National 'Catholic' 'Reporter' - Why Even Bother?

Few names are as misleading as that of the NCR, or 'National' 'Catholic' Reporter. They aren't nationally famous, so they shouldn't be called National, and they reject Church teaching on nearly everything, so they should much less be called Catholic. This article here is a great example. It's obviously old news, 10 years old in fact, and it shouldn't be shocking, but as a convert, this type of full blown apostasy really still is. The thing that keeps coming to my mind is, "why even bother?"

It was written in relation to Pope (sadly emiritus) Benedict XVI's book on the life of Christ. Here is a small taste of their article:

"A leading New Testament scholar, and former Catholic priest, has criticized Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 book on the Gospels, Jesus of Nazareth, saying that its insistence on identifying the historical Jesus with the Christ of traditional Christian faith has “turned back the clock” on modern scholarship.
The comments from Geza Vermes, author of the acclaimed book Jesus the Jew and a longtime professor at Oxford, came during a summit of leading Western intellectuals May 16-17 in Lugano, Switzerland, devoted to the theme of “truth.” The gathering was sponsored by the Balzan Foundation, which awards the Swiss-Italian equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
Vermes spoke as part of a panel on religious approaches to truth that also included Swiss Cardinal Georges Cottier, former theologian of the Papal Household under Pope John Paul II.
Vermes devoted his presentation to arguing that on the basis of the New Testament, the image of Jesus that emerges is that of a charismatic, wonder-working Jewish holy man, and thus not the divine Son of God claimed by later Christian tradition."

If this were not a newspaper claiming to be Catholic, this wouldn't be a problem. They're reporting the words of a former Catholic priest who is also a notable scholar. What's nitneresting though is that they don't try to present the opposing view. Instead they interview Vermes, the scholar who they talk about. What's amazing here is that they don't even mention somebody like N.T. Wright, Michael Licona, Craig Blomberg, Richard Bauckham, or any other scholar of the New Testament who would say that the Christ of faith was a real flesh and blood person, not a theological construct.

The trouble here, as with the rest of modernist Catholic approaches to biblical studies, is that if one takes only the writings of secular scholars without the light of faith, one will be pushed into a sea of doubts. A layperson finding this article who does not have enough time to read other scholars will be shocked and might have their worldview rocked quite a bit without good reason.

It's very confusing to me why somebody would not believe in the Christ of the gospels yet use the Catholic label at all. More importantly, if the claims that Christ made for Himself were false, there would simply be no hope for anything. There would be no future redemption, no justice, nothing, just a world of blind indifference. Those who try to create a historical Jesus outside of what we see in the Gospels, essentially wish to rob the world of its only chance for any meaning or future.

With Geza Vermes it's especially funny, seeing as he converted from the Catholic Church to Judaism, and lo and behold, the historical Jesus was not the Christ us Christians believe in, but a Jewish Holy Man. Likewise, in the 19th Century, when German thinkers sought to find their 'historical Jesus,' He turned out to be a German Hegelian of some kind. When people tried another quest in the 20th Century, especially in the 1970s and 80s, Christ was made to look like a social revolutionary. Is this a coincidence? It doesn't seem so.

But if the NcR is willing to buy into the 'historical Jesus,' why do they bother calling themselves Catholic? Why not be National Agnostic Atheist Reporter? Why not National Humanist Reporter? I guess they think that liking the guitar music at Mass counts as being Catholic. Maybe this is a misreading of the article, but it does strike me as strange that they didn't even give the counterarguments that exist.