AP’s Enraged Hunters

In today’s “On the Square,” Elizabeth Scalia reflects on the nature of blogging, or rather of bloggers, in response to a caricature of conservatives offered by AP. Even if the writer hadn’t spoken ominously of conservatives “purging” liberals, she writes No Purges in the Family ,

readers would nevertheless have encountered words like “enraged,” “dissecting,” and “hunting,” as the AP’s Rachel Zoll painted a harrowing picture of the conservative Catholic blogosphere, using broad strokes.

A reader unfamiliar with religion-focused blogs could be excused for taking from the article a vision of more traditionally-minded Catholics as demons disguised as haloed saints, their red, bifurcated tails just showing beneath their snow-white robes as they thrust out the Flaming Finger of Faith and cry “Heresy! Heresy!”

This caricature, however, has enough truth to suggest a lesson anyway.

Update: I should have mentioned that a little later this morning William Doino, who’s written on Pius XII and Benedict XVI , will give his view of the final statement of the Synod for the Eastern bishops.