Bishops, Presidents, and Vibes

How The New York Times Is Coping

File: Newspaper Row New York, The Sun on the left, New York Times in the front.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

The thing upward in my mind this morning is that I rushed out, because of the very icy blasts buffeting me all week, to procure a screen for my fireplace. We have kept all the curtains closed and the fire going almost all day when we are home in a vain effort not to feel cold and sad. I am excessively relieved about this screen because Bunter, the dog, desires to get as close to the fire as he can, his nose almost in amongst the embers, poor chilly beastie. Dragging him back over and over does not seem to change his mind. Now he is sitting next to the screen gazing at the fire and I feel much much more relaxed.

Anyway, what a cold time we are having, and yet exciting, which is also not something I prefer. I don’t need exciting times. I don’t require the rise and fall of kings and presidents to keep my mind occupied, and yet here we are. This morning I have an extravaganza of New York Times articles leavened with a little lump of the ladies of The View. I have three articles that, though about different subjects, work together to speak to the shift in Vibe that we are experiencing.

The first is one of those usual efforts in which a writer deigns to explain to the culture at large and people of “faith” in particular what they all ought to do and how they should conduct themselves. It has almost nothing to say that hasn’t been said many times over the last four or five years. Nevertheless, it is a good representative study in Missing The Point and will set up Article Two rather nicely. It begins by introducing the reader to a lapsed Roman Catholic who feels conscience-bound not to attend divine services anymore because of how bad the whole church is being:

That’s because he finds the behavior of the Catholic Church, as an institution, to go against its own teachings. “The contradiction of the Catholic Church’s actions and scandals and obsession and reliance on wealth is something that simply confuses me,” he said. He felt dishonest practicing Catholicism when the institution couldn’t live out the values he was taught as a child. He was particularly appalled by the behavior of the church around the sexual abuse of children. “It really betrayed my trust just because it’s not just the scandals themselves, but the efforts to cover them up or to not be transparent about them.”

So, protip writers on the subject of religion in the New York Times who will never read this blog but should, if you’re going to go digging up people who don’t go to church anymore, it would be really great if you would also interview people who do go and ask them why they go. And one thing they will probably tell you is that they are, in fact, not going because of all the warm feelings they have about the institution. They probably won’t even mention the word “values.” They will, if they are regular attenders, probably mention something else that continually escapes the notice of New York Times journalists. I know, it is something that is so hard to remember to think about. Ready? GOD. People go to church to worship God. That’s pretty much it. They believe there is a God and they feel some sense of obligation to worship him on his own terms, and they might also have had some kind of experience of him in a personal way. All the liturgy and scriptures and “values” fit together in an intellectual framework that makes sense because they have been able to wrap their minds—and hearts—around the fact of God’s existence and that he can best be known in the person of Jesus.