Big props to the East Oklahoma Catholic, newspaper of the Diocese of Tulsa, which has done something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before: cover tensions and problems in the diocese.

(pdf file)

The issue is illegal immigration and how that’s playing out in one parish in which a couple of months ago, some Anglo parishioners walked out of a Confirmation Mass celebrated mostly in Spanish.

The paper has an article on the bishop’s visit to that parish and the conversation that ensued. There’s also an editorial on the subject. Good job – usually the diocesan Catholic press is good about covering division and controversy outside the church, but papering over what’s going on within.

And you should know that the editorial direction on that score is, the vast majority of the time, the bishop’s decision. So…more props to Bishop Slattery.

(When I was writing a column for the Florida Catholic, I was having lunch with a former long-time editor of another, larger Archdiocesan paper. I complained about a column they refused to run, the only one in seven years or so. Ed recalled that the FC was the paper for 6 of the 7 Florida dioceses, which meant that 6 bishops oversaw its publication. "It’s a wonder they get out a paper at all," he said.)

(Oh, and the column? I had just read Souls and Bodies by David Lodge, his semi-autobiographical novel of British Catholic life from the 50’s to the 70’s, in which anxiety over contraception plays a big part. My column was purely observational on how the scene had changed, how contraception was not an issue for most Catholics anymore, relating a conversation I had with a couple who co-ordinated pre-marriage prep in a college parish, who said that 90% of the couples coming to them were cohabitating and using artificial contraception….and they refused to run it, saying it didn’t reflect reality, that the diocesan family life coordinator assured them that NFP was widely accepted, blah, blah, blah.)