

So, Catholic Radio International launched three programs in early May. The two commentary-style programs and one news program are available for download on the Internet.

“We’re trying to raise the quality of Catholic radio programming,” said Szyszkiewicz. “We need a Catholic response to National Public Radio.”

While their content is currently available online, the next step involves getting their programs aired on Catholic radio stations.

I listened to one of their program episodes on Ron Paul, from the program The Heart of the Matter. The programs are very professionally done and from a Catholic perspective they are clearly pretty solid.  However, in their treatment of Paul, I can’t help but offer some of my thoughts.  I would have liked to have heard a treatment not only of Paul’s not being in either the traditionally “left” or “right” camp but also I think necessary would be a treatment of shortcomings of libertarianism, which is essentially the same as one of the shortcoming of classical liberalism but on steroids. That is, libertarianism suffers from a lack of recognition of original sin and its effects.  Here is what I mean.

While modern liberalism generally suffers from an aversion to subsidiarity, libertarianism rejects subsidiarity in the other direction. In other words, while subsidiarity demands things be done at the lowest possible level, ultimately leaving to the individual and family that which they can effectively do on their own, it also recognizes that there is a necessary role for different levels of government and different degrees of governmental influence on daily life based upon the issues at hand. Libertarianism simply wants no interference on the individual in any manner.

Modern liberalism, if I might generalize, tends toward more and more control at higher and higher levels of government; except, that is, for issues related to sexual moral order and here they are very much in line with libertarianism.  Modern conservativism (which some suggest is the offspring of classical liberalism), is often characterized as being exactly the opposite of this.  On these issues, conservativism tends more toward libertarianism.  Again, libertarianism seems to presuppose that governments should have little to no role in almost every issue. In other words, it seems to see law as at best, a necessary evil rather than as an expression of wisdom.  Thus, laws should be kept to a minimum.  In our fallen world though, governmental instituted order, based upon natural law, subsidiarity, and solidarity, is a necessity. Ron Paul’s world view, as I understand it any way, is naive and simply a recipe for anarchy.

Any way, back to CRI.  Another critique that I have, and I suspect this primarily has to do with precision in wording, comes from a statement under the Masthead of their The Heart of the Matter program: “To omit information about an issue or an event is to lie.” Taken in an absolute sense, this certainly is not the case. However, from the context it is obvious that they are trying to say that the current culture of politics, media, etc. in which people intentionally mislead by omitting relevant facts that would change, or even contradict what is being asserted is in fact lying. That is true.

However, in itself, to omit information is not lying. The intent to mislead is lying (see CCC 2481). One always omits information in any assertion because he cannot possibly say everything about a matter that could be said.  One always must make judgments of relevance.  In addition, the difference between being wrong about one’s facts (which is in contradiction to the truth) and being a liar, is that one intends by his actions to mislead. In fact, one can omit even relevant information without the intent to mislead, without lying.

One could do this due to an error in judgment about the relevance of a fact or a lack of appreciation about how the missing information might lead to a misinterpretation. Moreover, there are times in which one is obligated to omit information about an issue. The sin of detraction is one in which one reveals true information about the faults or failings of one’s neighbor without an objectively valid reason (see CCC 2477).

Any way, I do not offer these as criticisms to CRI.  Rather arising from my temperament, I am wont to offer precisions and take opportunities to educate whenever they appear…which my wife hates by the way… Do check out CRI’s website and if you have a Catholic radio station you listen to, if you like what you hear with CRI why not suggest to your radio station that they pick up some of their content.