(ANALYSIS) It should come as no surprise to anyone that politicians don’t much like the press. This isn’t a shocking statement to anyone old enough to remember President Richard Nixon and Watergate.

Nixon, of course, wasn’t alone. A watchdog press has run afoul of many presidents, including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald Trump — this last one most of all.

In Catholicism, popes have also been media targets. Popes, compared to presidents, have been more gracious when speaking of the press. That even goes for the hyper-aggressive Italian media and their daily Vatican coverage.

As the left-right political divide widens, while many journalists working for mainstream publications abandon objectivity, so have the Catholic left-right doctrinal feuds. Francis’ papacy, in fact, has been plagued by it. Mainstream news media, for those who read this space, know that readers are increasingly fed narratives over reality.

The Catholic press operates differently. Those on the left wish to reform the church. Those on the right want to uphold and preserve centuries-old doctrines. Catholic media, depending where the publication or TV station falls on the doctrinal spectrum, aren’t governed by objectivity but by church teachings. This is where the conflict arises and when culture war battles within the church — and society at large — can manifest themselves.

This is an internecine battle among members of the Catholic hierarchy. In the crosshairs is EWTN. The media empire, founded by Mother Angelica in 1980, is a news organization that does all of its reporting through the lens of traditional Catholic teaching. It’s the 1992 Catholic Catechism network.

That frequently comes into direct conflict with the words and actions of Pope Francis’ strongest supporters, when dealing with ministry to LGBTQ+ Catholics, for example, and other culture war issues.

Just as Obama went after Fox News and Trump against most everyone (even Fox News following the 2020 presidential election), we now have Catholic cardinals openly criticizing Catholic media. The recent case involving San Diego Cardinal Robert McElroy is an example of Catholicism’s internal divisions playing out in Catholic media.

McElroy’s target is EWTN, one of the largest Catholic news organization in the world. This is what the National Catholic Reporter posted on March 24:

San Diego Cardinal Robert McElroy sharply criticized the Eternal Word Television Network, the conservative Catholic U.S. media conglomerate, in an interview with Spanish magazine Vida Nueva published on March 24.

Vida Nueva asked McElroy about the decision of newly installed Bishop Fernando Prado of San Sebastián, Spain, to ban diocesan television from carrying content produced by EWTN. Prado wrote that he made the decision "trying to support the communion of the diocese with the Successor of Peter."

"I would not have EWTN on diocesan media either," McElroy responded.

"EWTN worries me because it represents a giant of economic and cultural power connected to a religious viewpoint that is fundamentally critical of the pope," the cardinal said.

"The main anchors of the channel constantly minimize the abilities and theological knowledge of Francis, cite Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano’s slander of the pope and try to move the world away from the reforms the pope is signaling," said McElroy.

Vigano, a former Vatican ambassador to the U.S., has called on Francis to resign the papacy.   

There are a few things to unpack here. McElroy was made a cardinal by Pope Francis just last August, an appointment that was greeted with joy from those on the doctrinal left and skepticism on the right. McElroy, who was appointed bishop of San Diego by Francis in 2015, got his red hat without ever having served as an archbishop, which is a traditional stepping stone to becoming a cardinal.

In an interview with NBC’s Anne Thompson before the Vatican ceremony, McElroy “tried to downplay the differences between himself and the more conservative U.S. bishops over issues like ‘abortion, climate change, poverty, immigration, race.’” Here’s more from how NBC covered McElroy in August 2022:

“There are not differences between the bishops much on the question of substance,” McElroy said. “The difference is in the area of prioritization. That’s where the conflicts come.”

Still, McElroy has on numerous occasions publicly criticized his fellow American bishops for not fully embracing Francis’ pastoral priorities, and he outraged many conservative Roman Catholics in 2017 by branding then-President Donald Trump “the candidate of disruption.”

Also, McElroy is getting a promotion while the leader of the much larger Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Archbishop Jose Gomez, was passed over for cardinal again.

Gomez last year offended Black Catholics and others by branding social justice movements like Black Lives Matter “pseudo-religions.”

At 68, McElroy is likely to be one of the cardinals who will pick Francis’ successor, and who will carry on the reforms that the Argentinian-born pope has tried to push through despite opposition from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and other conservative Catholic clergy.

Asked if he would deny communion to pro-choice Democratic politicians, like the Archbishop of San Francisco did recently to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, McElroy said no.

“I think it’s an assault on the Eucharist,” said McElroy. “It’s taking the symbol of unity in the church, which makes us all one sacramentally in Jesus Christ, and making it a sign of division.”

That background helps to better understand where McElroy is coming from.

The other name to know here is Vigano, who served as the former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States from 2011 to 2016. He’s best known for having publicized two major Vatican scandals. In 2012, he revealed financial corruption inside the Vatican. In 2018, he accused Pope Francis and other church officials of covering up sexual abuse allegations against disgraced former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

McCarrick was once the powerful cardinal of Washington, D.C., and a Vatican powerbroker. He was extremely popular with reporters in “Team Ted” in the mainstream press.

The subsequent results of a Vatican probe released in 2020 exonerated Francis of any wrongdoing — puttng the blame largely on his predecessors St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

At the same time, Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, recently suggested McElroy — although he didn’t name him directly — was a “heretic” because of his views on a number of social issues.

In 2021, Pope Francis told a group of Jesuits, “There is, for example, a large Catholic television channel that has no hesitation in continually speaking ill of the pope.” And just last year, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, addressed EWTN’s European television affiliates, telling them:

Catholic media, as you well know, has an important role in the task of the new evangelization. This is why it is good that they feel that they are an active part of the life of the Church, first of all by living in a spirit of communion with the Bishop of Rome. This is all the more urgent today in a time marked by overly-dramatic debates, also within the Church, which do not even spare the person and the Magisterium of the Pontiff. When Mother Angelica founded EWTN with tremendous courage and extraordinary creativity, she did so primarily to provide an instrument of good at the service of the Church and the Pope. This continues to be your greatest mission and reward – to be and to experience yourselves at the service of the Church and the Successor of Peter.

All this has led to McElroy’s unprecedented move of banning EWTN from his diocese’s media, which includes stories from the National Catholic Register and Catholic News Agency. The Tablet, the international Catholic news weekly, reported on the story. This is the key section:

Explaining why opposition to Pope Francis is so acute in certain US circles, McElroy said: “Francis’ attention is centred on the life of the believer in its complexity and on how the Gospel and the tradition of the Church can apply in an effective and compassionate way to the lives of those who struggle ardently to draw close to God and follow his path in the midst of so many challenges.”

The Pope’s pastoral sensibility “doesn’t have the clarity and security that many have come to trust in their understanding of the faith”.

EWTN, which owns both the Catholic News Agency and the National Catholic Register, is seen as the principal forum for opposition to the Pope.

“The main anchors of the channel constantly minimise the abilities and theological knowledge of Francis, cite Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s slander of the pope and try to move the world away from the reforms the Pope is signalling,” McElroy said.  

Like the Paprocki comments, McElroy’s decision to ban EWTN received zero mainstream news coverage. (Also, Terry Mattingly acknowledged the lack of mainstream secular news coverage regarding Paprocki’s essay at the time.)

It should be noted that there was a possible escalation (aside from Paprocki’s comments) between McElroy and some in right-wing Catholic media dating back a few weeks.

For example, the National Catholic Register ran a column by George Weigel, a senior fellow and William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C, on Feb 1. He was also the author of “Witness to Hope,” a major biography of St. John Paul II. This is the key section:

The question of “inclusion” and the Church’s self-understanding was recently raised by an article published in America by Cardinal Robert McElroy, because the sensibility on display in the cardinal’s article is not that of the Bible, the Fathers of the Church, the Second Vatican Council or the Catechism. It is the sensibility of woke culture’s obsession with “inclusion.”

The article suggests, if elliptically, that, because of concerns about inclusion, the ordination of women to the ministerial priesthood and the moral integrity of gay sex are open questions. But that is not the settled teaching of the Catholic Church. How can a highly intelligent man who has taken solemn oaths in which he accepted that teaching and promised to uphold it think otherwise?

Like contemporary woke culture, the cardinal’s article seems to regard gender theory as a secular form of revealed truth. In fact, theories of culturally-constructed “gender” and “gender fluidity” flatly contradict divine revelation: “male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

The article makes extravagant (and unsourced) claims about widespread “animus” against “the LGBT communities,” deeming such “visceral” attitudes “demonic.” But Cardinal McElroy has nothing to say about the severe (and readily documentable) cultural, professional and legal pressures brought to bear on those who refuse to go woke about the proper ordering of human love.

Woke inclusion-mania’s anthem is Frank Sinatra’s childish concept of freedom: “I did it my way.” Burning incense at the altar of such infantilism is not going to bring men and women to the Christ who linked freedom to truth: “… you will know the truth and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32).

The Catholic Church is a communion of men and women, all of whom struggle with human weakness when confronting the vicissitudes of the human condition. But that communion of disciples has also been given the truths that truly liberate by the Lord himself — truths that are not subject to affirmation or denial by discussion groups.

There you have it. Certainly, McElroy saw these comments as fighting words. Catholic media — on the left and right — have always been very good at reporting the facts and highlighting the divisions between both campos.

This also opens up the question of whether diocesan newspapers are there to uphold Catholic teachings and traditions or meant to advertise the whims of a cardinal or bishop in any given jurisdiction. The answer is “no.” These newspapers exist to inform the community and to give them stories you won’t read in the secular mainstream press.

McElroy’s biggest issue may be with the commentary that has run on EWTN and its websites more than its news coverage. That’s a fair debate. More than a blanket ban, however, I would have liked to have seen McElroy engage — both theologically and intellectually — with EWTN’s various journalistic platforms.

Where has EWTN failed in upholding Catholic teachings? This is a fair question and one that McElroy could have engaged with rather than treat EWTN like a hostile news organization. Cardinals have a duty to engage with all Catholics. That means having to reach out to everyone in Catholic media — especially during the Lenten season — and debate the differences that sometimes cause the church to be at odds with itself.

In 2015, Pope Francis told U.S. bishops the following:

I know that you face many challenges, that the field in which you sow is unyielding and that there is always the temptation to give in to fear, to lick one’s wounds, to think back on bygone times and to devise harsh responses to fierce opposition. Yet we are promoters of the culture of encounter.

We are living sacraments of the embrace between God’s riches and our poverty. We are witnesses of the abasement and the condescension of God who anticipates in love our every response. Dialogue is our method, not as a shrewd strategy but out of fidelity to the One who never wearies of visiting the marketplace, even at the eleventh hour, to propose his offer of love.

“Dialogue is our method.” Indeed, it is for many in Catholic media. Now only if the cardinals abided by those same rules.

This post originally ran at GetReligion.

Clemente Lisi is a senior editor at Religion Unplugged and teaches journalism at The King’s College in New York City. He is the author of “The FIFA World Cup: A History of the Planet’s Biggest Sporting Event.” Follow him on Twitter @ClementeLisi.