Catholic Answers to Face Canonical Trial
Leading apologetics apostolate charged with counts of loving, hating the pope.
Editor’s note: The below is satire, written to mark the American custom of April Fool’s Day. Although the details in this article are fictitious, the criticism that Catholic Answers receives from different factions in the Church, for being too traditional or not traditional enough, is real. So we thought we’d have a little fun with it. We hope you’ll have a laugh and pray for us!
ROME: Catholic Answers has come under a rare canonical double-interdict, pending the results of an ecclesiastical trial, for the crimes of hyperpapalism and papal detraction. Cardinal Manuel Fernandez, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, announced the charges in a 6,000-word press release.
“In its works and publications, Catholic Answers has exhibited rigid opposition to the teaching authority of the current papal magisterium and its program of reform,” it read in part. “It has also shown itself,” it continued, “to be a shameless shill for modernist toadies and popesplainers.”
Catholic Answers president Christopher Check arrived in the Eternal City to face the trial, expected to take several weeks as prosecutors call in witnesses to testify to the apostolate’s kneejerk defense of everything that comes from the Holy See and also its constant dissension from it.
These witnesses are rumored to include a blogger from a well-known Traditionalist website, who will reportedly tell the Roman Rota that Catholic Answers staff outrageously categorized the recent DDF declaration Fiducia Supplicans, which approved the blessing of same-sex couples, as “not strictly heretical.” Vatican-watchers also expect to hear from a popular professor at a Jesuit college who will testify to Catholic Answers’ criticism of the prudence, motives, and theological foundation behind the recent DDF declaration Fiducia Supplicans.
Christopher Check calmly reviews the charges against Catholic Answers
“Look—like any non-profit, we have to keep a wide range of donors happy,” said Check as he finished breakfast on a terrace overlooking the Piazza Navona. “Sometimes that means throwing a bone to the Masonic overlords behind the St. Gallen Mafia, and sometimes that means kowtowing to the corporate paymasters pulling the strings at Catholics for Catholics”—referring respectively to shadowy entities rumored to want to take the Church down the destructive path of progressive heterodoxy and toward a retrograde triumphalism, both of which Catholic Answers supports.
“That being said,” Check continued, “maybe we went too far when we invited James Martin, S.J., to offer the usus antiquior in our chapel.” He paused and added softly, “Wearing clown makeup and a fiddleback chasuble.”
The prospect of canonical penalties for attacking the pope and also always defending him has not deterred Catholic Answers from pursuing its latest plans to promote liberal confusion in the Church in addition to reactionary smugness. These include: implementing a “mantillas, yes; slacks, no” dress policy for female employees; engaging in permanent dialogue with Unitarians and yoga practitioners; submitting a new dubium about Sr. Lucia’s dental records; and burning a pile of pre-1965 theology textbooks as an offering to Pachamama.