Tony Spence, longtime editor in chief of the Catholic News Service, resigned on Wednesday after running CNS for twelve years. This resignation was by request and afterwards he was reportedly escorted from the building without the chance to speak to his staff. When I was a younger man we used to call that being fired.

CNS is the official news service of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and its articles are widely used in almost every diocesan newspaper and website, making the editor an influential figure in the American Catholic world. Neither the bishops nor the CNS have issued a statement as of time of publication, but Spence’s forced resignation is being seen by dissenting Catholics as a crackdown on dissent.

Spence told the National Catholic Reporter, a privately owned newspaper often in open rebellion against the teaching of the Catholic Church, that the secretary general of the USCCB “asked for my resignation, because the conference had lost confidence in my ability to lead CNS.”

He said, “The far right blogosphere and their troops started coming after me again, and it was too much for the USCCB.” (The National Catholic Reporter should not be confused with the National Catholic Register, which is faithful to the Church’s teaching.)

Spence has been using his Twitter account to dissent from Catholic teaching on marriage and the primacy of religious freedom as a fundamental human right, the “watchdog” site Lepanto Institute reported. For example, Spence tweeted on April 7th:

Stupid evidently contageous. Tennessee tries to join MS, NC, IN in passing pro-discrimination laws. https://t.co/vQvB8WntlL via @Reuters

— Tony Spence🇺🇦 (@TonySpence) April 7, 2016

Earlier, on March 28th, New York Times religion correspondent Laurie Goodstein tweeted, “Republican Gov. of Georgia vetoes bill to shield religious objectors to gay marriage; Says bill discriminates.” Spence tweeted in reply:

Too bad the NC Republican gov didn't call him last week for a consult. https://t.co/2OPzr6M99C

— Tony Spence🇺🇦 (@TonySpence) March 28, 2016

Other examples can be found in the Lepanto Institute’s story.

Catholic Fifth Columnists

This news that the director of the American Catholic bishops’ press agency was publicly promoting the transgender causes does not come as a shock to many Catholics in the media, this writer among them. The term “fifth column” refers to a group within a larger community that covertly collaborates with an enemy to undermine that group from within. Catholics who have rejected the teaching of their Church form a fifth column within the Church. 

This is done in several ways. Often the fifth column works through an appeal to compassion, which makes dissent seem like honey, when it is vinegar. Other times it proceeds by a campaign against Catholic teaching, but one that contains its opposition within the family of the Church. Still other times it overtly rejects the clear teaching of the Catholic Church and uses public forums to hurt the Church and cause what the Catechism of the Catholic Church refers to as scandal. (“Scandal is an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil. … Scandal is a grave offense if by deed or omission another is deliberately led into a grave offense.”)

The most egregious example concerns the infallible teaching of the Catholic Church on the dignity of every human person from conception to natural death. There is a fifth column of Catholics in open rebellion against this truth, like the editors of the National Catholic Reporter and the group Catholics for Choice. They use their identification as Catholics to draw others into their error. Many even use a public forum to engage in a hostile campaign against the Catholic Church.

It is the same with the truth taught by the Catholic Church concerning the nature of marriage as between one man and one woman and the nature of man as male and female. The fifth columnists seek to reframe the debate over “same-sex marriage” as a matter of “marriage equality.” They seek to reframe the debate over sex as a matter of “gender identity” and freedom, and they support the escalating legal requirements that Catholic institutions support transgender “rights.”

I don’t know why Tony Spence sent the tweets he did. Maybe he thought what he said was in conformity with Catholic teaching, but even if he did, by publishing these dissents from the position he held he was operating as a “fifth columnist.” I hope the USCCB’s asking for his resignation signals the beginning of a necessary internal reform. As 1 Peter 4:17 says, “For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God.”