I know it will be hard, but for a moment try to ignore the fact that former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele is an African-American.

I know that, as we stand in the light of the political sunburst that is President Barack Obama, this will be hard. But try.

Now, think about the issues facing the imploded Republican Party. In the past few elections the GOP has struggled to find a way to please the giant hunk of its ballot-box base that consists of culturally conservative Christians, both Catholic and evangelical. There is no way forward to national victories without those votes.

At the same time, everyone knows that the swing vote that matters the most in American politics is centrist Roman Catholics, especially in the Midwest and parts of the Northeast. As the omnipresent John Green of the Pew Forum told some Oxford Centre students last summer, there are times when it seems that American politics has boiled down to Catholics in Ohio who go to Mass once a month instead of once a week. Remember that complex grid of Catholic voters? Click here for a crash course.

Which brings us to the local coverage of Steele’s election as — all together now — the first African-American chair of the Republican Party. I was stunned, when I read through the Baltimore Sun coverage, that the emphasis was totally on his race. Social issues are included, of course, but here is how that is covered, linked to discussions of whether Steele is too “moderate” for please the GOP right:

Steele was a co-founder of the Republican Leadership Council, a group headed by former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman. Even though he opposes abortion, and quit the group last spring, Steele was attacked by social conservatives for his association with Whitman, a prominent supporter of abortion rights.

Now, I am sure that, when push comes to shove, Steele will be viewed by the press exactly as he is portrayed here — a solid anti-abortion conservative. There is some chance, after all, that Steele may actually hold rather strong views on right-to-life issues — the while spectrum of them — due to his religious background.

Oh, and what might that be? His website notes:

Born in 1958 at Andrews Air Force Base in Prince George’s County, Maryland, Steele was raised in Washington, DC. He spent three years as a seminarian in the Order of St. Augustine in preparation for the priesthood, but, ultimately, chose a career in law instead. He earned his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1991.

The fact that Steele is a former seminarian is quite well known here in Maryland, where two statewide campaigns have filled out most of the corners of his biography. While race is crucial, right now, editors at the Sun also have to know that, in the current political climate, crossover Catholic voters are of equal or even greater importance to the GOP leadership. Skipping that part of Steele’s history leaves a giant gap.

Of course, race is the lede in the New York Times, as it should be in the current news climate. But where is his standing as a Catholic, a former seminarian? (cue: crickets chirping on a still night)

It’s a big ditto over at the Los Angeles Times, where once again we read:

(Steele) had been criticized during his bid for the chairmanship as too moderate, with some raising questions about his ties to a Republican group that backed candidates who supported abortion rights. Steele ran for the U.S. Senate in 2006 as a staunch opponent of abortion.

I am not, let me stress, saying that the racial issue is not important. I am saying that it is very, very strange — when everyone knows the importance of centrist Catholics in American politics — to offer no information on the religious element in the story of the new leader of the Republican Party.

So whaddya do when you are assigned to cover a story about a woman who just had octuplets (that’s eight, if you are counting) — and already has six young children?

This story is the consummate “hot potato”-guaranteed to arouse strong feelings among your readers (not to mention in your own mind).

So you start asking questions. Not only scientific ones, but religious and ethical ones.

But in the article published in the Los Angeles Times yesterday, it seems like a lot of those questions didn’t get asked-or if they were, they were not included in the story.

OK, it’s natural that the reporters would focus their lede on the brief phone interview they scored with the unidentified woman’s mother:

The woman who gave birth to octuplets this week already has six young children and never expected that the fertility treatment she received would result in eight more babies, her mother said Thursday.

The woman, who has not been publicly identified, had embryos implanted last year, and “they all happened to take,” Angela Suleman said, leading to the eight births Monday. “I looked at those babies. They are so tiny and so beautiful.”

She acknowledged that raising 14 children is a daunting prospect.

“It’s going to be difficult,” Suleman added, noting that her daughter’s father is going back to Iraq, where neighbors said he worked as a contractor, to help support the expanded family.

The mother of the octuplets lives on a well-kept cul-de-sac in Whittier, where more than a dozen reporters and camera crews descended Thursday.

What are we supposed to infer from the phrase “well-tended”? That we should be suprised?

Grandpa is about to put himself back in harm’s way to raise money to support the newborns—that’s an intriguing piece of information in itself.

Clearly the reporter didn’t have a lot of time to speak to grandma. We’ve all been there.

But what about the doctors at Kaiser Permanente? They actually held a press conference-one would assume that there would be opportunities for more profound questions there.

Although it’s not clear where the woman underwent fertility treatments, the staff at Kaiser supervised the multiple pregnancies.

We find out that:

Although the successful births at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Bellflower have received worldwide attention, they also have prompted disapproval from some medical ethicists and fertility specialists, who argue that high-number multiple births endanger the mother and also frequently lead to long-term health and developmental problems for the children.

Under the guidelines of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, U.S. doctors normally would not implant more than two embryos at a time in a woman under the age of 35. After that age it is more difficult to become pregnant. The mother of the octuplets is believed to be 33, based on available public records.

What is the mother’s faith background? Did she receive secular or religious counseling when considering fertility treatments? What kind of support is she being given now?

If we judge by what’s included in the article, the questions and answers seem a lot more focused on facts than ethics—althought the ethical and spiritual questions are glaring.

But a quote by one Kaiser doctor suggests, perhaps inadvertently, that doctors take a studiously neutral attitude towards multiple births:

Dr. Harold Henry, a member of the delivery team, said doctors counseled her regarding the options and risks — among them aborting some of the fetuses.

“Our goal is to provide the best possible care, no matter what the situation or circumstances are,” Henry said. “What I do is just explain the facts. I always talk about the risks. The mother weighs those options, and she chooses the option based on spiritual or personal makeup.”

Though readers like me may not be clear as to the difference between “spiritual” or “personal” makeup, he does zoom in on the big piece that’s missing here.

What goes into a woman and her partner/husband’s decision to have fertility treatments when the family already has six young children—and carry all to term?

They have a right not to answer questions about their personal faith or morality. But it seems to me that since the media is covering this story, it has a responsibility look beyond the Ripley’s-believe-it-or-not factor and to ask some of the more challenging ones.

You can be sure that readers are asking them.

Picture of babies from Wikimedia Commons

John Updike, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist known for his detailed portrayals of life — the mundane and the ecstatic — died this week. I didn’t get the chance to read him until about 10 years ago when one of my best friends introduced me to his prolific work. But I really enjoyed his prose and also what seemed to be a distinctly Lutheran approach to sin and justification.

It turned out he was raised Lutheran, although he’s worshiped as an Episcopalian for decades. The religious views that shaped his work are important and unavoidable and the media have done a great job of including them in their obituaries, retrospectives and appreciations.

The first New York Times story on the matter including this bit, for instance:

Raised in the Protestant community of Shillington, Pa., where the Lord’s Prayer was recited daily at school, Updike was a lifelong churchgoer influenced by his faith, but not immune to doubts.

”I remember the times when I was wrestling with these issues that I would feel crushed. I was crushed by the purely materialistic, atheistic account of the universe,” Updike told The Associated Press during a 2006 interview.

”I am very prone to accept all that the scientists tell us, the truth of it, the authority of the efforts of all the men and woman spent trying to understand more about atoms and molecules. But I can’t quite make the leap of unfaith, as it were, and say, ‘This is it. Carpe diem (seize the day), and tough luck.”’

Michiko Kakutani’s remembrance was beautifully written as always. I always enjoyed reading him for the secret — sometimes poignant, sometimes horrifying — look at what men really think. She notes that even this had religious themes for Updike. After looking at the existential struggles of some of his best characters, she writes:

Their fear of death threatens to make everything they do feel meaningless, and it also sends them running after God — looking for some reassurance that there is something beyond the familiar, everyday world with “its signals and buildings and cars and bricks.”

But if their yearnings after salvation pulled them in one direction, Mr. Updike’s heroes also found themselves tempted by sex and romantic misalliances in the here and now. Caught on the margins of a changing morality, unable to forget the old pieties and taboos and yet unable to resist the 60’s promise of sex without consequences, these men vacillate between duty and self-fulfillment, a craving for roots and a hungering after freedom. As the author himself once put it, his heroes “oscillate in their moods between an enjoyment of the comforts of domesticity and the familial life, and a sense that their essential identity is a solitary one — to be found in flight and loneliness and even adversity. This seems to be my feeling of what being a male human being involves.”

I also appreciate her caricaturization of Updike’s work as a vocation. Not everyone picked up on the religious themes so much, which is understandable. Some writers explored both his writings on sex and his religious themes (two of my very favorite things).

But for the best discussion of Updike’s religious views, head over to PBS’ Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. They provide an intimate look at Updike’s religious life, based on his public lectures and writing:

While much of his earlier work contains traces of Updike’s furious immersion in Christian theology, he said he looked more to the congregation of his hometown Massachusetts church as the rock of his faith today.

“When I haven’t been to church in a couple of Sundays I begin to hunger for it and need to be there,” he said, standing at a podium in front of the altar, against a backdrop of Byzantine-style mosaics and dressed in a gray suit befitting one of America’s elder statesmen of letters. “It’s not just the words, the sacraments. It’s the company of other people, who show up and pledge themselves to an invisible entity.”

As a young man studying at Oxford in the mid-1950s, Updike said he devoured new translations of Soren Kierkegaard at Blackwell’s bookstore, discovering him “so positive and fierce and strikingly intelligent, like finding an older brother I didn’t know I had.” He pointed to his classic character Harry Angstrom, of the Rabbit tetralogy, as an example of the Danish philosopher’s influence. The Swiss neo-orthodox theologian Karl Barth informed another character in the first book of the series, the Lutheran minister Fritz Kruppenbach, who faces off with an Episcopal priest in a scene Updike chose to read. Upon going to Kruppenbach’s house to discuss Rabbit’s desertion of his family, Rev. Eccles is treated to a diatribe against meddling in others’ affairs. Kruppenbach sounds like a stand-in for Barth himself.

“When on Sunday morning then, when we go before their faces, we must walk up not worn out with misery but full of Christ,” he tells a disconcerted Eccles. “Make no mistake. There is nothing but Christ for us. All the rest, all this decency and busyness, is nothing. It is Devil’s work.”

And there’s much more — about his denominational affiliations, his view on whether progressive politics are hampered by Christian theology, and the seeds of religious consciousness.

Sigh.

The other day, I wrote a rather nakedly personal post here about that CatholicVote.com ad about the rather interesting and obvious fact that, faced with a crisis pregnancy long ago, the mother of President Barack Obama decided to let her unborn child live, and thrive and make history. It’s the YouTube at the top of this post, again.

In that post, I noted that many people on the pro-life side of this issue have long discussed this angle of the Obama story and added:

… I have never seen this issue mentioned in mainstream coverage, let alone in a way that took it seriously — either to quote those who would salute this argument or the opinions of those who would condemn it. Instead, there is silence and silence is rare in journalism on such an obvious and controversial image and idea. …

Here is another question, if CatholicVote found the funds, would any major broadcast or cable television network take this ad? What about during the Super Bowl?

Soon after that, veteran religion writer Julia Duin at the Washington Times included the following interesting information about “Imagine Spot 1” in a roundup report about rising tensions between the Obama White House and traditional Catholics.

“We’re using Barack Obama as a pro-life messenger,” explained Brian Burch, president of Fidelis, the Chicago-based Catholic advocacy group that created the ad. “We were disappointed in his election in terms of our mission,” he added. “But the thought was: Why fight the euphoria when you can use it?”

He is in negotiations with NBC about airing the ad during Sunday’s Super Bowl, as donors, he said, are ready to come up with the $1.5 million an ad would cost. He also hopes the ad will highlight how one out of every three black pregnancies is aborted.

As it turned out, the supporters of the ad were able — against all odds — to find the money to purchase a Super Bowl slot.

Which brings us to yet another update, once again, in the Washington Times. You can probably anticipate how this story is going to turn out.

A popular pro-life video portraying President Obama as an unborn child has been rejected by NBC-TV as an ad during Sunday’s Super Bowl.

“Imagine Spot 1,” a YouTube video that has amassed more than 700,000 hits since its Jan. 20 premiere on Black Entertainment Television, was submitted earlier this week to NBC by Fidelis, a Chicago-based Catholic organization. Its subsidiary, CatholicVote.org, runs the 30-second spot on its Web site.

Brian Burch, president of Fidelis, said NBC originally responded with a proposal for a package including ads on NBC-owned or operated stations in the country’s top 10 markets plus an additional four cities for a price tag of $1.5 million to $1.8 million. The immensely popular football game is known for the unusual and trendy kinds of ads it attracts.

“We put out the call to our members and large pro-life benefactors who told us they would put up significant dollars to make this happen,” Mr. Burch said. “I was told the ad was approved and then there were a number of attorneys working on it. Then I was told they didn’t want to run political or advocacy ads.”

Now, the interesting subplot here concerns how the controversy about this ad does or does not compare with debates about other “issues” ads.

In this case, NBC is discussing the latest spot from PETA that argues that vegetarians have better sex lives. The visuals focus on women in alleged clothing doing rather creative things with vegetables. NBC’s argument is that they rejected PETA, so they rejected the Catholics.

It’s interesting, however, that the network suggested edits that would have allowed the PETA ad to run. As Duin reports, there have been other issues-related ads in Super Bowl broadcast history.

But here is what gets to me. What happens when you Google News search for, oh, “PETA, Super Bowl”? You get this batch of results.

What happens when you Google News search for “Obama, Catholic, Super Bowl”? You get this collection, which, you will note, once again shows that this is a “conservative news story” as opposed to a “real news story.”

The PETA ad flap was a “real news story,” you see. Vegetables and sex is real news. Abortion and the life of the nation’s first African-American president is not real news. Now you know. I am sure that this is a big surprise.

When the Episcopal Bishop of Washington participates in a conference on religion and politics, it’s not necessarily newsworthy. When that conference takes place in Tehran, Iran, and the same bishop has a private meeting with the theocratic nation’s top spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Hoseini Khamenei, it deserves more attention.

Interfaith Voices, an independently produced public-radio show, featured a fine interview with Bishop John Chane. At one moment Chane describes his work, which will lead to another conference in the United States later this year, as public diplomacy.

There’s a separate interview (at 22:30) with Evan Anderson, executive director of the U.S.-Iran Cultural Alliance, who presented a paper that compares the end-times scenarios of Shia Muslims and Western Christians.

Anderson’s paper was one of three that drew an award for exceptional research from Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The most pleasant surprise in this interview: When host Maureen Fiedler asks whether interfaith dialogue is really possible when both sides believe they profess the one true faith, Anderson says respectful discourse does occur. (Interfaith Voices links to this copy of Anderson’s paper.)

The stories here are not headline news, but they should not be limited to the niche programming — informative as it is — of Interfaith Voices.

Photo of Bishop Chane published with the permission of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.

When the President of the United States appoints an official to lead, say, the Department of Health and Human Services, reporters generally tell their readers or viewers what that person believes about issues relating to health. The same is generally true for positions such as Attorney General or any other position that has some level of autonomy from the chief executive.

Executive branch appoints are not the same as appointments to the federal judiciary in the sense that officials serving at the pleasure of the president generally do not have the same level of ultimate autonomy as say a Supreme Court Justice. But personal views, convictions and beliefs do matter, particularly in a sensitive role such as chief of President Obama’s new Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

The New York Times’ exclusive that President Obama intends to appoint 26-year-old Pentecostal preacher Joshua DuBois to direct the old office of faith-based initiatives covers, in a paragraph or two, matters of personal conviction, but much more leg work must be done if readers are going to get a true idea of what he believes.

Here is the gist of what the NYT has to offer, which I’ll readily admit is just now breaking the story, giving little time for in-depth reporting on DuBois:

“He is smart. He is calm. He is steady,” Mr. [former chief of the President Bush faith-based initiatives office John] Dilulio said of Mr. DuBois, “and I think he’s very close to the new president. He’d be a good guy to do it.”

On Capitol Hill, Mr. DuBois was part of a Democratic working group focused on building relationships with religious leaders, especially evangelical Christians alienated by the Republican record on economic inequality, foreign policy and environmental matters. Mr. DuBois expanded that outreach during the presidential campaign by convening house parties of religious voters across the country to present Mr. Obama as a man motivated by his faith.

The most contentious issue that Mr. DuBois will have to help resolve is whether Mr. Obama should rescind a Bush administration legal memorandum that allows religious groups that receive government money to hire only those who share their faith.

Mr. Obama said in a campaign speech last June, “If you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them — or against the people you hire — on the basis of their religion.”

The issue of religious-based hiring is the big one, and this quote is telling on where DuBois stands, particularly since Obama has already declared his intentions in this area. Much of that will be hashed out by lawyers. And I don’t doubt that the press will give plenty of attention to the issue of whether faith-based groups that discriminate in hiring will receive federal dollars. But here is the more interesting question: if and when groups that discriminate in hiring are banned from receiving federal money, will those groups give America’s lawyers some extra legal work to create separate secular entities entitled to receive the funds?

You also can’t help but notice that DuBois is about as much of a political operative as you will find these days. He makes Brownie look like a mid-level government bureaucrat with a law degree. What does that say about how Obama views this new office, and will reporters cover this aspect before the scandals start occurring? (see here Michael Gerson on Obama’s dismissal of a qualified, effective coordinator of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in favor of politics.)

An aspect I worry will fall between the cracks is the perspective on what this 26-year-old minister actually believes himself and how that could impact his policies. Here is what DuBois told Christianity Today:

“I’m certainly not a theologian, but there are fundamentals I know to be true. The foundations of my faith are in Jesus Christ and in his teachings, especially addressing the needs of the least of these,” DuBois said. “That’s certainly a model for me, and that’s how I’m hoping to approach my work on the campaign.”

DuBois said that while Obama’s personal faith (Obama is a member of a United Church of Christ congregation in Chicago) shapes his approach to issues, the senator is a firm believer that church and state should be separated.

Will his campaign approach differ from his approach as a federal official? For more perspective on the origins of his faith, see this Wall Street Journal profile from August 2008:

Mr. DuBois grew up in Nashville, Tenn., and Xenia, Ohio, the stepson of a minister at an African Methodist Episcopal church, a branch of Christianity born in protest against slavery in 1816. His grandmother participated in the 1960 Nashville sit-ins and used to tell her grandson stories about being spat on.

His conservative parents would listen to Mr. Dobson’s “Focus on the Family” radio show. Mr. DuBois says he remembers his mother being moved to tears by some of Mr. Dobson’s broadcasts.

While studying at Boston University, Mr. DuBois became an evangelical Christian and joined Calvary Praise and Worship Center, a small African-American Pentecostal congregation in Cambridge. He became an associate pastor at age 18. …

When the short video ended, Mr. DuBois led a discussion about how religious voters can come to terms with voting for a pro-choice Democrat.

“Abortion is certainly a deeply moral issue, but so is struggling to afford decent health care for your family, or straining to put food on your table,” he recalls telling the group.

From James Dobson to abortion, what does DuBois actually believe today as a Pentecostal preacher? Wasn’t there another former Pentecostal on the national stage that received quite a bit of attention for her religion?

This raises the famous tmatt trio questions regarding the resurrection, salvation and everyone’s favorite, sex outside of marriage. Perhaps someone will ask him questions along those lines? As DuBois told Christianity Today, church and state maybe separable, but how does his personal faith shape his approach to these public issues of faith?

Image from Obama-Biden Community Blog.

The California Lutheran High School Association, which owns and operates a private religious high school in Riverside, expelled two students on the grounds that they had a homosexual relationship in violation of the school’s “Christian Conduct” rule. The girls sued the school and its principal and alleged, among other things, that the school had discriminated against them on the basis of their sexual orientation, in violation of a California Civil Rights Act.

Because the school was deemed not to be a business enterprise, as required by the Unrugh Civil Rights Act, the court upheld a lower court’s ruling in its favor.

The story was covered in a rather straightforward manner by the Los Angeles Times, laying out the ruling before getting commentary:

Kirk D. Hanson, who represented the girls, said the “very troubling” ruling would permit private schools to discriminate against anyone, as long as the schools used their religious beliefs as justification.

“It is almost like it could roll back 20 to 30 years of progress we have made in this area,” said the San Diego attorney. “Basically, this decision gives private schools the license to discriminate.”

John McKay, who represented the Riverside County-based California Lutheran High School, said the ruling correctly acknowledged that the school’s purpose was to “teach Christian values in a Christian setting pursuant to a Christian code of conduct.”

The story notes that the school is affiliated with Lutheran synods that view homosexuality as sinful. It doesn’t specify which synods were involved or whether the Christian code of conduct at the school was explicit.

The school is affiliated with the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Synod, both of which have clearly articulated doctrinal statements about sex, same-sex relationships and other associated issues. The court noted that the school’s Christian Conduct rule states that students could be expelled for engaging in immoral or scandalous conduct, as defined by those synods.

All of this is rather dry, of course. We get just a touch of interesting theological commentary before it’s dropped:

Shannon Price Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said the ruling was based on “the particular circumstances of this school.”

“Labeling a young person or telling her she is ‘sinful’ can be psychologically devastating,” Minter said. “Regardless of one’s religious beliefs, all adults have a responsibility to treat young people with compassion and respect.”

Well if that’s not pregnant with possibility!

You can’t know much about Lutheranism if you think that this quote from Minter doesn’t have a million responses. I went to a (Missouri Synod) Lutheran school and I can assure you that sin is pretty much a daily topic of discussion. I have many recess hours of “standing on the line” to back that up (Zion Lutheran — Terra Bella’s stucco walls are deeply embedded in my memory and yet I consider my old school’s treatment of sin and punishment to have been compassionate and respectful). But the story simply says “school officials weren’t available to comment.”

Sure, fine. But there are millions of Lutherans — and people knowledgeable about Lutheran doctrine — who can address the Lutheran approach to sin. Go ahead and put them in the story if you’re going to enter the sinful fray. It actually makes for a much more interesting religion story.

The San Francisco Chronicle also wrote up the story, bringing out some other interesting elements:

A private religious high school can expel students it believes are lesbians because the school isn’t covered by California civil rights laws, a state appeals court has ruled.

Relying on a 1998 state Supreme Court ruling that allowed the Boy Scouts to exclude gays and atheists, the Fourth District Court of Appeal in San Bernardino said California Lutheran High School is a social organization entitled to follow its own principles, not a business subject to state anti-discrimination laws.

“The whole purpose of sending one’s child to a religious school is to ensure that he or she learns even secular subjects within a religious framework,” Justice Betty Richli said in the 3-0 ruling, issued Monday.

Because of the way the law works, the ruling is an affirmation of a lower court ruling and a response to the plaintiff’s case. But it’s interesting that the ruling isn’t that church schools have sacred First Amendment rights — it’s that the California civil rights law doesn’t cover social organizations. One wonders what might happen if there was a shift in California civil rights law definitions or interpretations, particularly as this case is sure to go forth to the California Supreme Court.

The story did a good job of presenting arguments for the school’s rights as well as the girls’ rights and how the ruling came down in favor of the former. I’ll note that it failed to identify which Lutheran bodies were involved in the case, a personal pet peeve of mine, as well as whether the school had a formal code of conduct it requires students to follow and whether its teaching on the larger issue of homosexuality and sin was clear. What did the parents and students sign to join this voluntary association?

We’ve discussed before the many cases where religious freedom and gay rights are on a collision course. In almost all of those cases — the Christian photographer in New Mexico who wished not to photograph a lesbian commitment ceremony, the Methodist camp that asked a lesbian couple not to use any of their worship facilities for their same-sex union ceremony, the psychiatrist who referred a gay couple to another doctor, the California doctors who referred a lesbian woman to a different doctor for in vitro fertilization — gay rights have been winning. As this case progresses to the California Supreme Court, we’ll watch and see what happens.

One of the mantras of modern journalism is, “Show me, don’t tell me.” In other words, when in doubt use images and information that describe people and events, not tacked-on labels that are often vague and judgmental.

At GetReligion, we keep adding another concept to that helpful advice. When in doubt, do not attach political labels to people whose primary role in life is defined by doctrine. We know that this is hard for reporters, since politics is the true religion for them and real religion is often viewed as a totally private hobby with slightly less cultural importance than, oh, reality television.

I bring this up because of the first wave of mainstream reports about the election of Metropolitan Kirill as the new patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. If you read several mainstream stories about this man, your head is going to spin. If you are Orthodox, as I am, your head may explode.

Count the labels. Let’s start with the basic Associated Press report:

The interim leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, seen as a modernizer who could seek a historic reconciliation with the Vatican and more autonomy from the state, was overwhelmingly elected patriarch Tuesday.

Metropolitan Kirill received 508 of the 700 votes cast during an all-day church congress in Moscow’s ornate Christ the Savior Cathedral, the head of the commission responsible for the election, Metropolitan Isidor, said hours after the secret ballot was over. Kirill defeated a conservative rival, Metropolitan Kliment, who received 169 votes, Isidor said.

OK, what precisely is a modernizer? (How many Orthodox Christians does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Change? What is this change?)

Well, we must assume that a modernizer is someone who values openness to other faiths — note the all important reference to the pope — and wants to distance the Russian church somewhat from the state. Note that this is the opposite of being a “conservative,” which means, well, what? Conservative Orthodox people want close ties to the Kremlin? Political ties? Cultural ties?

While we are at it, isn’t Pope Benedict XVI a wild-eyed fundamentalist who wants to take Europe back into the days before electricity? So you are a modernizer for wanting to discuss faith and doctrinal issues with Big Ben?

You see a few of the issues here. Note that later in the report we read that:

Kirill … has also promoted unity with the Roman Catholic Church against the secularism and immorality he says threatens humanity. The Vatican “rejoiced” over Kirill’s election, said its spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi. …

In Russia, Kirill is seen as a politically savvy figure who may seek a more muscular role for the church, which has served the state for much of its 1,000-year history. Church and state are officially separate under the post-Soviet constitution, but ties have tightened again since Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000.

So, he is a muscular modernizer who is opposed by conservatives. Is there some chance that the man actually wants distance from the government so that the church can focus on issues linked to doctrine, faith, religious practice and morality?

Let’s keep looking for clues over at the New York Times. Here, we start with the fact that Kirill is “outspoken,” which is the kind of thing that can be demonstrated. That’s progress:

A critic of declining moral values, Metropolitan Kirill has been involved in the ecumenical movement and has called for the Russian Orthodox Church to step up its outreach to secular society. He has also spoken in tough terms about threats to church unity, especially in Ukraine, where the Orthodox church has broken into rival groups since the collapse of the Soviet Union. …

The race for the patriarchal throne has played out almost like a contemporary political campaign, with passionate debates on Web sites and in blogs, and with tabloids and even some glossy celebrity magazines following the candidates as though they were movie stars.

There’s all kinds of information about rumors and political moves, which is understandable in the chaos that is Russia at the moment. Once again, the question is whether the reader needs to know anything about Kirill as a churchman, in terms of what he has said and done.

Thus, it is important to read:

Kirill was made archbishop of Smolensk in 1984 and metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad in 1991. In the 1990s, he and Patriarch Aleksy were accused by some critics of having served the K.G.B.

As chairman of the external relations department, he oversaw the drafting of the “social concept” of the Russian Orthodox Church, presented in 2000. It addresses church positions on social issues, including abortion, globalization and poverty. One of its most cited points allows for civil disobedience if the government violates Christian commandments.

Thank you very, very much. That collection of facts is crisp and to the point, showing some examples of doctrine affecting public issues, with no labels in there. More?

Over at the Los Angeles Times, the basic story has some more labels for us — including that “modernizer” thing again, only this time accompanied by a vague adjective:

The longtime head of the denomination’s external relations, Kirill is expected to undertake some modest modernization within the conservative confines of the church.

“On the one hand, he’s a remarkable preacher and theologist; on the other hand, he’s a diplomat experienced in huge, bureaucratic work,” said Sergei Chapnin, editor of the patriarchy’s Church Guardian newspaper. “Today the Orthodox Church is not only a spiritual but also a tremendous social force in Russia. The state cannot ignore the position of the church when we talk about the interests of its citizens.”

What in the world is a “theologist?” And I still have no clue what “modernizer” means.

For Orthodox readers, and journalists who crave hard facts, it is interesting to note the many details in this Moscow Times report and, above all, these statistics cited by Kirill himself during the meetings surrounding the election, and quoted by Interfax:

Russia has opened 234 monasteries and 244 nunneries, the CIS-countries and Baltic States — 142 monasteries and 153 nunneries, other foreign countries — three monasteries and three nunneries. Besides, the Russian Church Outside of Russia supervises over 16 monasteries and nine nunneries. There are 203 monastery representations and 65 hermitages.

The number of parishes increased fourfold for 20 years (from 6893 to 29,263 parishes), the number of dioceses — twofold (from 76 to 157), clergy — more than fourfold (from 7397 to 30,670) and the number of bishops increased almost thrice (from 74 to 203). The number of acting churches in Moscow has increased twenty-two fold — from 40 to 872. The city had only one monastery acting before 1990, now there eight monasteries, 16 monastery representations, three seminaries, two Orthodox higher education establishments.

Again, when in doubt, show us, don’t tell us. Cite some numbers, quotes, hard facts about background. Avoid the political labels.

Amen.

I’m not sure if a single person in Washington knows what all is in — or will be in — the $825 BILLION spending bill about to be passed by the Democratic-led Congress. There might not even be a current copy of the bill for taxpayers or journalists to peruse. It makes it a very difficult story to report — not that many reporters are known for in-depth budget reporting.

Ostensibly, the bill is designed to stimulate our sagging economy. Which led one reporter — ABC’s George Stephanopolous — to ask House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., about one of the spending provisions:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?

PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?

PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.

Turns out the contraception inclusion — something no economist has called for as part of any stimulus — might not make it into the final bill. Not every random inclusion of pork or other spending spree will have as much of a religious angle as this one, but I’m sure there are others in the bill. Federal funding of birth control under the rubric of stimulus spending certainly has more than a few ghosts, of course.

Unfortunately if taxpayers and the press only have a few hours to peruse the lengthy bill before it’s passed, it’s not likely that we’ll see much disclosure or coverage of such provisions in the spending bill. Of course, Drudge is highlighting the $335,000,000 FOR STD PREVENTION at the top of the page. But what about the other non-stimulus but certainly noteworthy spending plans — for education, health care and other items with aims supported by the National Council of Churches? I know the media are covering this as a “stimulus” bill but there are some possibilities pregnant for religion coverage, to say the least.

As for Pelosi’s comments, they lit up the blogosphere and the religious and pundit side of the press, but there wasn’t much, if any, mainstream news coverage. Last time Pelosi talked about human life issues on a Sunday morning program, it was at least covered by the media. Perhaps that’s because Catholic bishops across the United States corrected her for using Catholic teaching to defend her political support of abortion.

Here’s James Pethoukis of U.S. News & World Report’s Capital Commerce blog commented on Pelosi’s unique stimulus views:

This is wrong on so many levels, one of which is looking at children born to the “wrong people” as economic burdens rather gifts, the music makers, the dreamers of dreams. She sees them as a cost instead of blessed benefits. Wow.

He goes on to present the economic argument for why decreased birth rate isn’t the best thing for an economy. But he’s a business blogger and there are more overt religious arguments dealing with House Democrat plans for hundreds of millions of dollars in birth control.

There are religious advocates of birth control. There are religious opponents of birth control, taxpayer funded or not. Unfortunately, neither voice is presented in mainstream coverage because the line item and its significance aren’t really loked into.

Another religious ghost is the means by which the provision may be bumped. Apparently President Obama told Pelosi to get the provision out of there. Is there a religion ghost there as well? Would it have been a bridge too far for some of his Catholic or other religious supporters who crossed the aisle to support him? This is an ongoing story about how the Democratic Party learns to deal with some of its newly found religious supporters, not just a campaign issue.

It’s always interesting when writers take a controversial story and approach it from very different angles.

Such was the case today in the continuing and complicated drama of the Pope’s move to lift the excommunications of the four traditionalist Society of St. Pius X bishops.

Warning for mature audiences—the two mainstream press stories contain the “r” word (rehabilitate), one deemed inaccurate by some folks in the comments pages. The Catholic News Service story does not.

Let’s start with the lede of today’s article from the Los Angeles Times:

The Vatican stood firm Tuesday on a decision to rehabilitate a Holocaust-denying bishop, even as Jewish leaders warned that the move will set back decades of Roman Catholic overtures to mend strained relations between the two faiths.

The Vatican joined Jews and fellow Catholics in condemning the British bishop’s assertions that no Jews died in Nazi gas chambers. But the Vatican also said Richard Williamson’s ideas had nothing to do with the decision by Pope Benedict XVI to return him and three other traditionalist bishops to the fold.

The controversy over lifting the excommunication of Williamson came as people worldwide Tuesday observed an annual commemoration of the Holocaust.

This story focuses on the controversy between Jewish leaders and Pope Benedict, while paying almost no attention to the internal dynamics of the Lebrebrevist bishops and the laypeople in the Society of St. Pius X.

The writer does include quotes from Catholic leaders and from SSPX leader Bishop Fellay himself expressing regret for Bishop Williamson’s comments —it just doesn’t headline them.

Here’s a revealing quote from Vatican spokesman Father Lombardi:

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said Williamson’s “unacceptable” ideas had “nothing to do with the thinking of the pope or the ideas expressed in the many documents of the church that condemn the Holocaust.”

He said there has been no talk of revoking the decision because it represents a first step toward eventual reconciliation with an entire religious community, not a single clergyman. “This regards an issue of the internal life of the Catholic Church,” Lombardi said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

That is certainly a view shared by many of our commenters.

Lombardi then goes on to express “surprise” at the breadth of the reaction-and an apology.

Oh, and there’s another “R” word mentioned here-the oft-noted, oft-quoted Jesuit priest Thomas J. Reese. He does not, nor can he, represent the entire spectrum of opinion in the Catholic world, and it would be a nice change if we saw other scholars mentioned more often.

The article by in the New York Times leads with Bishop Bernard Fellay’s apology to the pontiff. Then the author takes a closer look look at the SSPX.

The group’s founding documents, available on its Web site, paint a picture of a group deeply at odds with contemporary society, nostalgic for the French monarchy and hostile toward Jews, Muslims and the Vatican itself, some of whose pronouncements Archbishop Lefebvre called “satanic.”

The society has “always refused to follow the Rome of neo-Modernist and neo-Protestant tendencies which were clearly evident in the Second Vatican Council and, after the Council, in all the reforms which issued from it,” Archbishop Lefebvre wrote in a “rebuttal to modernism” in 1974.

It is fair to ask whether the current bishops share these views or are in the process of changing the face of the Society.

The writer goes on to present some evidence that Williamson is not the only Society member to hold anti-Jewish views:

In a letter to Germany’s 27 official bishops in October, the director of the society’s German branch, the Rev. Franz Schmidberger, wrote that Jews “are not ‘our older brothers in faith,’ ” as Pope John Paul II said in his historic visit to the Rome synagogue in 1986.

Instead, Father Schmidberger wrote, “for as long as they do not distance themselves from their forefathers’ guilt through the avowal of Christ’s divinity and baptism, they are complicit in the deicide,” according to a copy of the letter available on the society’s Web site.

The Catholic News Service writer emphasizes the repudiation of Williamson’s anti-Jewish comments in her lede:

Remarks made by a traditionalist bishop who denied that millions of Jews were murdered during World War II are unacceptable, “foolish,” and in no way reflect the position of the Catholic Church, said the Vatican’s top ecumenist and major dialogue partner with the Jews.

“Such gibberish is unacceptable,” said German Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations With the Jews in an interview with the Italian daily La Repubblica Jan. 26.

“To deny the Holocaust is unacceptable and is absolutely not the position of the Catholic Church,” he said, adding that the bishop’s remarks were “foolish.”

Judging by the extensive coverage given here to church officials distancing themselves from William’s views, it appears that Catholic leaders do not now believe this to be solely an internal church matter, but one that has consequences for external relationships.

Yes, there are some highly debatable points in some of the articles appearing in the non-denominational media.

Some will argue that the baby should be thrown out with the bathwater. I don’t. Taken together, with appropriate skepticism, they offer us morsels of insight (the Lombardi quotes) additional information (the SSPX website) and a broader perspective.

“Correcting” that perspective has now become a much more democratic venture — time to hear from you.

Picture of Pope Piux X is from Wikimedia Commons