I read this transcription of the Pope’s words to priests of the diocese of Aosta from last week. Then I read Fr. McBrien’s latest column.

The total effect of reading the pope’s informal remarks: a man engaged with the world, who knows the issues, who grabs onto the crux of the issue at hand, who is very open-minded, easily able to draw a line between what we know and what we’re still exploring and trying to understand, a man who loves Christ  and is committed to the Church’s mandate to share Him with and in the world, and is thoroughly cognizant of the challenges, and how the failure to do so is often the Church’s own fault. But ever hopeful.

The total effect of reading Fr. McBrien’s column: Let’s muck about the institution some more. Let’s talk about it, mull it over and put the whole thing in terms of enforcement and boundaries.

His subject, of course, is the diocesan press and the bishops who publish is:

As bishops of a more open and moderate approach to pastoral leadership (one that not only respects but also welcomes legitimate diversity on debatable matters) depart from the ecclesiastical scene either through retirement or death, they are in many cases replaced by men who are more rigid and authoritarian in manner.

Such bishops seem to regard themselves less as pastors than as enforcers of orthodoxy and discipline. To put it more benignly, they see their enforcement duties as what pastoring is all about. For them, anything less would smack of permissiveness and dereliction of duty.

As this second category of bishops became more numerous in the U.S. hierarchy since 1980, diocesan papers changed accordingly. Some have been transformed from adult-level sources of information, interpretation, and discussion regarding developments important to the life and mission of the Church to house organs, comparable to publications produced by labor unions and business organizations.

One of the first things that many of these second-category bishops have done when taking the reins of episcopal authority in hand was to send a signal to the editor of their diocesan papers that hereafter they, not the editor, would be the final judge of what goes into the paper and what stays out. And that would include news stories, editorials, and syndicated columns, even though few remain that could possibly disturb any of these second-category bishops.

It’s kind of funny, actually. I read the "second-category" bishops as an implied sleight, as if we’re supposed to subconsciously replace it with "second-tier." It’s funny that Fr. McBrien proposes that his papers of choice, whatever they may be, aren’t ultimately under the bishop’s thumb as much as any other and don’t reflect that bishop’s wishes. It’s really funny that the bishop he singles out for praise is the retired bishop of Kansas City.

I think it’s unfortunate that diocesan papers are usually little more than house organs, not because I think they should be given over to naval-gazing, sincerely dull discussions, but because the news suffers. I don’t care about opinions. I have enough of those myself. I care about what’s happening, honestly reported, no matter how painful it may be. That, unfortunately we won’t get from diocesan papers from any end of the spectrum, which is why we have to depend on our friends in the secular press to do that work. That’s why we need independent Catholic papers and journals.

But in the end, the whole discussion is boring, and I would recommend reading the Pope’s words instead of Fr. McBrien’s – or mine, for that matter.