It’s been two months since I began blogging for GR and I’ve learned something very important: I don’t like blogging. And so, I am writing to bid the GR crowd farewell. This will be my last post.

Terry has built up a very respectable site that smartly looks at the way that religion is covered in the mainstream media. He has assembled a great team and I was honored earlier this year when he offered me a place on the team. In some ways it seemed like a perfect fit. I’ve been a religion writer for most of my career and I now teach an entire course in religion writing at Columbia.

What I found, however, is that I am more of a reporter and teacher than a press critic. I got into journalism because I love learning new things, meeting new people and telling stories. These are things that rarely happen to bloggers. To be a good blogger one needs to constantly be on top of the news (preferably while sitting in front of a computer), have strong opinions and be unafraid to express them instantly. This is simply not my style. My favorite days are spent visiting churches, synagogues and mosques. Not their Websites.

As I wrote in my initial 5 Q +1, I prefer my newspapers the old fashioned way: on paper. I like to chew over an issue before forming an opinion. I like to consider a story from different angles. I know that mine is not the current journalism model, although I’ve adjusted to the new. Every article I write for the mainstream media also appears on its Website. And I teach my students how to write for the Web and how to tell a story in pictures, audio and video. But, above all, I employ, and teach my students, the traditions of good journalism: of fact-checking, fairness and accuracy. I think we can safely say that journalism has standards but blogging does not. Too much of blogging, I find, is “gotcha” journalism by a writer who wants to show that he or she is smarter than the journalist in the field.

On more than one occasion over the last two months I have killed blog posts that I was writing because I felt that I was being unfair to the writer. (I should also add that I knew many of the writers either as colleagues or as former students.) I found myself calling people to get more information, either to find out why a reporter did something (did the editor take it out? was there just no room? why didn’t they think it was relevant?), all of which slowed down or simply destroyed the blogging process.

Two months ago, Terry wrote very warmly and about my joining the GR team. “Ari Goldman is in the house,” he wrote. Thank you for the hospitality, Terry, but Ari Goldman has left the house. I’m heading back into the trenches. And I wish you all Godspeed.

Over the past week, GetReligion has been pursuing this question: What is the mainstream press saying about where Judge Sonia Sotomayor falls in the spectrum of Catholic life and practice? Well, New York Times reporter Laurie Goodstein has been researching this for all of the curious minds who read that newspaper (not to mention GR readers), and here’s what she has found out:

Four of the Catholics on the court are reported to be committed attenders of Mass, and they make up the court’s solid conservative bloc — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. The fifth Catholic, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, often votes with them.

There are indications that Judge Sotomayor is more like the majority of American Catholics: those who were raised in the faith and shaped by its values, but who do not attend Mass regularly and are not particularly active in religious life. Like many Americans, Judge Sotomayor may be what religion scholars call a “cultural Catholic” — a category that could say something about her political and social attitudes.

First of all, we’re pleased as punch that Goodstein has tackled this question. It’s long been clear that conservative Catholics vote along conservative lines — so the fact that the mass—attending Justices generally trend reliably conservative should not shock anyone. As Terry said in a previous post, the hinge issue is abortion. Is there any way of predicting by her church attendance (and Goodstein has done her homework here) how Sotomayor would vote on abortion-related, or “right to privacy” cases that come before the court?

Franklly, it’s unwise to predict how anyone would vote, even if you think you know. Purely my opinion, but confirmation processes have now become a charade, where aspiring Justices say as little as possible without totally compromising their integrity. Yet it seems clear that piety (if one can judge piety by church attendance, which is a whole other debate) is a factor, if not a totally understood factor, in where one falls on the spectrum of liberal-conservative opinion (as in this poll on the Notre-Dame controversy). Here’s some interesting stats on a few social issues culled by Goodstein.

In fact, 52 percent of Catholics who do not attend church regularly say abortion is morally acceptable, compared with 24 percent of churchgoing Catholics, according to a Gallup study released in March based on polling over the previous three years. Gallup found that 61 percent of non-churchgoing Catholics found same-sex relationships morally acceptable, compared with 44 percent of churchgoers.

But legal scholars say that while Judge Sotomayor’s Catholic identity will undoubtedly shape her perceptions, they will not determine how she would rule on the bench. After all, they point out, Justices William J. Brennan Jr. and Frank Murphy, both Catholics, had records as liberals, while Justice Scalia has been a reliable conservative. Their positions have differed, even on issues covered in Catholic teaching, like abortion.

That’s a fascinating stat on same-sex relationships — anyone want to guess what it means? Actually, let’s start with the term “morally acceptable.”

Then there is the whole issue of whether Judge Sotomayor’s ‘Catholic identity’ was shaped by her Hispanic roots. She has talked about being proud of her Latina heritage — did she spend any time with the more than one-half (in this 2007 Pew poll) of Hispanic Catholics who identify themselves as charismatic? There’s no evidence here that she did. And there’s really no way of predicting yet how Sotomayor will vote — with the exception of the Ricci affirmative action case recently argued before the Supreme Court, she doesn’t have a huge paper trail on hot button issues. Generally picks for the Supreme Court don’t.

As much as I liked the Goodstein article, I had a few problems with it. Characterizing Anthony Kennedy (as Professor Powe does) as a “country club Republican” says nothing about his Catholic identity. Nor does telling us that Justices Breyer and Ginsburg are Jewish or that Stevens is a Protestant illuminate anything about how their faith and/or culture shapes their decisions. Aren’t you curious about them, too?

But here’s what I want to know — is it possible that “cultural Catholics” aren’t much different than the majority of Americans as a whole? If Sotomayor doesn’t go to church very often, then she’s like most of the rest of us. Does terming someone a “cultural Catholic” in an age of ethnic diversity and diversity of practice really mean a whole heck of a lot anymore? The vague definition here (a commitment to social justice and community service) could as well be applied to Quakers.

In the end, of course, it comes down to what one woman with a Catholic heritage believes — and as excellent a reporter as Goodstein is, she hasn’t been able to get inside Sotomayor’s head. Which won’t keep a lot of other people from trying.

Isn’t this a nice picture of Sotomayor with her mother (Wikimedia Commons)?

Day after day, your GetReligionistas receive emails that contain tips about religion-news stories across America and sometimes from around the world. We are extremely grateful that readers do this, because there is no way we can read even a 10th of the coverage that we would like to review here on the blog.

But there is a problem, one that I mentioned the other day.

One of the ongoing temptations here at GetReligion … is to focus on interesting events and trends in religion news, instead of keeping our unique focus on how the mainstream press attempts to cover those stories in an accurate, balanced, professional manner. The bottom line: This is not a religion-news blog; this is a blog about how the mainstream press wrestles with coverage of religion news.

I would say that at least 50 percent or more of the story tips that we get are about about news stories that do not fit what we do here. The readers are, it seems, upset about some event that has happened and they want us to comment on the event or a trend that it may represent. The coverage of the story usually seems pretty ordinary, by which I mean that it doesn’t contain the kinds of mistakes or gaps that we like to criticize or the kinds of unique insights or sources that we like to praise.

Perhaps it would help if I offered an example. Have you been following the story of the home-based Bible study that San Diego officials briefly tried to shut down? Here’s a very ordinary wire report on Fox News and then here is a more in-depth report in the San Diego Tribune, that opens with this summary:

David Jones and his wife, Mary, who hold Bible study in their Bonita home every Tuesday, have landed in the national media spotlight after San Diego County asked them to obtain a permit for the gatherings.

On April 10, a county code enforcement officer visited the Jones’ home after a complaint from somebody about the meetings. The officer told Mary Jones that if the couple don’t immediately stop holding “religious assemblies”, they could face escalating fines of $100, $200, $500, and $1,000, according to the Joneses’ attorney.

Dean R. Broyles with the Western Center for Law & Policy, which is representing the couple, said the county’s citation violates the Joneses’ “First Amendment Right to freely exercise their religion.” In addition, Broyles argues that Bible study does not constitute religious assembly under the county’s land use regulations, which refer to religious assembly as religious services at synagogues, temples and churches.

Now, there are all kinds of interesting questions here, starting with the obvious: How many people attend this Bible study and are these gatherings larger than similar events involving playing cards, backyard barbecues, “Final Four” hoops parties or Oprah book circles? If there are parking problems, are they caused by the work of God or man? Can neighbors protest religious meetings, but not secular?

There was also information included in the reports offered by religious publications that city officials were asking some very content-oriented questions about these gatherings, perhaps singling out religious speech for special scrutiny. That would interesting, to say the least.

I am happy to report that all of that ended up in the Tribune follow-up report on the resolution — in favor of the Bible readers — of the case. Here’s one of the more interesting passages, linked to an interview with Dean Broyles, of the Western Center for Law & Policy, a nonprofit organization in Escondido that supports religious liberty:

(Broyles) said traffic issues were not raised when the code enforcement officer first visited the Joneses in response to the complaint. The warning itself does not mention traffic or parking problems.

“Even though the county is saying it’s about traffic and parking, it’s a fake issue. It’s a fabricated issue,” Broyles said.

According to Broyles, the code enforcement officer asked a series of pointed questions during her visit with the Joneses — questions such as, “Do you sing?” “Do you say ‘amen?’ ” “Do you say ‘praise the Lord?’ “

Sure enough, the county is investigating those complaints about the questions linked to the original complaint. Does that make sense?

The reader who sent me the story ended by asking: “Would you comment on this story?”

On the news reports (which is our job here) or on the contents of the story, in terms of the church-state issues involved? I don’t dive into the latter, unless I think that the journalists missed something obvious.

So here’s my comment: The stories look good to me.

So what’s my point? When you send us URLs (and please keep doing so, folks), please let us know what you think is right or wrong about the journalism in these news stories.

We are getting closer and loser to an official mainstream-press language to describe the religious background of Judge Sonia Sotomayor and, to no one’s surprise, the issue that continues to drive this slow process of journalistic revelation is abortion.

At this point, however, no one wants to get into the confusing and controversial work of determining the identities of the Catholic judges on the U.S. Supreme Court, as opposed to the “Catholic” judges. After all, this would require listing the Catholic judges who support America’s current regime of abortion laws and then listing the Catholic judges who want to see abortion severely restricted or banned. That would raise doctrinal questions.

You see, it’s all about judicial mathematics. Here is a typical CNN reference:

Sotomayor was raised Catholic. If she is confirmed, six out of the nine justices on the high court will be from the faith. Catholics make up about 25 percent of the U.S. population. Of the 110 people who have served on the Supreme Court, 11 have been Catholic. Five of those justices — Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts — are currently on the court.

Notice the crucial words “raised” and “from.” Is someone who is “from” the Catholic Church a Catholic, as opposed to someone who is “in” the Catholic Church? Now that I think of it, which justices in the current gang of five are “from” the Catholic faith? Anyone care to name names?

Meanwhile, over at the Washington Post, we have the following language in a crucial news report in which the White House urgently assured leaders on the cultural left that Sotomayor is not a Justice David Souter in reverse. In other words, Democrats don’t make mistakes.

But it’s hard to stress that the nominee is a complex, nuanced moderate on abortion while also stressing that she is totally in line with the White House on its uncompromising support for abortion rights at all points during a pregnancy. Thus, we have this:

Facing concerns about the issue from supporters rather than detractors, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama did not ask Sotomayor specifically about abortion rights during their interview. But Gibbs indicated that the White House is nonetheless sure she agrees with the constitutional underpinnings of Roe v. Wade, which 36 years ago provided abortion rights nationwide.

And then we have this:

The abortion issue is likely to arise in Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings in July, in part because of her background as a Catholic. But she is unlikely to offer any more clarity than have previous nominees. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., for instance, ducked the question during his 2005 hearings by saying that Roe is “settled as a precedent of the court.”

And finally this, linked to Sotomayor rulings in the past:

… (In) cases involving deportation to China, she has written about the country’s sterilization and forced abortion standards. In one case, she talked about how husbands would be affected: “The termination of a wanted pregnancy under a coercive population control program can only be devastating to any couple, akin, no doubt, to the killing of a child.”

The question, in other words, is whether Sotomayor is a practicing Catholic or a person of Catholic cultural background who is, in effect, someone who is akin to being a Catholic.

Stay tuned. At some point, some reporter is going to dare to ask this question to people who might know.

… The pope and the president just live in it.

Yesterday morning at Los Angeles International Airport, Brenda Lee presented herself as a journalist, a Catholic priestess, and a California citizen so concerned about gay marriage that she wanted to give a letter to President Obama. In blurring those identities — in behaving as an activist while standing amid journalists — she managed to get herself hauled away in full-throttle civil disobedience mode.

The best reporting of this harmonic convergence of strange came from two reporters pursuing local angles.

Jon Cassidy of The Orange County Register addressed the question of Lee’s claim to Catholic priesthood:

In a phone interview, Lee said that she is a Catholic priestess “with St. Juliana’s in Fullerton,” and that there are 60 other Catholic priestesses worldwide.

Father Paul Gins of St. Juliana’s said that Lee is a member of the parish and a “well-meaning person,” but that “she does not represent the church. We do not recognize women priests, and haven’t for 2,000 years.”

Lee said that her duties as a minister involve consecrating the host, and ministering to the disabled and elderly in convalescent homes.

Cassidy also delivered the most poignant detail of the day:

Outside the terminal, a police officer chided Lee for making a scene, she said.

“‘This could’ve been much worse,’” she said the officer told her. “We could have cuffed you, put you in a black-and-white, and held you for 72 hours.’”

Lee — whose sister worked in a mental hospital, she said — understood the reference to the holding period for mental illness cases.

As she tearfully recounted this afternoon, she had one thing to tell the officer: “Are you trying to imply that there’s something mentally wrong with me?”

While other reporters had to settle for saying that editors at the Informer newspaper of Macon, Georgia, did not return calls, Travis Fain of Macon.com reached its longtime publisher:

Herbert Dennard, until recently the publisher for the Georgia Informer, which has changed its name to the Informer, said Lee is from the Macon area but now lives in California. She writes a column for the Informer, a monthly newspaper that focuses on the black community and routinely prints public officials’ salaries.

“She writes a lot of religious things and gives opinions on things from abortion to gay marriage,” Dennard said.

“She’s a very good person,” Dennard said. “She has very strong views on some moral issues. And I had talked to her, and she said she wanted to try to interview the president of the United States. I said, ‘if you can do it, fine.’”

Steven Mikulan of LA Weekly scoured Lee’s sparse record of columns for the Informer and found sad ramblings such as this: “Mother Teresa was a female and a person of color. Because she overshadowed Pope John Paul II for sainthood, her reputation had to be destroyed.”

Mikulan ruined his post, however, with this stunningly ignorant speculation about Lee’s future among what he calls faith-based conservatives: “It will be interesting to see if and how Rev. Lee writes about her own recent experience on the LAX tarmac — and if she becomes a Joe the Plumber for faith-based conservatives.”

If you have to ask, you’ll never understand.

Obviously, there are converts to the Episcopal Church and then there are CONVERTS to the Episcopal Church.

As you would expect, the Miami Herald offered a major piece on decision by Father Alberto Cutié to leave the Roman Catholic Church and to enter the Episcopal Church, where he will start preaching this coming Sunday, yet wait about a year to become active as a priest.

Obviously, the newspaper focused on celibacy as the central issue involved in this new set of headlines about Father Oprah:

While the Catholic Church requires priests to hew to a vow of celibacy, the Episcopalians, who broke from Rome in the 16th century, have no such rules. Cutié was formally welcomed into the Episcopal Church in a small, private ceremony early Thursday afternoon at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral (pictured), the church’s South Florida headquarters in downtown Miami.

”I am continuing the call to spread God’s love,” Cutié said after the ceremony, adding that he has gone through a “spiritual and deep ideological struggle.”

In attendance at Trinity was Cutié’s girlfriend, Ruhama Buni Canellis, 35, a divorced mother living in Miami Beach. It was the first public sighting of the couple since compromising photos appeared in a Mexican magazine early this month that led the telegenic cleric to take leave from his South Beach parish. Cutié sat smiling beside Canellis during the half-hour ceremony. Deacons and former Catholic priests now in the Episcopal Church were by his side — many notably accompanied by their wives.

Now Cutié had earlier stressed that he did not want to become known as the anti-celibacy priest. However, this decision raises a host of doctrinal issues — with celibacy barely making it into the Top 10. The Herald mentions a few items that have made the biggest headlines, in this era and that of King Henry VIII.

The more-liberal Episcopal church considers itself the ”middle way” between Protestantism and Catholicism. It ordains women and has an openly gay bishop. The church represents the U.S. wing of the 77 million-member Anglican Communion and traces its roots to the Church of England. In South Florida, the Episcopal diocese has 38,000 members, compared with the 800,000-member Catholic archdiocese.

While the Episcopal and Catholic churches have almost identical worship services, there are significant differences. Episcopalians, for instance, do not believe in the infallibility of the Pope.

The obvious question: What beliefs were in his mind when Cutié said he had been engaged in a “deep ideological struggle” before this decision? As I said, celibacy is a powerful issue for a man who wants to get married. But, when listing differences between the Catholic Church and the modern Episcopal Church, it’s not a major issue of doctrine or ideology.

Meanwhile, there was one other question that I think the newspaper’s team should have raised while doing this story. When Catholics convert to the Episcopal Church, at least in all of the cases I have witnessed (including friends) or covered as a reporter, they go through the same process as other people who convert and are “confirmed” into the denomination. However, since Catholics are coming out of an ancient church with full orders, they are “received” into the Anglican Communion, rather than being “confirmed.”

This usually takes between three and nine months, depending on how seriously a parish takes the confirmation process (or the catechumenate in the ancient churches).

Obviously, it appears that a bishop can speed that process up. Obviously, he or she can speed it way, way up. However, as Doug LeBlanc noted, when I asked him about this, it appears that the canon law involved is rather open and, in the true meaning of the word, liberal:

It is expected that all adult members of this Church, after appropriate instruction, will have made a mature public affirmation of their faith and commitment to the responsibilities of their Baptism and will have been confirmed or received by the laying on of hands by a Bishop of this Church or by a Bishop of a Church in communion with this Church. Those who have previously made a mature public commitment in another Church may be received by the laying on of hands by a Bishop of this Church, rather than confirmed.

I still think that’s an interesting subject. Why did the bishop need to act so fast? And putting Cutié straight into a pulpit?

It doesn’t matter whether you are a Methodist, a Reform Jew, or a Roman Catholic. When somebody in your denomination is convicted of a crime, or behaves in a scandalous manner, it seems that the question often arises: what’s the point of belief if it doesn’t keep a John Edwards or an (ex-Catholic priest) Alberto Cutié * from betraying their vows or a Bernie Madoff from cheating people out of millions of dollars?

And sometimes the faithful ask each other: what’s the point of belief if it doesn’t make you a more ethical person?

The ethical and religious dimensions of morality are addressed in a sometimes frustrating but practical article by Helen Gray of McClatchy Newspapers. While it’s wonderful that Gray examines issues that affect ordinary people in the workplace as well as Wall Street pirates, the story doesn’t dig hard enough below the surface to analyze why some congregants (and non believers) are ethical giants and some are cockroaches.

The first part of the article seems to work better than the second, possibly because thosed quoted address the morality question directly — according to DePaul University professor Scott Paeth, we shouldn’t assume that being religion makes one moral.

“After all, Ken Lay (the late Enron chairman convicted of fraud and conspiracy) was very proud of his involvement with his church, while (convicted Enron CFO) Andy Fastow’s rabbi called him a ‘mensch,’” Yiddish for a person having admirable qualities.

Mere affiliation with and even regular attendance at church or synagogue or mosque does not guarantee a commitment to ethics, said Robert Audi, business ethics professor of the Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame.

“But internalizing, say, the ethics of ‘Love thy neighbor’ and the ethics of the Ten Commandments will yield strong motivation to be moral,” he said.

Audi goes on to assert that “there is some evidence” certain religion commitments impel ethical actions. What is that evidence? I wish the author had gone into some detail — and perhaps found a theologian or ethicist to talk about the moral implications of loving God as well as loving neighbor.

I do like the large canvas Gray works with here, viewing workplace misbehavior in the context of a lack of ethical moorings, and her willingness to take a look at workplace ethics in from a nonreligious as well as from a religious perspective — and quote those who identify deficits in the way secular organizations present ethical values as well as the way that religious organizations may embody them.

The best “application quote” comes from the life of Abrahama Lincoln, apparently an inexhaustable source of quotable stories.

Green, of Dartmouth, told a story of President Abraham Lincoln being visited by the wives of two Confederate soldiers who were Union POWs and who had supported slavery.

“The wives asked for their husbands’ release and added, ‘They are religious men.’ Lincoln replied, ‘I don’t see how someone who thinks one man should earn his bread by other man’s forced labor can be called religious.’

Although I have no idea of whether its true or not, it’s a great story. I’d like to see more stories on how congregations or denominations are finding ways to address the issues around workplace behavior and how it connects to faith. Let’s not cede this territory to “The Ethicist” column in the New York Times.

* Yes, we are aware that Cutié has been received into the Episcopal Church — all part of its attempt to bolster its membership by reaching out to the Hispanic community in Miami and bidding for a spot on the late night comedy shows.

Picture of AIG protester from Wikimedia Commons

Let’s face it, this is a spectacular hook for a story that blends sports with spirituality. The headline gives you an idea where the Washington Post team is going: “For Jaeger, the Point Is Love — Tennis Prodigy-Turned-Nun Wishes to Show Compassion She Once Craved.”

As a sports story, this feature really works, offering many insider details about controversial events in the life of a controversial young star who flamed out in the world of professional tennis.

That’s the point. Andrea Jaeger started her pro career at age 14, in pig-tails, bashing her way through the lives and careers of much older rivals. However, the pressure was simply too great and her family background was simply too flawed. She started young and she quit young. This brings us to the second big turn in her life story:

Now 43, Jaeger rarely picks up a racket or reflects on the era when she toppled legends of the game but had no friends, traveling the world with a father-turned-coach who believed that discipline, often in the form of a firm whack, was the most effective teacher.

Today, the teen once ranked No. 2 in the world and on track to unseat Chris Evert atop the sport is an Anglican Dominican nun, ordained in 2006, and devoted to helping children with cancer. They are the reason she has given away every dollar she earned, shed her possessions and devotes her days to raising money to bring them to a Colorado ranch to ride horses, play Ping-Pong, perform in talent shows and, if only for a few days, share a childhood otherwise denied.

If Sister Andrea thinks about professional sports at all, it’s of the prodigies like herself — children whose uncommon gifts have thrust them into an adult world.

This raises a few questions, doesn’t it? I mean, other than the question of whether one is “ordained” as an Episcopal or Anglican nun. Was she made a priest as well as a nun? How did a German woman come into contact with the tiny, tiny world of Episcopal religious orders? Why not become a Catholic nun?

If you are looking for more insights into those factual questions, you won’t find many answers, only a few hints, in this story. Later on, we learn:

And when she blew out her shoulder during the 1985 French Open with a pop as loud as a bullet, Jaeger saw God’s hand at work. The injury was a blessing, she decided, seven surgeries later — God’s way of telling her she had accomplished enough in tennis. Another calling awaited.

This story, it appears, is supposed to be about that calling. When Jaeger begins to do charity work with young children — through her own Little Star Foundation — she realizes that she doesn’t have any answers for the big questions of life, the kinds of questions asked by children when they get cancer.

Thus, we are told:

So she immersed herself in religious studies, earning an associate degree in ministry training and theology. Joining the Dominican order, she said, was a natural next step once she learned that not all nuns lived in convents but increasingly were drawn from the laity and lived among those they served.

Now you have more questions, right? There are a few answers at Jaeger’s own website, which offers a link to a 2007 story in USA Today that was almost as interested in faith as in sports.

Despite growing up in a household that had “no belief system” and no Bible, Jaeger says she felt a stirring from an early age. “My inclination was just to share with God,” she says. “I just felt this presence on my heart and this relationship.”

That relationship took another turn in September when Jaeger says she was called to become a nun. After nine months of training and study, she took her vows and entered the Anglican Dominican order. Unlike some Christian denominations, the tiny Anglican Dominican order does not require nuns to live in a convent, wear a habit at all times or take a vow of celibacy. Some lead secular lives as caregivers or teachers.

Jaeger, who didn’t spend time in a convent and had earned a degree in theology, is a “novice” nun and will go through a two-year trial period before taking her life vows.

“In this Dominican order, you just feel called to God in a greater capacity,” says Jaeger, who receives no salary and must continually enhance her service and studies as part of being Sister Andrea.

It’s easy to do the math, adding two years to 2007. Thus, I assume that Jaeger’s two-year novitiate is either coming to an end or has come to an end. But the Post story, remember, said she was ordained in 2006. That implies a permanent vow of some kind was taken at that time.

So what is going on here? What vows did she take? When?

I understand that the former superstar may have wanted to keep some questions off the record, declining to describe the exact nature of her vows, for example. But it seems to me that there are certain basic questions that needed to be answered, leaving holes that resemble unforced errors.

This Post feature was supposed to be a story about her faith and her new life, as well as her previous career in sports. Readers needed a few more facts. Just saying.

This week the California State Supreme Court revealed its decision regarding Proposition 8, the ballot initiative limiting marriage to a union of one man and one woman. Californians had passed the initiative and opponents had filed suit against it. The court arguments were televised which meant that no one was particularly surprised by the ruling, which the Washington Post’s Keith Richburg writes up here:

The ruling Tuesday by California’s Supreme Court upholding a ban on same-sex marriages shows that, despite a year of successes for gay activists, the road toward full marriage rights remains difficult — particularly when voters are given a direct say.

The decisions in three states this year to legalize same-sex marriage, and the possibility that three others will soon follow suit, created a sense that the issue was gaining irreversible momentum and widespread acceptance, with many advocates making comparisons to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. But the California ruling served as a reminder that same-sex marriage remains deeply polarizing, and the movement is likely to see more reversals and setbacks as it tries to expand beyond the favorable terrain of the Northeast.

Of all the interesting things about the way the mainstream media portray the debate over same-sex marriage, the above paragraphs demonstrate the importance of framing.

For instance, it’s true that in the last few months, three states have legalized same-sex marriage and others may soon follow suit. But it’s also true that in the last few months three states passed initiatives outlawing same-sex marriage and that they joined 30 others who had already done so.

Or what is this language about ‘creating a sense that gay marriage was inevitable.’ That’s only true because the media have been creating that sense. When a beauty pageant contestant is in the middle of a media firestorm for articulating a view of marriage and marriage policy shared by a majority of Americans including President Barack Obama; when articulating the view that marriage should be defined as it always has been — no matter what its variances — as a heterosexual institution is grounds for public shaming by the cultural elite; when the many victories of traditional marriage proponents are simply ignored …

The article goes on using the framework of how the Supreme Court ruling affects proponents of same-sex marriage — and not how it affects the majority of Americans who oppose same-sex marriage. It’s just an interesting choice, particularly on the same day that this Gallup Poll came out showing that the media-promulgated view of the inevitability of same-sex marriage might just be a fabrication of the media. From the Washington Post’s web site and written up by Chris Cillizza:

On the heels of a decision by California’s Supreme Court to uphold a ban on gay marriage in the Golden State comes polling data from USA Today/Gallup that contradicts the conventional wisdom that a majority of the American public is moving closer to acceptance of same-sex unions.

Asked whether “marriages between same-sex couples” should or shouldn’t be “recognized by the law as valid”, 40 percent of the sample said those unions should be valid while 57 percent said they should not.

Those number are essentially unchanged from a May 2008 Gallup survey but less optimistic for proponents of gay marriage than a May 2007 poll in which 46 percent said same sex marriages should be valid while 53 percent said they should not.

The USA Today/Gallup survey also asked whether “allowing two people of the same sex to marry” would change change society for the better, the worse or have no effect. Thirteen percent said it would make things better, 48 percent said it would make things worse and 36 percent said allowing gay people to marry would have no effect on society.

It’s fascinating that the plurality of Americans who reported in this poll that same-sex marriage would make things worse for society — and the majorities who routinely vote to define marriage as a heterosexual institution — aren’t given a voice in the media. They consistently express their views and yet are routinely derided by, marginalized in or ignored by the media. Why?

One of the hardest things to do in journalism is to do a fair, accurate story when you are covering an emotional, complex issue when one side of the story will not talk to you (especially if lawyers are involved).

The alternative Houston Press recently published a textbook example of this kind of story and, even though I just labeled this an “alternative” newspaper, reporter Craig Malisow did about as good a job on it as you can do.

So what’s the story about? It’s horrific. It’s the story about accusations against a trusted religious leader in an Episcopal school, accusations that he acted as a sexual predator and that his superiors covered it up — for 40 years. Here is the top of the story — it’s long — and then I’ll show you the crucial passage that caught my attention:

In 1993, Bob Haslanger received a letter from his high school alma mater, St. Stephen’s Episcopal School in Austin. It seemed that Haslanger, who was living in Seattle, had been designated a “never-giver,” which, as the label suggests, is a category of alumni who have never donated to the school. Why was this, the school wanted to know. …

So, Haslanger says, he flew to Austin and sat down with an administrator named Jim Woodruff. Haslanger proceeded to give what he felt was an understandable explanation for his unopened pocketbook: Between the years 1964-1968, when he attended St. Stephen’s, a faculty member came into his dorm room about once a month, after lights-out, and molested him. Haslanger told Woodruff that he told the school’s headmaster about that person, and the headmaster called him a liar. Now, according to Haslanger’s account, here’s where it got weird.

“I became too emotional to say anything when he asked me who had molested me,” Haslanger says from Seattle, where he still lives. “And he asked me — he asked me — ‘Was it Jim Tucker?’ I didn’t provide Jim Tucker’s name. He provided Jim Tucker’s name.”

It blew Haslanger away that Woodruff would immediately bring up the name of the school’s wildly popular chaplain, the Reverend James Lydell Tucker.

Haslanger says he asked Woodruff if he was the only one who had ever alleged such abuse. According to Haslanger, Woodruff said the school had no information on that matter.

There is much more to that one-side anecdote. But, suffice it to say, Haslanger failed to get justice. Then, later, came another fundraising letter that pushed him totally over the edge into legal warfare against his old school.

This was the letter that would disturb him so much that he took a leave of absence from his six-figure job as chief operating officer of a manufacturing company, which wound up being a permanent leave. This was the letter that unraveled all the effort that had gone into kicking self-medication with drugs and drink, and wiped away all the help he had received in therapy: The school wanted Haslanger to contribute to a new scholarship in the Reverend Jim Tucker’s name.

Before he started spiraling, Haslanger wrote letters to St. Stephen’s and to the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, here in Houston.

Now you know where the story is going. Right? Slowly, but surely other accusations began to surface and the story built and built.

But like I said, it’s hard to tell a story when only one side has any incentive to talk. So what can you do? What punches a whole in the legal dam and gives you on-the-record material that can be published? Veteran journalists know the answer — documents.

Thus, the key to the story:

During a July 2007 Houston Press interview about the allegations against Tucker, diocese spokeswoman Carol Barnwell chuckled over the idea of a “conspiracy.” How ludicrous.

Either Barnwell wasn’t being candid, or her boss didn’t fill her in on the fact that the diocese had hired a risk analysis company to investigate the allegations and had, three months earlier, outlined clear evidence that there was in fact a conspiracy among St. Stephen’s and diocesan authorities. And, in September 2007, the diocese released a summary of that investigation. …

In the end, reporters end up having to write passages like this:

Nothing shuts up men of God like a lawsuit. When they’re fund-raising, they point to all the good work they’re doing in Jesus’s name. But the truth, the way and the light crumble under the weight of a civil complaint. Being on God’s side no longer cuts it. No, for that, you need lawyers.

Jim Tucker, who retired in 1994, would not comment for this story. Nor would Jim Woodruff. Nor would Fred Weissbach, the headmaster of St. Stephen’s at the time Haslanger informed the school of the abuse. Bishop Don Wimberly wouldn’t talk. Neither would Bishop Coadjutor Andy Doyle.

When the Press asked Chris Phillips, the attorney representing St. Stephen’s, to expound on his response to the suit, Phillips said he couldn’t comment on confidential matters — even though both the plaintiffs’ complaint and the school’s answer are public records.

It’s a long story, with many terrible details.

There is also an interesting subplot, which is that no one suspected this priest — a married man with children of his own — because he was part of a school administration that was progressive, that was on the right (that would be left) side of social-justice issues during the civil right era. And where did the diocese send him, silently, when it was not safe to leave him at the school? To an African-American parish in Houston to work with the children there.

There is one final irony or painful fact to mention. The story ends with this note from the newspaper:

Editor’s Note: In the interests of full disclosure. Houston Press Editor Margaret Downing and her family did attend the Reverend Tucker’s church for two years in Houston. That was not at the time of the events described in this story.

Read it all, if you can stomach it.