(Followup to 9/29/02)
Equal Time for the Right
And just so we can rest assured that all the in-house public dissention doesn�t come only from the left, we have Father James Wathen expounding his ultra-conservative heresy on our local radio station every Sunday morning. Presenting himself as a Catholic priest preaching the Catholic point of view, the radio broadcasts often attack the authority of the post-Vatican II Church. Wathen is a schismatic by virtue of the fact that he obeys no bishop, answering to no one but himself. That doesn�t mean every opinion he holds about the Church and Vatican II is necessarily wrong. Like Luther, however, he has abandoned the ship and is, in effect, now a Protestant.

My concern is that non-Catholics get much of their knowledge of the Church from what they read in the papers and hear on the radio. Despite some of these sources purporting to teach the Catholic position, much of this information is distorted and biased. Combine this with anti-catholic rhetoric that is often completely wrong, it�s no wonder people develop a misunderstanding of Church teaching.

Today there are many good websites that present Catholic teaching accurately. Of course, there are many more that do not. How does one know when he is getting the truth? One way is to consult a web page called Peter�s Net. ( http://www.petersnet.net/)

Peter�s Net rates Catholic web pages according to their fidelity to the Catholic Faith. Most of the mainline Catholic pages are listed. If the website is given a �green light�, you can be fairly certain the site is presenting the Catholic position accurately. Be cautious if a page has a �yellow light�, and avoid any page with a �red light.� If a site is given a yellow or red light, reasons and examples are provided to justify the rating. No, it's not perfect. It too is someone's opinion. However, Peter's Net is generally a good benchmark for determining whether the material presented is orthodox.

Keep searching for the truth.