Hmmm... I've never really taken the effort to read any of their material - for the obvious reason.
But nevertheless, just a question: what type of readership to they have? Is it widespread? Across all fractions? Is it distributed freely?
The mud-dumping episode from today sort of makes me wonder how they can call themselves Catholic!
Can you fill me in about them?
I have no special information about the diocese of Anchorage, but since Alaska is a vast state and sparsely populated, the diocese cannot possibly have more than few thousand souls, and the diocesan newspaper is probably not seen outside the diocese at all.
But the crucial thing is whether the MSM will use Father Brundage's story at all.... And as of right now, 24 hours since Father Brudnage's brief was posted, not one of them has. Instead, to my horror, their new battlehorse is some frivolous lawsuit in the United States seeking to implicate the Vatican and the Pope himself (in his role as Cardinal Ratzinger) as co-defendants in some suit against a diocese - and they are all reporting it as if it was the first time this has happened. I won't even bother posting all this new crap!
And yet it has happened a few times already since 2005, and each time, the suit was thrown out by the courts for two reasons: the Vatican is a sovereign state, and as head of state, the Pope is immune from lawsuits; and 2) local priests and bishops are not employees of the Vatican at all, since dioceses are autonomous structures within the Catholic Church; they are not political or administrative subdivisions of the Vatican.
Perhaps I can resurrect some relevant posts from the past about the court dismissals....
The pot at the end of the rainbow, of course, for victims and their rapacious treasure-hunting lawyers is what they perceive to be the Vatican's literally inestimable wealth.... And no matter how frivolous these lawsuits are, it gets the lawyers a lot of worldwide publicity and makes them heroes to all the lunatic hate-driven anti-Church Jacobins of the world.
In his own way, through the homily on Palm Sunday, and especially the homily about John Paul II yesterday, Benedict XVI is reassuring us the faithful adn all who love him that as it was with John Paul II, the Lord has him by the hand and "accompanies him with grace and continuous assistance".
And so,we pray, and we pray, and we pray.....
TERESA
P.S. I'm sorry, Heike... Your question was about John Allen's newspaper or whatever, not the Anchorage diocesan paper! Stupid me, my mind has been on a single track since this morning.... I can't seem to find any information about their circulation, but according to the only statistics I can find, from 2003, there were 626 Catholic newspapers, magazines, and newsletters, with a combined circulation of 27 million, which averages to about 40,000 per publication.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 31/03/2010 00:10]