Thomas Fox, left, with colleague in the National Catholic Reporter office
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The editor of the American newspaper National Catholic Reporter has described itself as proudly Catholic in response to a warning an American bishop that the publication undermines the faith, reports the Catholic News Agency.
“NCR is proud to call itself a Catholic publication. We report and comment on church matters, including official teachings,” Thomas Fox wrote on the paper's website on Sunday.
“We also report and comment on those who call into question some of these official teachings,” he said.
Mr Fox was responding to a column last week by Bishop Robert Finn for his diocesan paper, The Catholic Key, in which he wrote that “in light of the number of recent expressions of concern, I have a responsibility as the local bishop to instruct the Faithful about the problematic nature of this media source which bears the name 'Catholic.'”
The National Catholic Reporter is based in Bishop Finn's Diocese of Kansas City-Saint Joseph. As the local bishop, he noted his responsibility to “call the media to fidelity in the use of means of social communications.”
In his column, the bishop did not take issue with the paper's reporting, but with its editorial stances.
“In the last months I have been deluged with emails and other correspondence from Catholics concerned about the editorial stances of the Reporter: officially condemning Church teaching on the ordination of women, insistent undermining of Church teaching on artificial contraception and sexual morality in general, lionising dissident theologies while rejecting established Magisterial teaching, and a litany of other issues.”
FULL STORY National Catholic Reporter 'proud to identify as Catholic' (CNA)