“Fr James Martin SJ,” the editor reported yesterday in his Morning Catholic must-reads, “says that ‘web-based McCarthyism’ is on the rise in the Catholic blogosphere.” What he means by web-based McCarthyism is what John L Allen (of the National Catholic Reporter) calls the “Catholic Taliban”.
Allen’s explanation of this term was recently spelled out to an audience at the University of Texas. It was necessary, Allen said, to strike “a balance between two extremes”. This is how he described these extremes:
