As you would imagine, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the Rocky Mountain News the past week, especially once the final word came down on the shutdown of the newspaper where I worked during most of the 1980s. I still have lots of friends out there and, of course, that is also the paper that the Divine Ms. MZ Hemingway grew up reading, as well. Lots of memories.

Then the announcement came out that Dr. James Dobson was taking another step away from the controls at Focus on the Family, which called to mind an especially powerful memory from my Rocky days.

There was a stretch in the 1980s when Colorado Springs — really quick — turned into “Wheaton of the West,” a phrase I used in a column early on that I really wish I had copyrighted. Every month or so, some new group arrived at the base of Pikes Peak. Try to imagine what would have happened if Campus Crusade for Christ had settled there, too.

Anyway, I’m sitting at my desk one day and a member of the business-page staff walked up and asked: “Hey, there’s some organization moving to Colorado Springs called Focus on the Family. Is that worth a brief?”

I almost fell out of my chair. I told her that this might be one of the biggest Colorado news stories of the late 20th century.

The response: No way. You see, none of the editors had ever heard of Focus on the Family. That was a niche radio show and published empire that was not on their radar screen.

Well, Dobson showed up and things changed. These days, most journalists have even realized that he is not an ordained minister!

Now, the mainstream media is trying to describe why it is so important that Dobson is — kind of — moving away from center stage in American political and cultural life. The best lede is at the Washington Post:

James Dobson, a child psychologist who became a leader of the religious right, announced yesterday he was stepping down as board chairman of Focus on the Family, the megaministry he and his wife started 32 years ago.

Dobson, 72, had ceded the position of president and chief executive six years ago, and there have been ongoing discussions among the organization’s leadership about how to keep the Colorado Springs-based ministry and its popular radio show relevant to younger evangelicals. Dobson had already pulled back from most administrative duties, although he will continue to host the show, which reaches 1.5 million Americans daily, and write a newsletter that goes to 1.6 million people each month.

Note the emphasis on the “megaministry.” Now, compare that with the Los Angeles Times lede, which way overstates the situation:

James Dobson is stepping down as chairman of Focus on the Family, the conservative religious group announced Friday — a change that comes as the political movement Dobson has long embodied has been torn by questions over its direction and priorities.

Now wait a minute. Dobson embodies a “political” movement? What would that be? The religious right? Maybe, not not really. There are too many generals in front of that army for that to be true. Moral and cultural conservatism? No way. Traditional Catholics and Orthodox Jews out there. Raise your hands if Dobson ever spoke for you. Ditto for you charismatics and lots of you Southern Baptists.

If Dobson embodied anything, it was Focus on the Family, an organization that has waded into moral and cultural issues and frequently into politics. However, it must be emphasized that it began as a ministry truly rooted in marriage and family issues and, once upon a time, Focus materials were used in a wide range of sanctuaries — from old, mainline Protestant churches to evangelical megachurches to some Catholic parishes. His influence grew larger, as the years went by, but his reach also became more narrow.

There is no way that Dobson was the leader of the religious right, let alone of the world of moral and cultural conservatism. He was powerful, but not that powerful.

This sets up the main problem that I had with the MSM Dobson coverage, which is this idea that the white “evangelical (whatever that means) vote (whatever that is)” is somehow splintering and that social and moral issues are losing their power. It is true that the Democrats have made some gains among conservative religious believers, but those gains have been small and the Democratic establishment has also allowed some culturally conservative candidates to run in key corners of the Sunbelt. It’s also true that many evangelicals are interested in a broader range of issues these days (a trend I started seeing in the mid-1980s, as more evangelicals began to work with Catholic activists).

But look at this language from the Los Angeles Times, which cannot seem to grasp that evangelicals can pursue a broader agenda without giving up 2,000 years of Christian doctrine on basic moral issues.

We are told that Dobson’s move:

… comes as U.S. evangelicals are reconsidering their movement’s tie to the Republican Party and to wedge issues like same-sex marriage that Dobson has long emphasized.

“It’s very symbolic, the handing off of evangelical leadership to the next generation, whoever that may be,” said the Rev. Joel Hunter, senior pastor of Northland church in Orlando, Fla.

Dobson initially opposed Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for president but grudgingly backed the eventual nominee against Democrat Barack Obama, whom Dobson sharply criticized. Other evangelical leaders, such as Hunter, who offered the benediction at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, have been less confrontational with Obama and are shifting their focus to issues like global warming and combating poverty.

Who agrees with that assessment? Primarily voices on the religious left. Ask Hunter if he is “shifting his focus” away from the sanctity of human life. Ask him if his emphasis on the environment is actually part of his beliefs on the right to life. Please, ask.

It is certainly accurate to say that Dobson’s retirement is a symbolic moment. But it’s a symbolic moment for Focus on the Family and its supporters, not for some mythical, united evangelical movement that has never existed. And if reporters are actually interested in the political implications of traditional faith, then that’s a subject much, much, much broader than the life and work of Dobson.

Come on, do your homework, people.

Because my background is in economics and not religion or media, the media malpractice that gets me worked up the most usually involves numbers. No matter which newsroom I’ve worked in, the presence of numbers or numerical analysis seems to make journalists lose any brainpower. You should see what it’s like when reporters try to analyze polling data or governmental budgets. It’s just not pretty.

A reader sent along a story about a new nationwide study about porn usage. The story appears in the New Scientist. I have to be honest, if this story is any indication, that name must be satirical. There is literally nothing scientific about the report, headlined “Porn in the USA: Conservatives are biggest consumers.”

There is literally not one scintilla of evidence to back up the claim, written by reporter Ewen Callaway. I’m not saying conservatives aren’t the biggest consumers of porn. I’m just saying that there is nothing in the story to substantiate that they are. Maybe new science is about making stuff up?

The story begins by quoting the study’s author Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School noting that there is little variation across the nation when it comes to consumption of on-line porn. And yet …:

However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.

“Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by,” Edelman says.

Um, this is your first clue that something is amiss. The data groups consumers by “states” and yet we then extrapolate based on anonymous credit card receipts that people who are outraged by porn are consuming it?

How do I explain to Edelman and Callaway that states are places where many people live and that in each state there are variations in behavior in attitudes? You can, say, live in a state that has legalized marijuana usage for medicinal purposes because a majority of voters supported that. And yet you can also oppose marijuana for any use. You can, say, live in a state that voted for President Barack Obama and yet not have voted or not have voted for him. See how that works? This seems like such an unbelievably obvious point to make and yet look at how the story lumps millions of people together as if they are all lock-step voters:

The biggest consumer, Utah, averaged 5.47 adult content subscriptions per 1000 home broadband users; Montana bought the least with 1.92 per 1000. “The differences here are not so stark,” Edelman says.

Number 10 on the list was West Virginia at 2.94 subscriptions per 1000, while number 41, Michigan, averaged 2.32.

Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year’s presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama.

I don’t if Callaway or Edelman — or both — are to blame for the idiocy of the above three paragraphs. But someone needs to explain to people that these numbers don’t mean a thing.

I mean, is the Utah number so high because some high number of repressed Mormons are logging on to some cheesy porn site? Or is it so high because all of the non-Mormons use porn as an outlet in their private time because the state is so pious otherwise? Or is it some altogether different explanation related to, say, gender ratios? We have literally no idea because Edelman didn’t have data that would even come close to answering that question.

Are John McCain voters obsessed with porn? Or are Barack Obama voters who are marginalized in Red States seeking comfort from porn? We have, again, literally no idea. To infer otherwise is nothing less than lying. And it’s not just inference, if you recall that headline.

And then check out this:

Church-goers bought less online porn on Sundays — a 1% increase in a postal code’s religious attendance was associated with a 0.1% drop in subscriptions that day. However, expenditures on other days of the week brought them in line with the rest of the country, Edelman finds.

Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don’t explicitly restrict gay marriage.

That first line can not be known from the data. Church-goers may buy more porn on Sundays, they may buy less. We don’t know because the data set that Edelman was using didn’t identify individuals by their church attendance. Are 100 percent of the people in postal codes with increased religious attendance going to church? Obviously not. So how do we know which percentage of the churchgoers are in his credit card data and which percentage of non-churchgoers are in his credit card data? We don’t know. We just don’t know. To say otherwise is hackery.

Now there have been studies that ask INDIVIDUALS (as opposed to, um, STATES) about their porn usage and various other sex-related questions. And when it comes to INDIVIDUALS (as opposed to, again, STATES), 60 percent more Democrats than Republicans report having watched at least one porno in the last year. That was from the 2006 General Social Survey. While there’s no breakdown for conservative versus liberal, it does seem to contradict the claims by the New Scientist and Edelman. And it has the bonus of being data-driven as opposed to existing solely in the fevered imaginations and poorly-done statistical analysis of two individuals!

I read the study and it really is shocking that an assistant professor of business administration at Harvard University could be so clueless about what his data showed. I fear for the state of higher education. But whether or not a professor tries to make data say something it doesn’t even come close to saying, reporters should remember that their job is not to be so gullible. As news coverage spreads, hopefully reporters won’t fear or reject statistical analysis as much as Callaway. It’s not looking good thus far.

The last couple of weeks have seen a significant amount of coverage on the issue of big families. Much of this has been sparked by the single mother of six who gave birth to a set of octuplets in January in California. The story is full of issues relating to morality and what one believes about the significance of children, the family, procreation and life in general. Central to many individual’s beliefs on these issues is their faith, but that is not what is getting the attention in the news stories.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s article on the subject, published Wednesday, is a case-in-point. The headline of the article put me off initially because it implies that the controversy relating to the California octuplets related to large families in general:

Octuplet case increases scrutiny on large families

The rest of the article isn’t much better.

The more central controversy to the octuplets story relates to the use of in vitro fertilization and doctor’s efforts to increase the chances of having children by implanting more embryos than necessary, which increases the chances of multiple births. Large families are in a way the side issue.

Why does the scrutiny have to be on large families? In an interview on Terry Gross’s Fresh Air program Monday, reporter Liza Mundy talked about how it has become routine for doctors to reduce the number of babies in a multiple-birth situation induced by IVF. Significant morality issues arises that go beyond the more basic decision of whether to have an abortion, particularly when the intention is to have as many “options” in terms of gender, health and even the number.

Whether or not this is ethical in the medical community is very much up for debate and does not divide along the traditional choice/right to life lines.

Overall, the Inquirer article focuses mostly on the trends relating to large families and only briefly mentions religious issues:

Society looks most critically on those furthest from what’s typical, said Arnold, herself a mother of six. If a family is Catholic, “that’s a good excuse for why you would have so many children,” she said.

For others, religion is not the driver. Large families just feel right - something couples experienced themselves as children or never experienced and therefore always wanted.

In an age when many parents want to provide every advantage to their children and hover endlessly, large families often talk about a team spirit that gets them through the days.

Stereotypes about people with large families are frustrating for me because people often assume I come from a Catholic family since I have five wonderful siblings. (People also make presumptions about couples who do not have children yet.) I wish the article had explored more whether there were “non-Catholic” religious reasons individuals decided to have large families. The Catholic assumption relates to the faith’s official rules regarding birth-control, but there can be other religious reasons people decide they want more children than is considered normal these days.

The article also quotes a Rabbi discussing how prejudice against large families is one of the last remaining in our society. But the controversy surrounding the California octuplets relates less to the size of the family and to the medical issues surrounding medically induced multiple births. Focusing on that issue, I believe, would have made for a stronger article and for better overall coverage.

Photo of the Canadian Dionne sisters, the first quintuplets known to survive infancy, used under a Wikimedia Commons license.

One of the things I wish we saw more were casual inclusions of religion in stories about general life. It seems that there’s a lot of compartmentalizing of religion — as if stories are completely secular or they’re pigeonholed as religion news.

So I like the ideas behind theses two stories. The first comes from a U.S. News & World Report blog called Fresh Greens. It covers the “green movement and looks for ways to be an ecofriendly consumer without breaking the bank.” Producer Maura Judkis looks at whether Lent will decrease Catholics’ carbon footprint. She calculates that 354 million pounds of meat will go uneaten during Lent — using the number of registered Catholics and per capita meat consumption.

To put that abstract figure into perspective, that’s the equivalent of to 1.5 million round trip flights from New York to Los Angeles not being taken.

Obviously, I realize that this is not a precise science - more like a game of “What if.” There are plenty of Christians other than Catholics who give up meat for Lent, and there are plenty of Catholics who don’t participate. There’s also the factor of the carbon emissions from fish that many eat on Lenten Fridays instead, which I left out because there are so many kinds of fish that we eat, and each has a different carbon footprint. Either way, Catholics that participate in Lent are automatically lowering their carbon footprint, which is a good thing, since some church officials have urged Christians to give up carbon for the 40-day period.

I also just thought the blog post was funny in that way that makes you think that sometimes journalists can only understand a Christian spiritual discipline if in coincides with another political aim that journalists admire. I guess it’s a good thing that Lent is politically correct! Still, it’s a funny hook for a Lenten story and a good thing to enter into the “religion of environmentalism” files.

The next story was published on CNNMoney.com and is headlined “Hired! Going to church to get a job.” Why else would one go to church? It’s actually a cute story with good advice about how unemployed individuals should work their networks to help them get a job. But it has that same tone deaf quality — not quite understanding the sacred aspects of church life.

The story really just follows the steps taken by one unemployed individual, which included attending a church’s free career workshop. Experts say it was a good idea:

Our panel of career coaches agree that Butler was wise to tap into local organizations that could help him brush up on his job search skills and expose him to other job seekers sharing their experiences.

“Church groups are a good way to use existing community connections to expand your network of people,” according to Career and Business Consultant Kathy Robinson. But the danger is that “you could be getting 20-year-old resume advice,” she warned. “As long as the members are keeping themselves current on job search techniques it’s actually a fabulous resource.”

I confess I don’t quite get this quote. Why would churchgoers be 20 years behind in resume technology?

Still, this is a prime example of how I wish religious life were better incorporated into everyday stories and I’m glad to see it.

Those rowdy Anglican conservatives out there are very upset that the mainstream press has not paid more attention to the election of Father Kevin Thew Forrester as the new bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan. If you wish, click here to get a sense of just how upset they are.

As it turns out, there is an Associated Press report on the wires. Here it is — every word of it (as best I can tell):

ESCANABA, Mich. (AP) — The new bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan is an ordained Zen Buddhist.

Northern Michigan’s Episcopal congregations and delegates overwhelmingly elected the Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester at their convention on Saturday. The diocesan Web site says Thew Forrester “has practiced Zen meditation for almost a decade,” and the Buddhist community welcomed his commitment by granting him “lay ordination.”

The Web site says Northern Michigan’s new bishop “resonates deeply” with “his own interfaith dialogue with Buddhism and meditative practice.”

Now, it is true that if you do a Google News search, you don’t get very much.

Then again, if you do a Google search of the Web itself, you turn up all of the usual suspects in the world of alternative, conservative news. You see, once again, we are dealing with a “conservative” story, for some reason. The election of a Buddhist — or someone with a serious attachment to Buddhist beliefs and practices — is not a mainstream story. The question, of course, is, “Why?”

As you would expect, the mainstream Episcopal press has covered the story a little bit. Here is a chunk of the report in The Living Church. The key fact is that this election was totally predictable.

Fr. Forrester, the only candidate on the slate, was elected on the first ballot, receiving 88 percent of delegate votes and 91 percent of congregational votes, according to a diocesan news release.

The bishop-elect has served the diocese since 2001 as its ministry development coordinator and more recently as rector of St. Paul’s Church, Marquette, and St. John’s, Negaunee. The announcement of Fr. Forrester’s nomination sparked controversy last month because he is also a practicing Buddhist and said he had received Buddhist “lay ordination” and was “walking the path of Christianity and Zen Buddhism together.”

You can hear the yawn, can’t you. After all, this is not as big a shock as news about a Muslim Episcopalian or even a brace of Episcopal druids. And I would argue that this is not a first for the Episcopal Church, anyway.

The key is that word “ordination.” What does it mean in a Buddhist context, anyway?

Clearly, there is nothing new about an Episcopal leader practicing elements of the Buddhist faith or seeing them as compatible with Christian doctrine. After all, more than a decade ago, I wrote the following for the Scripps Howard News Service about the election of the denomination’s new presiding bishop:

It is the Most Rev. Frank Tracy Griswold III’s custom to begin his day at 5 a.m. with prayer and yoga, a heels-over-head ritual that symbolizes what some call his Zen-Benedictine approach to faith.

The graceful, bookish cleric didn’t stand on his head in the National Cathedral during the festive rites in which he was installed as the Episcopal Church’s leader. But the new presiding bishop did challenge his church to wholeheartedly embrace the ambiguity of modern life.

Each person must discover “the truth which is embodied in each of us, in what might be called the scripture of our own lives,” he said. … With their legacy of “graced pragmatism,” Episcopalians are uniquely gifted at blending the “diverse and the disparate,” the “contradictory and the paradoxical,” the “mix and the muddle,” he said. In a flock committed to finding the “via media,” or middle way, “different dimensions of truth, different experiences of grace, can meet together, embrace one another, and share the Bread of Life.”

Here is a postmodern credo for the next millennium: The truths are out there.

So here is the question about Forrester’s election: Where’s the news hook?

Dan Gilgoff, who runs the God & Country blog over at U.S. News & World Report, picked up on a little noticed but terribly interesting development in civil religion. Apparently President Obama’s public events are now being launched with prayers from local leaders.

Gilgoff introduces us to Ryan Culp of Elkhart, Ind. He’s a high school teacher and conservative Republican who attends the same evangelical church in which he grew up. He delivered an invocation before a nationally televised town hall meeting to sell President Obama’s $800 billion spending bill. He wrote the prayer and called an aide from the White House Office of Public Liaison for vetting. It passed:

The White House had no revisions for the prayer, which opened with the line: “Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you this day thanking you for who you are—a God that cares about each of our needs, our desires, and our fears.” Culp delivered it the following day at Obama’s town hall meeting, landing a handshake from the president and mentions in several local papers.

A once-in-a-lifetime experience for Culp has become routine for President Obama: In a departure from previous presidents, his public rallies are opening with invocations that have been commissioned and vetted by the White House.

What a great idea for a story. We’re then introduced to someone else who gave a prayer recently:

During Obama’s recent visit to Fort Myers, Fla., to promote his economic stimulus plan, a black Baptist preacher delivered a prayer that carefully avoided mentioning Jesus, lest he offend anyone in the audience. And at Obama’s appearance last week near Phoenix to unveil his mortgage bailout plan, an administrator for the Tohono O’odham Nation delivered the prayer, taking the unusual step of writing it down so he could E-mail it to the White House for vetting. American Indian prayers are typically improvised.

I wonder why we learn the race of this pastor, James Bing. We didn’t learn the race of Culp, for instance. Still, the inclusion of the angle about the offense caused by proper nouns is such an important thing to mention. (Of course, I wish those of us who are offended by the avoidance of proper nouns got a hearing, too!) There’s a fascinating quote later in the story from Bing, by the way.

The story does a good job of showing how these invocations and the vetting process compare to past presidential practice. Basically, it’s unprecedented, according to various folks interviewed for the story.

“If a similar thing had been done by President Bush’s White House, I guarantee you there would have been a lot of people crying foul,” says Bill Wichterman, deputy director of the Office of Public Liaison under President George W. Bush. “Democrats can do this with immunity, but when Republicans do it, it becomes controversial.”

The Obama administration may have skirted controversy by scheduling the invocations to be delivered before the president arrives at the events—and before national cable network cameras start rolling. “Having prayers in places like Indiana where public prayers are commonplace would help the president,” says John Green of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. “Whereas seeing it on national TV would cause controversy because there are places where these things are less popular.”

The Obama White House declined to comment about the program, other than to say that it has “been standard since the campaign,” according to spokeswoman Jen Psaki. So far, the names of those delivering invocations have appeared on the official presidential schedules that the White House distributes to the press. Culp is described in a press schedule as “a well-respected faith leader in the community.”

But many church/state experts are unfamiliar with the program. “The only thing worse than having these prayers in the first place is to have them vetted, because it entangles the White House in core theological matters,” Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said upon learning of the Obama invocations.

Gilgoff notes that no one has been asked to change their prayers. Lynn is quoted saying that the existence of the vetting process is problematic for other reasons.

In addition to the story, Gilgoff posted audio of the prayers and more information about how presidents have handled prayer in the past.

I’ve been out of the loop for a day or two, so let me jump back in with a comment or two about the ongoing coverage of the new pope of the United States of America — the unofficial title that many pin on the man who wears a red hat in New York City.

It’s obvious that the leaders of the New York Times must, their roles as priests at the Alpha Newspaper atop the mainstream media food chain, work out a template for this guy. He cannot go away, so the editors must make sense of him. They must find the appropriate label, so that they know how to cover him. They have to tell people who he is.

As regular GetReligion reader Brian notes:

I’ve been trying find out more about Archbishop Dolan, but everything I read I have to play the game, “If source X says he’s Y then that probably means he’s Z.” This seems to be true not only in the mainstream media but also in Catholic news sources and blogs. Whatever Dolan is, it’s not easily quantifiable, he doesn’t seem to fit into any one of the standard labels. I’d appreciate a newsource I could trust to paint an objective picture of him without having to translate as I read.

As I suggested the other day, the Vatican tends to send men into these high-profile slots (see the throne in Washington, D.C.) who are conservative, but not confrontational. Rome knows that the New York Times is not going to go away, either. Always remember that the Vatican is in Europe and is used to a European press.

So it’s clear that Dolan is a kind of conservative, but is not toooooo frightening.

However, he is also popular with many ordinary Catholics and he has interesting academic credentials. But being popular and a kind of conservative, in the nuanced world of the Times, must mean that he is a kind of light weight. That appeared to be the theme in the opening salvo of coverage and no there is an interesting follow story that suggests that this is going to be the template for Dolan coverage, at least until he takes some action that clearly makes him a sort-of good guy or a truly bad guy.

It seems that the archbishop is a man’s man, a guy’s guy and this means that he may be able to attract more men into the priesthood. All kinds of questions loom in the background, but this is what we get in print:

The big recruiters talk about him as if he were future Hall-of-Fame material — the kind you build organizations around. They talk about his “skill set,” the leadership qualities that make the young ones double their commitments.

They speak of Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of Milwaukee, the gregarious, football-coach-size prelate whom the Vatican named … to take the helm of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. They hope he helps attract more men to the priesthood.

“He’s a professional extrovert, a banterer, a sports fanatic,” said the Rev. Edwin H. Obermiller, director of vocations for the Congregation of Holy Cross at the University of Notre Dame. “He knows how to talk to young men.”

Once again, we are drifting into the most pressing demographic crisis that is affecting Catholicism in the West — the declining number of men willing to enter the priesthood.

It’s good that the Times piece does point toward one of the most obvious causes of the decline, which is the plummeting birth rates among American Catholics. A family with one son will rarely produce a priest. There is also a short, short reference to questions about celibacy. There are zero references to other concerns, such as the opinions on the left that almost all young seminarians are arch conservatives and the frequent claims on the right (and sometimes on the left) that about half of the new priests are gay.

Instead, we get this picture of Dolan as the old-fashioned urban Catholic who does old-fashioned Catholic guy things without breaking a sweat. There is, you see, this suggestion that a guy who is totally into football and baseball probably isn’t hooked on Broadway tunes.

Here is what that looks like when he visits a seminary in Yonkers:

… (A)fter a vespers service at St. Joseph’s chapel in which Archbishop Dolan addressed the seminarians as “the future of the priesthood I love,” many of them stood around gaping with what seemed a mixture of curiosity and awe as he held court in a scrum of television cameras and sound booms, answering questions from reporters.

The bishop laughed a lot. He spoke glowingly of the Green Bay Packers, the Mets, the Yankees, hot dogs and jelly doughnuts. At one point he shouted over reporters’ heads: “Hey, when’s opening day at Yankee Stadium?”

One seminarian, standing with his chin resting on his closed hand, smiled broadly when asked by a reporter what he thought of the new guy. “They asked us not to make comments,” he said, turning to walk down a hall to a dinner in honor of Cardinal Egan and his successor. “But I like him.”

Standing with his chin resting on his closed hand? I am trying to picture this stance and figure out what it means, in terms of body code. Any suggestions? In fact, any suggestions what in the heckfire this piece is trying to say? What’s the bottom line?

Let’s look at a few more Ash Wednesday stories. Ann Rodgers of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette explores the meaning of Lenten discipline by focusing on a group of Presbyterians who are fasting. The story features the Rev. Elizabeth McCormick of First Presbyterian Church of Frostburg, Md., who is encouraging her congregation to fast. McCormick and her husband used to be missionaries in Sudan. She taught at a seminary in Khartoum and he was a financial adviser for the Presbyterian Church of Sudan:

Many of her students were among 2.5 million refugees from the south living in camps in the desert outside the city. For many the single meal served at the seminary was their only food. She was often invited to preach in the camps.

“I saw firsthand the children who were malnourished, with extended bellies and orange hair, and the very thin, emaciated women,” she said.

“What was most difficult was that their sense of hospitality is so overwhelming that they would still provide food for their guests, even if it meant their family didn’t eat that day.”

Their faith deepened her own, she said. Despite their hunger, they fasted regularly.

“The Sudanese see their suffering as their being united to Christ Jesus in his suffering. So, for them, fasting is a way to show that they intentionally want to be united with Christ in his suffering for the world,” she said.

Good quotes and information. Julia Duin of the Washington Times looked at books about fasting for her piece in Sunday’s paper. As my family embarks on our 40 days of fasting, I am reminded of how easy it was to fast before I had a husband or children — to say nothing of figuring out a proper dietary discipline while pregnant or nursing. Let’s just say it takes a lot more intentionality than I recall from my single days. So I was elated to see that one of the books reviewed is a vegan cookbook for intensive fasts:

Aided by her mother, a gourmet cook, [“The Daniel’s Fast Cookbook” author Grace Bass] began to develop recipes — using only whole grains, water, vegetables and fruits — for people, such as diabetics, who want to go on multiday fasts but cannot subsist on merely water. Others had families who rebelled at nonstop vegetarian fare in place of their prepackaged pizzas.

Still others could not figure out how to cook enough meals for such a project.

“Many people were quitting their commitment to the fast,” she said. “I really had a burden to help them.”

It’s a great hook for a Lenten story and helpful to readers as well. I also have a brief personal entry — nothing newsy about it! — in a symposium on Ash Wednesday over at National Review Online.

I had a few thoughts as I read this provocative article from The Telegraph on a survey done among Catholic clergy in Poland.

I pondered what seems to me to be a number of short articles like this in the British press-seemingly barely more than news blurbs.

And then I reflected on another side-effect of the malaise eating away at the mainstream media here and in the U.K. — a lack of U.S. and British reporters based in places like Poland and other Eastern European countries who have the time to dig deep into stories like this — and then be assured that they will be published.

That’s unfortunate because not only does the United States have a fairly large number of Americans of Eastern European descent (and immigrants), but readers here don’t often get an opportunity to understand the relationship between faith and culture in such countries-equally important as other stories that seem “sexier.”

The writer doesn’t waste any time going for the broad (or broads) generalization.

A survey of Poland’s Catholic priests has shown that a majority favour an end to celibacy, with some admitting they are already in a relationship with a woman.

The research has dealt a blow to the country’s reputation as a champion of traditional Roman Catholic values.

A survey of over 800 priests carried out by Professor Josef Baniak, a sociologist specialising in religious affairs, found that 53 per cent would like to have a wife, while 12 per cent admitted that they were involved in a relationship. A further 30 per cent said that they had had a sexual relationship with a woman.

Let’s say that this research is accurate—and a slight majority of clergy would like to get married. Does that mean that Poles no longer uphold traditional Catholic values?

Here we are on a very slippery slope. The article doesn’t tell us anything about who these clergy were or how the study was done, or what kind of “religious affairs” the sociologist specializes in.

I find the 12 percent (of clergy who admit to having a relationship with a woman) number fascinating—mostly because they were willing to admit to such a relationship. What does that say about the clergy, the Catholic hierarchy, and Polish culture? I don’t know—but I wish the writer had given us a cultural context.

The story includes a few boilerplate rejoinders from the bishop who chairs the Catholic Church’s Vocational Council. I have a feeling that Catholic leaders have a lot more to say about these results.

The terse nature of this story is especially frustrating because it tells us both so much and so little. If there’s a crisis among Polish clergy, and declining vocations, what do Catholic leaders plan to do about it? What is the influence of the church now on people’s day-to-day lives? Is Poland like other countries in Eastern Europe in having a clergy shortage?

More! Less purple prose, and more content, more context, and more quotes from Catholic sources inside and outside Poland. Then we might have a story.

We are always pleased when news reports tie religion into stories about social celebrations and holidays. Celebrations like Mardi Gras — known today by most for its explicit expressions of drunkenness and lascivious behavior — have religious roots that go back centuries. Reporters would be amiss in neglecting to report that angle. However, when dealing with celebrations such as Mardi Gras, it is always refreshing to see news reports that tell just it how it is today.

When National Public Radio reported on a religious angle to Carnival, the Mardi Gras equivalent in Brazil and many other countries with Catholic cultures, they focused on the “Sons of Gandhi” also known as Filhos de Gandhy and their religious roots in the nation’s celebration of a mix of cultures and religions. It is an interesting angle that mixes many of the aspects of Carnival and its history in Brazilian culture:

Although the holiday may be an excuse to party for most people, the parade of the Filhos de Gandhy is intended as a spiritual experience. The group, named for the late leader of India’s independence movement, marches at several major religious festivals throughout the year. Carnival is their biggest event.

“The Sons of Gandhi serve to bridge the sacred and the profane, a connection that is characteristic of Brazilian culture — and above all, Carnival,” says anthropologist Goli Guerreiro.

The article has a nice reflection on the group’s lofty aims. It mentions briefly that the chants sung by the group during the celebration are in honor of Afro-Brazilian gods and that religious beliefs from Africa were discriminated against in Brazil’s Catholic-dominant society. But that is the only implied mention of the Carnival’s roots as a Catholic celebration.

As a reader submitted to us, failing to mention Carnival’s connection to Lent and Easter is surprising considering that the story is about syncretism and the blend of religion and cultures.

Nevertheless, the article accurately notes what celebrations like Carnival and Mardi Gras in the United States have become today:

But in truth, not everybody who joins the group is looking for peace. Saba says that when asked, almost all of the Sons of Gandhi will say the same thing: They’re in it for the women.

“The women go crazy for the Sons of Gandhi. Many women come from other states just to have the chance to go out with one of us,” Saba insists.

Of course, Gandhi himself spent much of his life celibate. The Sons of Gandhi also have their rules — since the beginning, they’ve never allowed women to join their ranks. They also forbid members to consume alcohol or drugs during marches.

The prohibitions aren’t a matter of keeping pure, but rather of keeping the peace. In the macho society of Brazil, the Filhos de Gandhy believe that where you have men mixing with women and alcohol, you have fights.

One has to wonder whether a reporter’s tone would change if a group such as this in the United States refused to allow women to join. Somehow I imagine it would be given a greater significance than rules about not drinking or doing drugs during a parade march.