Dawn Eden Goldstein wants to sue EWTN: thoughts on the Catholic New Left

By Peter Wolfgang ( bio - articles - email ) | Dec 14, 2024

I call them the Catholic New Left. And they are back in the news. Or, at least, they are back on my newsfeed.

In a recent article for Where Peter Is (WPI), Catholic author and theologian Dawn Eden Goldstein accuses EWTN of having defamed her. An interview for the network’s “News In-Depth” program on why Dawn was voting for Kamala Harris had included a voiceover saying “Some have criticized her [Dawn] for advocacy of gender ideology.” In her WPI piece Dawn describes her demand for a retraction and apology from EWTN and suggests that she might sue them.

Her argument is that, by that phrasing, it was really EWTN accusing her of advocating for an ideology opposed to Catholic orthodoxy. Dawn’s defenders have said, correctly, that EWTN’s voiceover could have been worded better (For instance, “some have criticized her for alleged advocacy of gender ideology.”) Dawn’s critics have said, correctly, that what EWTN did say does not meet the legal standard for defamation.

What interests me here is not specifically Dawn’s beef with EWTN. She has had many such beefs with elements of the Catholic Right before and will likely have many more again. Rather—as someone who respects the sincere orthodoxy of both Dawn Eden Goldstein and EWTN—what interests me is that this is a conflict that could only have arisen amid a Catholic commentariat that is newly divided in the 21st century.

To be sure, U.S. Catholicism in my lifetime has always been divided. We can claim until we are blue in the face that “liberal” and “conservative” are political terms that cannot properly be applied to the Church. But properly or not, that has been the reality for almost sixty years.

In its century-long existence Commonweal magazine, for instance, had always identified as a voice of liberal Catholicism. But that meant something different before the 1960s. Beginning with the orchestrated rebellion against Humanae Vitae in 1968, an institutionalized division set in between a Catholic Left that dissented from the Magisterium in sexual matters and a Catholic Right that responded to the Left’s challenge to Catholic authority by hugging the Pope tight. The Left-Right division has been with us ever since.

Though regrettable, that division was relatively steady for the rest of the 20th century. In the 21st century, however, it metastasized. Especially among theological conservatives.

The first cracks began with the Bush Administration’s War on Terror. What might be called the orthodox Catholic establishment in the U.S. supported it. But an orthodox Catholic anti-establishment opposed it. Bloggers who objected to Catholic support for waterboarding, Buchananites who opposed U.S. interventionism.

What began as a trickle of new Catholic divisions in the 2000s turned into a flood in the 2010s with the arrival of the two most polarizing figures of our time: Pope Francis and President Trump. The present pontiff has scrambled the ‘60s-era division in ways that would have shocked an earlier generation. Liberal dissident publications have become enforcers of loyalty to the papacy while former Pope-hugging conservatives are newly open to longstanding traditionalist warnings against “papalatry.”

President Trump, meanwhile, has created new divisions within the Catholic world. He has brought into existence a group I think of as the Catholic New Left.

The Catholic New Left differs from the Catholic Old Left in that they are not dissenters. Are you old enough to remember, say, Richard McBrien? Rosemary Radford Ruether? Andrew Greeley? Joan Chittister? I could name more of them but if you recognize these, you know the crowd I mean. Dissenting from the magisterium was the mission of the Catholic Old Left.

The Catholic New Left’s mission is not so grandiose. Or so malicious. They are not on a crusade to change the Church but to disinfect it. From what, you ask? From, well, people like me.

I mean, not me, specifically. I have never had a single adversarial exchange with any of them. But I am a garden variety Catholic conservative. What that means, in the mid 2020s, is that I am Republican. That I prioritize fights for human life and religious liberty, and against the LGBT agenda, over other issues. Worst of all, that I’m glad President Trump will be back in the White House soon.

That last part, Catholic support for President Trump, is the bête noire of the Catholic New Left. It’s the one thing they all have in common. If you favor President Trump, your Catholicity is suspect in their eyes. You can see it in Dawn’s description of EWTN in her WPI article, even before she mentions the mischaracterization of her work.

But again, I don’t question their orthodoxy. If I were to describe the difference between the Catholic New Left and me, I would say we have a different hierarchy of values. That is, we mostly value the same things. But we disagree on which things we value more. Their idea of what trumps what is the inverse of mine.

The things they consider to be burning issues often strike me as straining at gnats. Would anyone really peg antisemitism on, say, how the New American Bible translates Ἰουδαῖοι as “the Jews”? They would. Would anyone really see culture war significance in jokes about the unworthiness of pineapple pizza? They would. Would any pro-lifer really feel bad about the end of Roe v. Wade because it was accomplished by the wrong people? They would.

The Catholic New Left can be pedantic. They can be, to borrow from the Yiddish, a noodge.

But here’s the thing. I think we garden variety Catholic conservatives, guys like me, I think we need them. No one needed the Catholic Old Left and good riddance to them. But the Catholic New Left? They are a different story. Dawn Eden Goldstein, Steven Greydanus, Simcha Fisher and so forth.

Think of it this way. Do we want to be in a bubble? Should there not be a “minority report?” Someone in the room to say, “Hey Bub, are you sure you got that right?”

Remember what I said about the orthodox Catholic anti-establishment of the 2000s? How they were against waterboarding and U.S. interventionism? Those are consensus positions on the Catholic Right today. Those guys turned out to be correct.

I’m not saying the Catholic New Left of today will turn out to be correct about, well, anything. But I think we should at least be listening.

Peter Wolfgang is president of Family Institute of Connecticut Action, a Hartford-based advocacy organization whose mission is to encourage and strengthen the family as the foundation of society. His work has appeared in The Hartford Courant, the Waterbury Republican-American, Crisis Magazine, Columbia Magazine, the National Catholic Register, CatholicVote, Catholic World Report, the Stream and Ethika Politika. He lives in Waterbury, Conn., with his wife and their seven children. The views expressed on Catholic Culture are solely his own. See full bio.

Show 2 Comments? (Hidden)Hide Comments

• Posted by: feedback - Dec. 17, 2024 4:09 PM ET USA

  Like him or hate him, Donald Trump saved the US and the planet (for the second time!) from a very dark, demonic alternative. Quote: "Liberal dissident publications have become enforcers of loyalty to the papacy while former Pope-hugging conservatives are newly open to longstanding traditionalist warnings against “papalatry.”" That switcheroo of attitudes should be thought-provoking. At the least. I try not to blame pope Francis too much but I'm more than happy to blame his acolytes and advisors.

• Posted by: philtech2465 - Dec. 15, 2024 11:05 PM ET USA

  The Catholics you speak of, recognize as fundamental values, not just the right to life and opposition to the LGBT agenda, but also the rule of law, which in the US means upholding the Constitution. That means Donald Trump was no better than Kamala Harris. I have no idea about the other "pedantic" issues mentioned. But orthodox Catholics can and do disagree.