Bacchanals at his residence, liaisons with prostititutes, an ambiguous relationship with a teenage girl — allegations against the Italian Prime Minister have been roiling the country for months.

You think that the Silvio Berlusconi story couldn’t get more luridly Baroque — then darned if someone doesn’t slap on another layer. Add to politics and sex a religious element, and it gets very complicated. Foreign readers, possibly unused to reading for Italian nuance between the lines (unlike some of our Vaticanista commentators), need a writer who will tell the story clearly and explain the subtleties. Particularly the theological ones. People “get” prostitutes and models, but they don’t always understand rituals of penitence.

And in this case, believe it or not, oft-critiqued Times of London Vatican Correspondent Richard Owen has done a very nice job. We’ll get back to him in a minute.

But first, the lede of a story from the Italian news agency Adnkronos which gives readers the story with a little Italian tinting:

Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi on Friday cancelled plans to attend a religious service for the remission of sins in the quake-hit city of L’Aquila and a dinner with the Vatican’s secretary of state, Tarcisio Bertone. Berlusconi and Bertone were due to head to the city for the annual “Perdonanza” or festival of forgiveness, instituted by the 13th-century Pope Celestine V.

The scandal-plagued Berlusconi was to have been accompanied by his equal opportunities minister, Mara Carfagna, a former model to whom the premier once professed: “If I weren’t married, I’d marry you.”

But at the last minute Berlusconi’s office announced he would not be attending the event to “avoid exploitation” and would send his top aide, Gianni Letta, instead.

Was it strictly neccessary to mention equal opportunities (hmmm) minister Carfagna? I think not. But the fact that Berlusconi was attending a service instituted by a 13th-century Pope to provide an opportunity for penance is important. Strangely, though, the article does not say that it was Cardinal Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State, who decided he could do without the dinner.

Now why would the second-in-command at the Vatican turn his back on a chance to have dinner with a prospective penitent? In a story that balances news and analysis, unsnarling some of the complexities for baffled readers, Reuters correspondent Philip Pullella fills us in:

The rapid sequence of events began when Il Giornale, a national newspaper owned by Berlusconi’s brother Paolo, ran a banner front-page headline against Dino Boffo, editor of Avvenire, the daily newspaper of the Italian Bishops Conference.

Il Giornale said Boffo, whose paper has been very critical of Berlusconi’s private life, had accepted a plea bargain in a court in 2002 after he was accused of harassing a woman. The paper said Boffo had a homosexual relationship with her husband.

Il Giornale regularly attacks Berlusconi’s critics but rarely if ever targets the Church.

It called Boffo, one of the most influential Catholic opinion makers, a hypocritical “supermoralist” who should not criticize Berlusconi’s lifestyle when it said he has sexual skeletons in his own closet.

Read Pullella’s article for Boffo’s response. He quotes a source as saying “Vatican officials” went “ballistic” when they saw the Il Giornale story. Various stories say that Berlusconi has distanced himself from the Il Giornale article.

But readers still don’t know why his brother’s paper made what seems to be an almost unprecented attack on a highly influential editor on the eve of a service and dinner apparently intended to offer Berlusconi an opportunity to cleanse himself of some of the controversy and scandal of the past few years. In the first paragraph of his story on the fiasco, Owen sums up the current situation in a few words (not an easy job):

Silvio Berlusconi’s relationship with the Catholic Church was in the deep freeze last night after he was forced to pull out of a Mass intended to begin his religious rehabilitation and his family’s newspaper mounted a personal attack on the editor of Avvenire, the bishops’ newspaper.

Here’s some really good analysis (also from the Times) by a professor at the American University in Rome that suggests that Berlusconi is a man on the edge.

But who knows? Did Berlusconi jump? Was he pushed? Why publicly take on the church at the highest levels? Read National Catholic Reporter senior correspondent John L. Allen’s blog for what may be a partial answer.

There will be another act, or perhaps many acts, in this opera buffa (or Boffo) and maybe we’ll get a few answers. In the meantime, we need writers who can ride the waves of political and religious tempests without drowning in a sea of Italian intrigue. This requires that religion writers be able to explain the theatrical and traditional aspects of a culture in which a public display of atonement is even more effective than an appearance on a talk show or a press conference (atonement, American-style). Covering religion Italian-style demands continued skill in translation, even if the writer’s first language is English. The most experienced Vatican-watchers fill in some pieces where they can — or admit that they don’t have all the pieces.

Berlusconi addressing a joint session of Congress a few years ago from Wikimedia Commons

During a recent post about the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy, I used the term “cafeteria Catholic” and then — with great haste — emphasized that this condition exists on the right side of the political fence, as well.

I also personalized the issue, a bit, leading to this exchange with a loyal liberal GetReligion reader:

… [A]s a Democrat I am well aware that there are politically conservative Republican Catholics who choose to eat in their own doctrinal cafeteria.

I just want to make sure I understand: You say you’re a Democrat?

— Mithras, August 29, 2009, at 3:47 pm

Well, I just don’t say that I am a Democrat, I am actually registered as one. If you ever walk into my office, look for the large framed portrait of that noted right-winger Franklin Delano Roosevelt (and my well-worn copy of “Fighting for Life,” by the late Gov. Robert Casey).

In response to the comment by Mithras, which echoes similar comments I have heard through the years, I posted the following snippet of commentary:

As I have stated many times, I am a pro-life Democrat. I used to be a very standard issue left-wing Democrat, as many folks are in graduate school, but swung back to a pro-life position after reading the famous Sojourners issue on life issues — especially the Jesse Jackson essay on legalized abortion as a form of institutionalized racism — back in 1980. That was a turning point. My family’s journey into the ancient Eastern Orthodox faith has left me in position where I am highly critical of many positions taken by both of the major parties. It’s not an easy era in which to be a consistently pro-life voter.

Now, I post this information again simply to note that I believe that it is possible to be both a traditional Christian in an ancient church and a struggling Democrat. By the way, I also believe that it’s possible to be a struggling Republican, while embracing the moral and social teachings of historic Christianity. Like I said, this is not an age for easy choices.

However, Ross Douthat of the New York Times has written a striking column on this subject, which I pass along as a point of personal privilege even though GetReligion rarely if every comments on editorials of this kind.

You see, I got really tired of the old “Edward Kennedy was the man the right-wing wackos loved to hate” theme that ran through much of the coverage of the senator’s death and his funeral rites. It is, of course, true that many right-wing leaders could not stand the man. However, it’s important to remember that not all pro-lifers are conservatives. I would argue that many pro-life progressives — especially Catholics — felt a unique and highly painful sense of disappointment through most of Kennedy’s political career.

Thus, it’s hard for pro-life Democrats not to reflect on the deaths of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and her more famous brother.

Thus, Douthat wrote:

What the siblings shared — in addition to the grace, rare among Kennedys, of a ripe old age and a peaceful death — was a passionate liberalism and an abiding Roman Catholic faith. These two commitments were intertwined: Ted Kennedy’s tireless efforts on issues like health care, education and immigration were explicitly rooted in Catholic social teaching, and so was his sister’s lifelong labor on behalf of the physically and mentally impaired.

What separated them was abortion.

Along with her husband, Sargent Shriver, Eunice belonged to America’s dwindling population of outspoken pro-life liberals. Like her church, she saw a continuity, rather than a contradiction, between championing the poor, the marginalized and the oppressed and protecting unborn human life.

Her brother took a different path.

There were, of course, other issues on which they differed, but it’s safe to say that many or most of those issues were linked to matters of Catholic faith and doctrine, as well.

So was Eunice Kennedy Shriver (don’t forget her husband, Sargent, too) a liberal Democrat in the Religious Right, or was she a pro-lifer in the Religious Left (perhaps a soul sister to some in the Sojourners orbit)? Or is it safe to say that the press needs to rethink how some of these labels are used?

Of course I take this issue personally. I admit that right up front. But do we really live in an age in which people on the left cannot conceive of a doctrinally traditional Christian being a Democrat? You see, I thought it was the nasty Republicans on the right who were supposed to make those kinds of attacks.

You can also see that this might affect news coverage of some of these sanctity-of-life issues, beginning with abortion and continuing through natural death.

Is it really that hard for journalists to believe that a few pro-life liberals still exist? How about conservative or moderate Democrats who are still pro-life? Might they help President Barack Obama pass a health-care package?

Just saying….

Sometimes the most interesting religion stories are about some small angle in daily life. And the Washington Post’s William Wan has found a great one. He looks at how folks have filled out the “religious views” box on Facebook. Mine says “Confessional Lutheran,” for instance.

It was in no way difficult for me to self-identify as a Confessional Lutheran. While my “Favorite movies” list includes Lindsay Lohan’s “I Know Who Killed Me,” I didn’t joke around about my faith. I have over 700 contacts on Facebook and at least 328 of them are Lutheran. It’s one of the ways I keep in touch with my Lutheran peeps around the country. We share news on what’s happening in our church body as well as jokes, videos and pictures. So I was excited to see the way that other people use Facebook as it relates to their religious views.

It turns out that this piece had a surprisingly narrow focus. Basically Wan shares a few anecdotes of people who have struggled with how to fill out the box:

Katharine Gordon, 29, a Catholic from the District, who joined Facebook two years ago … agonized over what to say about her beliefs.

The problem, she explained, was that she couldn’t just type “Catholic” and leave it at that.

“The term comes with a huge asterisk,” said Gordon, a civil rights advocate for a nonprofit group. She found herself wanting to add parenthetical clauses to explain her nuanced stances on homosexuality and abortion.

“I’m not exactly looking to discuss the intricacies of the latest papal encyclical with work buddies,” she said. “I couldn’t help thinking how others would judge me.”

She had to consider her strongly secular friends from Bryn Mawr College — people who might be shocked to hear her talk of God now — as well as her current friends from the local parish. She could just imagine the reaction at church (“Wait, she doesn’t list anything under religious views?”).

So after several days, she finally settled on this answer: “Matthew 25,” the Bible chapter in which Jesus urges his followers to feed the hungry, clothe the poor and help the imprisoned. His words represent the part of Gordon’s faith that she holds most dear.

“It’s a bit of code,” she said, “so people can make of it what they want.”

There are also anecdotes about or mentions of a Pastafarian, agnostic, a student who answered with a Noam Chomsky quote and a girl who went from “Judaism” to “MJLC{heart}” — the initials of a friend who died.

The thing is that Wan is handicapped by Facebook declining to share any meaningful information about how people fill out the form. We learn that only 150 million out of 250 million users worldwide fill out the “religious views” box but not how that compares to other profile areas. We don’t have any reasonable statistical information. Presumably the 2,000 folks who answer “Amish” aren’t being serious. Wan handles it by sharing a little of the little he’s given:

Not surprisingly, the most popular faith professed is “Christian” and the various denominations associated with it. The category is so dominant that for this list, Facebook’s statisticians insisted on combining such other designations as “Protestant,” “Catholic” and “Mormon” under the “Christian” label. As a result, the second most popular entry on the list is “Islam,” followed by “Atheist.”

“Jedi,” interestingly enough, makes an appearance at No. 10.

I think the story idea is great for an evergreen piece — looking at people who struggle to fill out the box. And it’s not surprising that Pastafarians and Jedis get media coverage far outweighing their actual representation among religious adherents. That’s how it works. Still, considering that the story is pretty much only a collection of anecdotes and shrouded numbers, it may have been a good idea to broaden the piece a bit. Include those Catholics who don’t want an asterisk, for instance. Or maybe it would have been a better idea to use the aforementioned anecdotes in service to a larger point about difficulties with religious self-identification. There’s a quote from a graduate student about how teens identify themselves on MySpace but the Post’s story isn’t about teens or MySpace, for instance.

The problem with relying simply on a couple of anecdotes you happened across is that the piece becomes extremely subjective. Much of Wan’s piece is written in the passive voice and phrases such as “some,” “others,” “a good many,” “a staggering number” and “often” are littered throughout. (What exactly is “a staggering number,” I wonder?)

Media critics are always pointing out the trouble that some reporters have in coming up with stories that quote people who are not in their larger social circles. (Here’s the New York Times ombudsman recently on the matter. And here’s a New York Times story on Facebook from yesterday in which many of the sources are described as “friends” of the author!) Not that this was necessarily the weakness of the Washington Post’s article but to avoid the problem of writing a trend piece based solely on the reporter’s personal experience or circle of friends, articles should have at least something a bit sturdier to build around.

In terms of political content, the unofficial state funeral (video here) of Sen. Edward Kennedy was pretty normal, with pews full of presidents and prose full of allusions to legislation that helped the masses, with President Barack Obama in full civil-religion flight.

But the Catholic politics of these final events? That’s another matter, with layers of symbolism, gaps in the public record and unanswered questions.

First, consider this one simple statement in the Boston Globe coverage:

Obama and Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, who presided over the Mass, shared an extended greeting.

O’Malley was present, but did he in fact preside in this rite? That’s an interesting question because, as several GetReligion readers noted, the event took place in the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help (also known as The Mission Church of Boston — which is a church of the religious order known as the Redemptorists of the Baltimore Province. This simple fact raises some interesting questions, as noted by one of this weblog’s most loyal Catholic readers. Let’s give Julia her say:

Cardinal O’Malley was clad in what is known as choir dress. That means he was neither a celebrant nor a presider. He was there the same as the folks in the pews.

The church is run by the Redemptorist order of priests. That means that the archbishop has more trouble enforcing the diocesan rules on funerals, among other things, at such parishes. The same thing happens at Jesuit churches. The Cardinal did not look very happy to me.

At the Final Commendation, where the Cardinal had the last say at the Mass, he briefly mentioned that Ted Kennedy was an important national figure, but his major point was praise of the last days of the Senator’s life which he and his wife spent in prayer. Short and pithy. Very smart. The text of the Commendation Rite ritually hands the soul of the deceased over to God who will judge Him. …

The Ordinary parts of the Mass (Sanctus, etc.) were spoken and not sung - very odd considering all the singers present. … Since there was such a great Irish wake the night before, it seems strange that there were so many, many eulogizing moments during the Mass. That’s not the purpose of a Catholic Requiem Mass on the day of burial. The envelope was really, really pushed hard.

Again, note that the cardinal spoke at the very end of the rite, after the president, in fact. This may imply that his words were not part of the formal liturgy that was offered by the Redemptorists — an order with strong ties (well covered by many journalists) with Kennedy that go back for years. In other words, as a question of liturgy, O’Malley may or may not have been invited to “preside” over the service and he may or may not have accepted that invitation. He may simply have been an observer in the actual service, before adding a word of his own after the end of the formal rite.

We do not know. It is, however, interesting to contrast the cardinal’s online comments after the death of the devout, pro-life Eunice Kennedy Shriver and then, a short time later, her fiercely pro-abortion-rights brother.

And what about that amazing exchange of letters between the dying senator and Pope Benedict XVI? Here’s a typical reference to this dramatic touch at the end of the day, care of the Washington Post:

Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, a friend of Kennedy’s, presided and read from a letter the senator had written to Pope Benedict XVI, which Obama had delivered to the pontiff in Rome. In the letter, Kennedy wrote he had been “an imperfect human being but with the help of my faith I have tried to right my path.”

His grandchildren spoke lovingly of their relationship with him and a military rifle squad fired off three volleys. In his prayer, McCarrick asked God to bring Kennedy “to everlasting peace and rest.”

The Boston Globe coverage was, of course, deeper and more detailed. There we read some additional information about a word from Rome:

As the single eternal flame at John F. Kennedy’s grave burned just steps away up a grassy slope, and the Capitol dome and the monuments of Washington were illuminated against the night sky, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick stood next to Kennedy’s casket and recited excerpts from the letter, as well as a reply from an unnamed aide to the pope. It was a stunning and powerful moment that closed an extraordinary day of farewell observances.

“I have always tried to be a faithful Catholic, Your Holiness, and though I have fallen short through human failings, I have never failed to believe and respect the fundamental teachings,” Kennedy’s letter stated. “I continue to pray for God’s blessings on you and our Church and would be most thankful for your prayers for me.”

And there it is, the central question: Are the Catholic dogmas on the sanctity of human life — from conception to natural death — part of the church’s “central teachings”? While Kennedy said he often “fell short through human failings,” his pro-life Catholic critics — left and right — will continue to note that his political record on abortion was perfect. He had a 100 percent pro-abortion-rights rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America. There were no public signs of a struggle by Kennedy on this point of doctrine.

The Globe went on to note:

The Vatican reply came two weeks later: “His Holiness prays that in the days ahead you may be sustained in faith and hope, and granted the precious grace of joyful surrender to the will of God our merciful Father.”

Online coverage at the New York Times added one other detail in the graveside remarks:

“They called him the lion of the Senate and indeed that was what he was,” Cardinal McCarrick said as he presided over a traditional Catholic burial. “His roar and his zeal for what he believed made a difference in this nation’s life.”

In a possible reference to Mr. Kennedy’s support of abortion rights, Mr. McCarrick added that friends “would get mad at him when he roared at what we believed was the wrong side of the issue.”

Once again, note the subtle point that this is the former shepherd of Washington, D.C., who was presiding, not the current archbishop. McCarrick is also, among Catholic conservatives, famous for repeatedly downplaying the contents of a famous letter from one Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now Pope Benedict XVI — entitled “Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion. General Principles.” This letter argued that pro-abortion Catholic politicians who declined to repent must, after being warned about their sins, be denied Holy Communion.

At this point, it seems that most — perhaps all — of the contents of Kennedy’s letter to the pope have been released.

Some sites are also claiming to have released the full text of the response from Rome, which the Globe noted was written by an unnamed papal aide. One of these texts concludes:

“Commending you and the members of your family to the loving intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Father cordially imparts his Apostolic Blessing as a pledge of wisdom, comfort and strength in the Lord.”

At this point, I do not believe that we have a full text of this letter — since Cardinal McCarrick was reported to have read excerpts. Will the Vatican release the rest of this third-person, indirect (“the Holy Father cordially imparts his Apostolic Blessing”) statement? I do not think that is likely. Will the family release it? One would have to assume that this depends on what else is in the text.

Truth be told, the public does not need to know the rest of the contents. If it is made public, that would be highly unusual. We can, however, assume that the full letter was read to the senator during the final days of his life, about the time of his final prayers with his priest and, almost certainly, his last confession.

Again, that is between the senator and — literally — a much higher authority.

The mainstream media really hasn’t done a very good job covering the heated debate over whether to extend the institution of marriage to same-sex couples. It’s been a problem for years and the coverage has been so amazingly one-sided that it’s surprising that all 30 states that have asked voters to define marriage as a heterosexual institution have done so. Part of it is that the mainstream media has long been an elite institution with views on homosexuality somewhat out-of-step with the general populace.

Five years ago, for instance, Pew found that journalists were more than twice as likely to self identify as liberals than conservatives and that 88 percent of journalists felt society should accept homosexuality compared with 51 percent of the general public. That same poll found that nearly half said that journalists’ ideological views color their work. Probably none of this is surprising to any media observer. But it means we get a number of emotional puff pieces about same-sex marriage with hardly any — if any — seriously engaging the concerns that the majority of voters in the majority of states have registered about making changes to how society has viewed marriage since its inception.

A few years ago, Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler wrote (in a column I can no longer find online) that “critics who say the paper has had few, if any, features portraying opponents of this social change in a positive or even neutral light have a point. The overall picture, it seems to me, could use more balance.”

Okay. It took five years but the Post found one — and only one, the reporter repeatedly reminds us — supporter of traditional marriage who it can portray in a “positive or even neutral light.” It doesn’t go deep in describing his arguments and it throws pretty much every other traditional marriage supporter under the bus in doing so — but it’s not actively hostile (toward him — and only him) like so many other pieces about traditional marriage activists are. Here’s how it opens:

The nightmares of gay marriage supporters are the Pat Robertsons of the world. The James Dobsons, the John Hagees — the people who specialize in whipping crowds into frothy frenzies, who say things like Katrina was caused by the gays.

The gay marriage supporters have not met Brian Brown. They should. He might be more worth knowing about.

That’s a pretty weaselly introduction, there. I’m sure the Post newsroom doesn’t feel the same affection for James Dobson as it does for Vice President Joe Biden but a few things here. Maybe they all look alike from the cozy confines of the newsroom but not every evangelical or charismatic Christian believes the same thing. It’s unfair to describe them as “whipping crowds into frothy frenzies” and while it’s a butchering of the actual statement regarding hurricanes being acts of God, be careful who you ascribe it to. Thanks Snopes!

Anyway, you get the basic device reporter Monica Hesse is using: Most traditional marriage supporters are crazed bigots but there’s this one guy who is not vomiting while his head is spinning around. His name is Brian Brown.

But apart from the misrepresentation of what a lot of people believe, the device is probably the only way you’re going to get a feature profile of someone with his views in the paper. And within its own logic, it works. Brown is the executive director of the National Organization for Marriage, which works to prevent the legalization of same-sex marriage. Hesse characterizes the aforementioned Christian-types as “fringes” who appeal to the far wings:

But this country is not made up of people in the far wings, right or left. This country is made up of a movable middle, reasonable people looking for reasonable arguments to assure them that their feelings have a rational basis.

Brian Brown speaks to these people. He has a master’s degree from Oxford, and completed course work for a doctorate in history from UCLA. He shoulders the accusations of bigotry; it’s horrible when people say that your life’s mission is actually just prejudice. He tries to help people see that opposing gay marriage does not make them bigots, that the argument should have nothing to do with hate or fear, and everything to do with history and tradition.

The reason Brian Brown is so effective is that he is pleasantly, ruthlessly sane.

You mean you can be sane and support traditional marriage? It’s a testament to the one-sided nature of the media treatment of this issue that this line could be published in a national newspaper. And yet, while it’s not news to many voters throughout the country that the arguments in support of traditional marriage could be considered sane, it probably is news to many media elite and their readers. And so we get this curious profile that treats Brown remarkably charitably. I mean, it quotes a critics but one saying relatively nice things about him.

These features are sort of a staple of the Post’s Style section. They are usually very light and breezy and hardly critical of the subject of the profile. Brown’s is no exception. (For another puffy profile in last week’s Washington Post, you simply must read this one of ‘The It Girl of a New Generation Of Lobbyists’, Heather Podesta. The description of why she decided to take her third husband’s last name will make you laugh or cry. Or both.)

Here’s the portion that discusses Brown’s faith and a bit of his beliefs:

Brown is Catholic. He converted at Oxford, where he studied after a BA at Whittier College (he grew up surfing in California). He liked Catholicism’s traditions of social justice and work for the poor. Along the way, he met Sue, also a devout Catholic. After UCLA he accepted a position with the Family Institute of Connecticut, and worked to prevent the distribution of condoms in schools. “People would ask, ‘What does your husband do?’ ” Sue says. “It was embarrassing to say he worked on condoms. But it was nothing compared to this.”

His faith is important to him, but in his arguments he is ever the PhD candidate, addressing questions and dismissing counterarguments with fascination.

“I have gay people who are friends and family,” he says. “We can disagree on all sorts of things and still care about each other.” And later, “Of course, I have to take their arguments seriously. This issue is important. Ideas have consequences.”

He takes nothing personally. He means nothing personal. He is never accusatory or belittling. His arguments are based on his understandings of history, not on messages from God that gays caused Hurricane Katrina.

In short: The institution of marriage has always been between a man and a woman. Yes, there have been homosexual relationships. But no society that he knows of, in the history of the world, has ever condoned same-sex marriage. “Do they always agree on the number of partners? Do they always agree on the form of monogamy? No,” Brown says, but they’ve all agreed on the gender issue. It’s what’s best for families, he says. It’s the union that can biologically produce children, he says. It’s all about the way things have always been done. He chose his new church, St. Catherine of Siena, because it still offers a Latin Mass. Other noted conservatives have been parishioners there; Antonin Scalia has worshiped at St. Catherine’s.

I hear even some people who don’t choose Latin Mass Catholic parishes have these same views on the institution of marriage! But it’s a start. It shouldn’t be shocking to see some of these simple and straightforward positions of traditional marriage advocates in a newspaper but it is.

What I’d really like to see is a deeper exploration of those views and the various other arguments against same-sex marriage and some actual back and forth of the arguments for and against changing marriage laws. I’m sure advocates and opponents of same-sex marriage would love to see the same. We’ve had eleventy billion puff pieces — usually in favor of same-sex marriage — and we have this piece that is an uncritical look at one proponent of traditional marriage. But how about we move Brown and his arguments off of the Style pages and into the news pages where they can compete in the public policy marketplace.

Oh, one last quibble with the piece:

NOM’s campaigns have had missteps. “Gathering Storm,” with its melodramatic dialogue and fake lightning, prompted parodies as much as panic; one New York Times columnist called it ” ‘Village of the Damned’ meets ‘A Chorus Line’ ” for its instant camp value. Two Million for Marriage, the organization’s push to rally online activists around the country, was similarly unfortunate: Apparently no one at NOM had realized that 2M4M, the hip-sounding tag they’d chosen for the initiative, is also the abbreviation favored by gay couples looking for a threesome.

Okay, obviously it’s a bit dramatic and emotional of Hesse herself to claim that the purpose of the ad was panic. And while gay activists and the media may have disliked it, that doesn’t say much about its effectiveness. I’m always amazed at how stories fail to mention how successful traditional marriage activists are politically.

But more than anything, I wonder whose side it hurts more to learn that 2M4M is the favored abbreviation used by gay couples looking for a threesome.

Have you ever considered branding an eighth-grader’s arm in the shape of a cross with a high voltage device?

Me neither.

But that’s the most lurid of the allegations made against Mount Vernon, Ohio science teacher John Freshwater in a fascinating church-state drama that all highlights creationism, freedom of speech, and how or whether religion can be taught in the classrom. (Freshwater, by the way, denies the cross-branding.)

The rationale for renewed coverage of this case, which has been going on since the spring before last, is the settlement of one lawsuit against the school district (there are other, ongoing lawsuits — don’t expect this one to go away soon).

The family of a student who said a science teacher burned the image of a cross on his arm settled a federal lawsuit with his former school district in their effort to move past the incident, a lawyer said Thursday.

“It’s really to put at least this part of the case behind them and to move on with things,” said attorney Doug Mansfield of Columbus. “I think they regretted bringing the lawsuit.”

The Mount Vernon school board on Wednesday approved a $121,000 settlement with the family of the student identified in the lawsuit only as “James Doe.” The agreement would require the district to pay $5,500 to the family and $115,500 to the family’s lawyers.

There are a few important questions lurking beneath this case — but the AP chooses to lead with the most spectacular one —- as opposed to wrestling with the Constitutional dilemmas, or the question of why the school district waited to launch an investigation until they were officially the target of a lawsuit.

How should religion be taught in the public schools — if at all? And how should school boards handle disputes over teaching religion? Somehow these get lost in the
sensational allegations — and, frankly, mystery. Here and here are a few articles from the Columbus Dispatch when the case became public in 2008.
I foundthis quotation from Mount Vernon school superintendent Steve Short very intriguing (italics mine):

“As a public school system,” Short said, we ‘cannot teach, promote or favor any religion or religious beliefs. Our obligation is not to endorse or establish any religion under the First Amendment, but we have an obligation to protect our students’ rights. We are hoping that an independent investigation will get to the truth of the allegations so we can make appropriate decisions as to what should be done going forward.”

The allegations about Freshwater are that he argued for a particular, Christian perspective on religion, including, but not limited to the cross-branding incident (s).

But what does it mean to “teach religion” as opposed to “teaching about religion”? As I understand it, it is fine for schools to teach about religions, but not OK for teachers or other staff to advocate for any particular religion. But nowhere is this distinction expressed in the articles I’ve seen — and frankly
how to teach about religion isn’t a settled issue in the public schools, as this writer asserts in an commentary on the USAToday.com website. How many stories have you seen about schools as they grapple with how to teach about religion — as opposed to stories about teaching creationism or battles over prayer in schools? I can’t blame the press alone for covering the creationist battles. A Pew poll from 2005 indicated that many Americans favored teaching creationism along evolution. But I do wonder why the other, more positive ways of approaching teaching about religion get don’t get discussed.

Why? Because it’s easier and simpler to focus on the more attention-getting allegations rather than seeing this, and other controversies as teachable moments — places to educate readers about what is still a volatile hot spot in American public life. There’s a good possibility, given the lack of clarity about what is and isn’t permissible, that such a case will be coming to a district near you.

We’ve been complaining a bit about the meager inclusion of religion angles in some of the political coverage of the various legislative efforts to reform health care and health insurance. So David Kirkpatrick’s piece in the New York Times this week was welcome. Headlined “Some Catholic Bishops Assail Health Plan,” here’s how it began:

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has been lobbying for three decades for the federal government to provide universal health insurance, especially for the poor. Now, as President Obama tries to rally Roman Catholics and other religious voters around his proposals to do just that, a growing number of bishops are speaking out against it.

Except the story never shows that the bishops changed their position on universal health insurance. Some bishops are simply being quite vocal about the way abortion would be funded in the current legislation. Others are concerned about the premium government efforts might place on efficacy at the expense of the chronically ill.

The story quotes from Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput’s newspaper column and other letters and statements from Catholic leaders around the country. He explains that the opposition of bishops has already been getting around and will be reported in a Catholic newspaper being distributed this weekend at churches throughout the country. He calls it another setback for President Obama and says it reflects a struggle and tension within the church over how heavily to weigh opposition to abortion against other concerns.

Kirkpatrick puts that question in context:

The same question, [Notre Dame] Professor [Cathleen] Kaveny said, set off the debates over whether conscientious Catholics could vote for Mr. Obama despite his support for abortion rights, whether he should be invited to speak at Notre Dame, or whether Catholic politicians who support abortion rights, like Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., should present themselves for Communion.

I wanted to highlight this to point out how well Kirkpatrick handled the Communion issue. So many times this issue is discussed in terms of barring abortion rights communicates from Communion. But when the bishops speak about it, they tend to discuss it in terms of whether someone who publicly supports abortion rights should present themselves for Communion. Kudos to Kirkpatrick for phrasing that more accurately.

The article discusses some of the debate over how abortion would be paid for under various legislative proposals. That could — and will — be another post entirely.

But there was another problem with the piece. It comes in the section where Kirkpatrick tries to balance out the abortion concerns with the support of various “liberal” Catholic groups. He quotes the Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and others:

On its Web site this summer, the bishops’ conference published a commentary by the Rev. Douglas Clark of Savannah, Ga., arguing that the country now rationed “health care on the basis of wealth.” Father Clark cited an encyclical last month from Pope Benedict XVI about the evils of global economic inequality.

Catholic Charities and the Catholic Health Association endorsed the president’s plan without reservation.

The only problem is that neither Catholic Charities nor the Catholic Health Association have endorsed the particular legislation currently under debate. As Our Sunday Visitor’s Daily Take blog report, they both have, well, reservations. This is from a July 31, 2009 letter written by Father Larry Snyder, the president of Catholic Charities:

I am writing to clarify that Catholic Charities USA does not support any plan to reform health care and/or any proposed legislative provision that allows or promotes the funding of abortions or compels any health care provider or institution to provide such a service. In fact, Catholic Charities USA will continue to work with the Catholic Health Association and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to ensure that any health care reform legislation will not include such provisions.

Catholic Charities USA will continue to work to reform health care in a way that is consistent with the teachings of our faith.

And here is the statement on the Catholic Health Association website:

CHA has not endorsed any of the health care reform bills, but our message to lawmakers is clear: health care reform should not result in an expansion of abortion, and it must sustain conscience protections for health care providers who do not want to participate in abortions or other morally objectionable procedures.

Looks like a correction is in order.

Facts are such picky, provocative things.

Soon after the story broke about the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy, I noted:

Only God and his father confessor … have any right to claim inside information about the state of his soul and neither will be granting interviews. … It will be interesting to note the role of the hierarchy in his funeral Mass.

Since then, we have seen quite a few interesting and valid details added to the public image of Kennedy and his faith. The mainstream message (check out CNN) has been that Kennedy was an active Roman Catholic in every way that the family could make public, including verbal images that most would interpret as descriptions of the senator meeting with a priest for a final confession before last rites. There have been very few hard questions (noted MZ).

But facts as such pesky things. What is the local prelate saying about this most famous member of his flock? In a Boston Globe report we learn:

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, who blogged affectionately about Kennedy’s sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, after her recent death, has declined requests for interviews about Kennedy. He has issued only a cautious written statement, saying “we mourn the passing of Senator Edward M. Kennedy” and describing the senator as “often a champion for the poor, the less fortunate, and those seeking a better life.” But O’Malley has been sharply critical of Catholic Democrats who support abortion rights, and has said that for Catholics to vote for such politicians “borders on scandal.”

As I have noted here and elsewhere, Eunice Kennedy Shriver was an articulate and consistent defender of the Catholic doctrines on the sanctity of all human life. She was both a strong Democrat and a consistent, orthodox Catholic.

But there’s more. It appears that Time magazine is willing to pursue hard news online, even if factually-driven news reporting is out of style in the news weeklies at this point in time. Thus, picky facts have raised debates about Kennedy’s public and private faith a much higher level.

Check out the story under this headline, “After Kennedy’s Death: Silence from the Pope.” The lede focuses on the private letter that Kennedy recently sent to Benedict XVI, with President Barack Obama serving as the middle man.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs later told reporters that nobody — not even the President — knew the contents of the sealed missive. Obama himself asked Benedict to pray for Kennedy, and called the ailing Senator afterward to fill him in on his encounter with the 82-year-old Pope.

The letter, most likely already re-sealed and tucked away in the Vatican archives, was probably just a dying Catholic’s request for a papal blessing. In the eyes of the traditionalist wing of the Church, however, Kennedy should have been asking the Pope for forgiveness. The Vatican’s official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano reported Kennedy’s death, praising his work on civil rights and fighting poverty, but noted that his record was marred by his stance on abortion. As of yet, unlike some other world leaders, Pope Benedict has not commented or issued an official communique in response to Kennedy’s death. One veteran official at the Vatican, of U.S. nationality, expressed the view of many conservatives about the Kennedy clan’s rapport with the Catholic Church: “Why would he even write a letter to the Pope? The Kennedys have always been defiantly in opposition to the Roman Catholic magisterium.”

This story includes many interesting details, including the fact that — early in his life — Edward Kennedy “received his first communion directly from Pope Pius XII, and his marriage in 1958 was performed by Cardinal Francis Spellman, the influential Archbishop of New York.” His devout mother hoped he would become a priest and then a bishop. That brings us to one of the most striking understatements in the coverage of this larger-than-life politico, backed by many familiar facts:

Edward Kennedy, it can be said, was not cut out for the priestly life.

But the bluntest information comes at the end in what must be one of the most gripping negative quotations that has slipped into the mainstream media during this time of mourning inside the Washington, D.C., beltway. Brace yourselves:

Back at headquarters, however, there is little room for nuance. “Here in Rome Ted Kennedy is nobody. He’s a legend with his own constituency,” says the Vatican official. “If he had influence in the past it was only with the Archdiocese of Boston and that eventually disappeared too.” …

During Benedict’s 2008 trip to the U.S., there was some heated debate (with conflicting photographs and eyewitness accounts) about whether or not Kennedy took Holy Communion at the papal mass at Nationals Stadium in Washington, with conservatives insisting that the Pope says the rite should be denied to pro-choice politicians. With this in mind, Church observers are keen to see if Boston’s Archbishop Cardinal Sean O’Malley will preside over Kennedy’s funeral.

Yes, that is a crucial question. For several decades, Ted Kennedy has defined the majority stance of American, as opposed to Roman, Catholicism — serving as the living incarnation of the cafeteria-Catholic faith of the left (and yes, as a Democrat I am well aware that there are politically conservative Republican Catholics who choose to eat in their own doctrinal cafeteria).

If Boston’s cardinal takes part in the service, it will be important for journalists to note what he says. My prediction? O’Malley will be there and he will enthusiastically salute the recently departed Eunice Kennedy Shriver, as well as praise some of the actions of Ted Kennedy. He may even read a carefully worded statement from the pope.

It will be quite a high-wire performance, if the cardinal chooses to risk it. Obviously, officials in Rome will be paying close attention. Journalists should pay attention, as well.

One of the most unbelievable stories I think anyone’s heard in a long time emerged yesterday. Some are, not surprisingly, calling it a miracle. It’s certainly miraculous.

A South Lake Tahoe girl who was abducted 18 years ago, when she was only 11, was found alive, though not well, and living in the backyard of her abductors with the two daughters she had with one of her abductors, Phillip Garrido.

The way my mind work, I immediately wondered whether this story had any religion legs. I hoped not. I prefer to think that the kind of people who could commit such crimes aren’t folks I’m likely to see every Sunday at church. (Think: BTK.) But then I read this in The New York Times:

The break in the case came Tuesday afternoon when a University of California, Berkeley, police officer noticed Mr. Garrido trying to hand out religious literature on campus and asked him for identification.

God help us. The LA Times makes no mention of this religious literature. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Certainly the paper of record wouldn’t introduce this vague detail without exploring it a bit more. Right?

Mr. Garrido gave a telephone interview from jail to station KCRA in Sacramento, saying, “In the end, this is going to be a powerful, heartwarming story.”

“My life has been straightened out” in recent years, he said. “Wait till you hear the story of what took place at this house. You’re going to be absolutely impressed. It’s a disgusting thing that took place with me at the beginning, but I turned my life completely around.”

In a posting on a blog associated with the God’s Desire church, Mr. Garrido told of his ability to control sound.

“I Phillip Garrido have clearly demonstrated the ability to control sound with my mind and have developed a device for others to witness this phenomena,” he wrote. “I have produced a set of voices by effectively controlling the sound to pronounce words through my own mental powers.”

Think again, because that’s it. You can infer from Garrido’s words, within the language of redemption, that he’s a bit off kilter. What we don’t know is whether his “religion” has caused this or vice versa. In fact, we don’t learn from The New York Times a single detail about this so-called church.

Now, I fancy myself a bit of an expert on Christianity, but I’d never heard of the God’s Desire church. How did I miss this one? Must be a small denomination, right?

Really small.

Like maybe it exists only in his head. On that “blog associated with the God’s Desire church,” Garrido, under the screename “themanwhospokewithhismind,” announced Aug. 1:

For those that follow this blog we would like to inform you about our website. WWW.GODSDESIRE.NET.
Thank you for your continued support.

That domain remains empty and Garrido said nothing about the leadership of this church. But the online site LALATE, which I discovered while researching this story, reported that Garrido registered the church as a California corporation with the secretary of state last year. And would you look at that: A little searching on the secretary of state’s website and, voila:

Now I understand why The New York Times didn’t educate me on the beliefs of the God’s Desire church. What I don’t understand is how they missed this detail.

Garrido’s jailhouse interview can be heard in the above video.

This last Friday of August 2009 marks the final post of my third stint with GetReligion. I am grateful for each of my excursions with GetReligion since February 2003, and I thank my longtime friend Terry Mattingly for making each one possible.

I have made new friends among this blog’s readers. GetReligion has helped me adapt my style, shaped by roughly 20 years in print journalism, to the rowdier medium of the blogosphere. I will miss my colleagues, but I am eager to return to full-time work on the Godbeat. A reporter who is not reporting tends to be fidgety and neurotic, and I am already neurotic enough about plenty of other things.

My new work will be with The Living Church, a magazine that has covered the Episcopal Church since 1878. I am thankful for this opportunity to join TLC in promoting and supporting Catholic Anglicanism within the Episcopal Church. I have written freelance articles for TLC for more than 15 years. Some years, especially those involving the Episcopal Church’s trienniel General Convention, have kept me busier than others. TLC is based in Milwaukee, but I will remain in Virginia. Thus my new job title, which I requested: editor at large. It reflects my geographical distance, and it is lighthearted.

I have engaged in a lover’s quarrel with the Episcopal Church since the late 1980s, when I began feeling tensions between my understanding of the gospel and my church’s public image of finding a middle way in all things, including ethics and theology. Through much of the 1990s, this quarrel kept me in a place of anger.

Since then, I have found a deeper affection for the church that formed me from my earliest days as an acolyte. I have a renewed love for interviewing other Episcopalians, across the church’s theological spectrum, about what they believe and how they live in light of those beliefs.

My work now seems less like reporting a war and more like chronicling an impassioned, protracted family argument. (Yes, this thought occurred to me before I read Lisa Miller’s similar comparison in Newsweek.) My church family reminds me, in its lighter moments, of the Castorinis in Moonstruck: One minute we’re yelling at each other operatically, and the next we’re eating together.

In these days of shrinking news pages, widespread layoffs in newsrooms and imperiled metropolitan dailies, it’s a remarkable gift to be paid to write about something I love so deeply. I had better get on with it.