My friend Rod Dreher offers two completely irreconciliable propositions over at his blog:

Proposition 1: MSM Journalists are the Church’s best friend.

Proposition 2: In Scripture, God often uses the enemies of His people to chastise them, and to bring them to repentance.

So… what?  The Assyrians who wrought slaughter on the northern kingdom and doomed them to their fate as the Ten Lost Tribes were Israel’s best friend?  Journalists are like Assyrians? Friends are enemies?  Enemies are friends? One of these Propopsitions is not like the other.

Look.  I can grant that *God*, who orders all things for the good of those in Christ Jesus, can use bitter enemies of the Church to bring about redemption and healing.  But please: let’s make up our mind.  Are journalists who do slipshod hatchet jobs on Benedict “the Church’s best friend” or are they “enemies of His people”?  I think it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that, whatever God may have in mind, the authors of this war on Benedict do not regard themselves as “best friends of the Church” and that the self-congratulation of journalists for their shoddy reportage is as repulsive as the self-congratulation of abusers who lectured their victims to sit there, shut up and take it due to the abusers’ sanctity as priests and as mediators of Truth.  Spare me.

Rod’s two Propositions remind me of a quote my son found somewhere: “An enemy is just a friend who wants to kill you.” 

By all means, emphasize Isaiah 10’s point that Assyria was a rod of punishment against Israel and that, under God, the bitterest foe of Jesus Christ can be used to bring glory to God and redemption to his people.  But please. This group of frenzied MSM sharks bent on destroying Benedict and engaging in their annual Holy Week Church Bash on the flimsiest charges are not the Church’s"friends”, nor do they give a tinker’s damn about the good of the Church or abused children who are not usefully Catholic.  You might as well tell me that Mehmet Ali Acga (whom these sharks did not fail to consult for his expert opinion) was just trying to help John Paul II grow closer to Christ Crucified when he shot him.  Jimmy Akin has methodically taken apart the NY Times crapalicious reporting.  Real “friends” at the Times (London and New York) would acknowledge they did a lousy job and apologize (as for instance, NBC did when they libeled the Pope as a child molester).  Enemies, however, admit nothing.  And enemies of the Church is just what these people act like.  God will, of course, bring life out of the sins of pervert priests, bad bishops *and* bad reporters.  But with the exception of a few journalists with actual integrity and knowledge of the facts like John Allen, the spectacle leading up to the annual MSM Bash Christianity for Holy Week Fest has been a depressingly ignorant and ideology-driven affair.  To be sure, what the MSM meant for evil, God means to turn to good.  But they do indeed, largely mean to do evil in this recent spate of hatchet jobs on Benedict.