The guest opinion “EWTN offers an outdated view of the church” in the Jan. 29 Catholic Messenger by Keith Soko, of the theology department at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, is a very sad commentary on the quality of SAU theology faculty.
It was so bad that I made an effort to encourage Mr. Soko to pray about it, to issue a retraction and apology for what he wrote before I wrote a letter to the editor. All I wanted to do was correct the problem. He said, “I don’t feel that any of my comments were outside the bounds of Catholic theology today.”
What do you think?
He said that “EWTN offers ‘outdated theology, promoting a version of Catholicism that no longer exists.’” His opinion was obviously written by someone who has not been listening to or watching EWTN very much. EWTN’s promotional information states that it is the largest religious media network in the world, reaching over 146 million homes, even more with radio. In my opinion, Soko uses deceiving and misleading general statements and ignores the truth. This opinion should never have been written or printed in The Catholic Messenger.
His guest opinion has harmed many: The Catholic Messenger, St. Ambrose University, EWTN, the listeners of EWTN, Catholic radio stations in our diocese who broadcast EWTN programming as well as many young people. He did not fool all of the young people as evidenced by most of their comments on The Catholic Messenger’s Web site.
Charlie Burke
DeWitt
