"Is there a sinister agenda behind the Ignatius blog's attack on me personally..." Wha...?

The National Catholic Register site has a CNS piece, "Popes and Saints Take on 'Suspicion and Conspiracy'" by Beth Griffin, about a conference, "Suspicion and Conspiracy: Defending the Reputation of Noble Individuals" at Fordham University:

Jesuit Father Joseph Koterski, a philosophy professor at Fordham, said Pope Benedict XVI thought very deeply about how to respond, or how not to respond, to indirect accusations against the Church.

He said the Pope's 2006 encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love) is a model for Catholics to answer charges made using innuendo and suspicion, instead of those developed through traditional forms of scholarly argument that present actual evidence for the position taken.

Father Koterski described psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, socialist Karl Marx and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche as "masters of suspicion" because they attacked the Church and its motives with innuendo and insinuation, rather than straightforward argument. He said Pope Benedict is "our German shepherd standing resolutely in the face of three German wolves."

"The distinctive feature of arguments preferred by the masters of suspicion, and of postmodern and deconstructionist thinkers in their wake, is to proceed by raising suspicions about the motives of their opponents," Father Koterski said. When charges are based on resentment or envy, rather than evidence or argument, the target is put on the defensive.

"A modest response can make it seem that the accused is really guilty and incapable of mounting any more of a defense, while a vigorous response can easily suggest one is trying to hide something under the very energy of the reply," he said.

Father Koterski said in Deus Caritas Est Pope Benedict steers a middle course by combining an extremely clear but rhetorically modest explanation of genuine Catholic doctrine with an exposure of the main misrepresentations that are part of the smokescreen laid down by the masters of suspicion.

The Pope then provides stories of Catholic saints and martyrs whose sacrifices are above suspicion, Father Koterski said.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen famously wrote: "There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church—which is, of course, quite a different thing" (Preface to Radio Replies [TAN, 1979; vol. 1], by Rumble and Cary, p. ix). On one hand, I understand his point, especially since I was raised in a Fundamentalist setting in which I heard and read numerous crazy and false ideas about Catholicism. And my recent post about Anne Rice certainly elicited some telling responses from people who simply cannot conceive that the Catholic Church is anything but corrupt, abusive, and even evil.

But I don't think Sheen's remark can account well for the fact that many people really do hate the Catholic Church because they rightly see that she stands up against the faddish sins of the age, especially those sexual in nature. As Peter Kreeft writes in Catholic Christianity: A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs Based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Ignatius Press, 2001):

By its own admission, what our age finds most unacceptable in the Church's perennial wisdom is her sexual morality. Almost every controversial issue dividing "dissenters" from the Church's teaching is about sexual morality: fornication, contraception, homosexuality, divorce and most especially abortion.

The Church has always shared her Master's holy unpopularity. But never before the "sexual revolution" did this unpopularity center almost exclusively on sex. In all eras and cultures, fallen man has never been very good at obeying any of God's commandments. Man has always failed to practice what he preaches. But today he denies the preaching, the ideal itself, when it concerns sex.

Most other areas of traditional morality are still assumed to be rightful and attainable ideals. But traditional sexual morality is almost always assumed to be unhealthy and unattainable, and the Church is usually portrayed as obsessed with sexual morality. This obsession with sex is not the Church's but the world's. There is much more to the Church's sexual morality than "just say no," much more to the Church's morality than sexual morality, and much more to the Church's teaching than morality.

Many (if not most) critics who rightly denounce sexual abuse by priests are unwilling to admit and condemn abuse by non-Catholic clergy and school teachers. They refuse to acknowledge the destruction wrought in society because of the "sexual revolution", which has reaped a bloody whirlwind of abortion and the catastrophic rending of families, marriages, and communities. To even put it this way immediately elicits the tired retort, "You're refusing to admit the sins of priests! You're defending molesting monsters!" No, I'm saying that all abuse is evil and that all sexual sins are sins, even when we carefully and rightly distinguish matters of gravity and culpability. (By the way, do read these two excellent posts by Fr. Chori Jonathin Seraiah: "Catholic Sex Abuse Scandal (really?)" and "Balancing the Issues".)

And so the critics, instead responding to reasonable defenses by Catholics resort to innuendo and insinuation and suspicion. For example, Anne Rice has described me on this Facebook page as "a frantic defensive Catholic" who is engaging in "hysterical defensiveness". This morning she commented on my post, stating, "Is there a conflict of interest here on this blog?
Is anyone connected with this blog a friend or associate of notorious convicted sexual abuser, Jesuit Donald McGuire? If this is the case, perhaps you can explain in detail." So, since I'm defending the Catholic Church and responding to her description of the Catholic Church as a "criminal organization", it's insinuated that I'm likely a friend or associate of Fr. McGuire (I have never known, met, or corresponded with any priest, including Fr. McGuire, who has been accused of or found guilty of abuse. Got it?).

She also posted the following this morning on amazon.com:

I want to thank the Ignatius blog for linking to this discussion group and to my Facebook page. The blog was of course condemning me for my work here, but the blog seems to exquisitely support my point: the rank and file must stop being defensive and speak up for the victims of abuse. The blog's post is wildly defensive.

The blog's actions will no doubt bring more Catholics and former Catholics, and Catholic critics, to this discussion, and I think that will be good for all.

Is there a sinister agenda behind the Ignatius blog's attack on me personally and their attack on this discussion?

Good grief. Well, one of my "hysterical" and "defensive" remarks in my original post was that Rice and Co. apparently believe that "Catholics who defends the Church and who see bias or worse in the media when it comes to the scandals are either unwitting dupes or devious hatchetmen." And now she publicly ponders, "Is there a sinister agenda behind the Ignatius blog's attack on me personally...?" I'll let readers of good will and sound mind draw their own conclusions about Rice's rhetorical methods.