More evidence that the Church hierarchy plans to squeeze traditional bloggers?

So we’ve seen the sad spectacle of an independent part time blogger in Canada getting slapped with a cease and desist order from a high-power Toronto law firm at the behest of a very connected Catholic priest, and we’ve seen Voris bullied out of the scandalous St. Patrick’s Day March for asking Cardinal Dolan uncomfortable questions.  Now I find that Pat Archbold’s been fired by National Catholic Register, which saddens me because I like his work a lot.  They apparently did so because he asked uncomfortable questions regarding this pontificate, as well as pointing out the crisis in the Church with a bit too much clarity and force.  Or way too much, I don’t know.  I’ve always found Pat to be very reasonable and balanced.

But even more than the above, which are simply individual instances, is the report from Life Site News that the USCCB has strongly endorsed the Obama Administration’s move to regulate speech on the internet via so-called “net neutrality,” which in reality will be “turning the internet into yet another venue for only elite leftist views.”  In doing so they joined some of the most reliably leftist organizations on the planet, including the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, George Soros, and others among the quasi-governmental left-wing elite.  These left-wing advocacy groups favor “net-neutrality” as a vehicle to block opposing views and squash dissent from their sexular pagan agenda.  At least, that is how many opponents of government regulation of internet speech view it:

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, meanwhile, has joined George Soros and the Ford Foundation in supporting net neutrality.  On the day of the FCC vote, USCCB Communications Committee chairman Bishop John C. Wester released a statement praising “open internet,” “where neither the telephone or [sic] cable company providing access can tamper with access by consumers to any legal website or other web content.”

The USCCB emphasized the threat to religious liberty as one of its primary reasons for supporting net neutrality……

The assumption apparently being that the federal government will be better promoters of “religious liberty,” whatever that means, than the private corporations that are presently responsible for providing and monitoring internet content.  However, to date, I am unaware of any broad-scale censorship by any of these private entities towards those who hold strong religious opinions of any stripe, even up to an including those advocating violence on the muslim side (ISIS makes routine use of the internet to recruit and broadcast their satanic videos and other messages).  But the government has already strongly intimated that it would contemplate forbidding such “hateful” speech.  I find it incredible in light of the numerous threats to the freedom of the Church that have emanated from the Obama Administration that the bishops would really find government control over internet access and speech a less-threatening environment.  In fact, I fail to see what the compelling interest for the bishops would be here.

Or could there be one?  Admittedly, this is a cynical thought, but is it not possible that perhaps the bishops wouldn’t mind a number of pesky internet-based apostolates being shut down or at least hounded by the government, especially those of a traditional bent that have a habit of highlighting the enormous failures of leadership that have beset the Church in the past several decades, especially in the West, and the ongoing manifest deleterious effects that this crisis of leadership has caused for millions of individual souls and the Church at large.  Those same apostolates tend to be equally strong critics of the present political apparatus of this country and the entire sexular pagan agenda.  This is just scattershooting, since the bishops have said very little that really substantiates their supportive stand.  I am quite possibly off base, but then again…….

……..then again, in one of the most important matters affecting the practice of religion of the past year or more, the US bishops have been entirely silent.  I refer to the really craven lack of commentary on the media-engendered moral panic that has afflicted the very minor Indiana RFRA law.  This was a perfect opportunity for bishops to speak on any number of issues ranging from the Social Reign of Jesus Christ to the nature of marriage to the constant assaults by the sexular pagan left on the Catholic Faith……I could go on at length.  But under the current reign of “duck and cover Catholicism,” where the vast majority of Church leaders in this country (if not all), assiduously refuse to speak on any greatly controversial issue on which they might receive a strong backlash, it seems the leadership seeks to accommodate itself to whatever deranged sexual regime the left settles on from one moment to the next.  There appears a much greater desire to not make waves and maintain those cherished little elements of pretend-influence, the lunches with governors and photo-ops with senators, than there is to speak boldly in opposition to the rapidly accelerating moral decay in this increasingly failed republic.

Do we really want the agencies that presently fine people $5,000 for an “illegal border crossing” from Ontario to Maine while mountain biking in an unmarked forest one afternoon, while at the same time spending millions to fly families of illegal immigrants into this country to join those already here, to make decisions on what kind of speech is permitted on the internet?  Apparently, the USCCB does.  While there are certainly problems and concerns with the present system of internet “policing,” we all deplore the filth and idiocy that so often prevails, but, on the other hand, the current system has “tolerated” blogs like this one and even more aggressive apostolates like CMTV for years with nary a peep.  I am far less convinced that the federal government, under this or any administration, will take such a hands off approach.

Meanwhile, the bishops will, by and large,  continue to duck and cover from any critical cultural matters that will carry a stiff price for dissent.  They will also continue to receive billions in funding from the government, even while that government insists on numerous practices directly counter to the Doctrine of the Faith.

You do the math.