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With March Madness behind us, reporters have moved on to other bracket-like stories, including the next Supreme Court nominee. As Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens openly discusses his upcoming retirement, reporters play guessing games about candidates in the running.
So after a two-year uptick in 2006 and 2007, the teen birth rate fell in 2008. You might recall that when the teen birth rate went up, many mainstream stories attempted to link the increase to abstinence education.
In the nation’s smallest state, a big controversy is brewing over the keynote speaker for the inauguration ceremony of the new University of Rhode Island president. The reason for the furor: President David M. Dooley has asked a Christian minister to deliver the keynote address at Thursday’s ceremony. The Providence Journal reports that the decision “has triggered a campus-wide discussion about the separation of church and state, tolerance and free speech.”
Every Holy Week, GetReligion must examine the slew of sensationalist religion stories that crop up. I don’t know why everyone in the fourth estate thinks this is the ideal time to uncork that story they think is going to finally blow the lid off this Christianity fad, but that’s the way it is.
Indiana is a happening state this month as we near the end of March Madness. I grew up just a few minutes from Butler University, and you might remember that Young Master Pulliam is a proud alumn. It’s a thrilling time to be a Hoosier.
Yes, your GetReligionistas did see that highly provocative piece in USA Today by Rod “friend of this blog” Dreher, the essay that began with this double-deck statement:
It’s official. Catholicism has little or nothing to do with the giant, heartrending story here inside the other Beltway — the closing of 13 of 64 schools in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore.
Sometime this morning, more than a few Catholic educators in Baltimore are going to get some very bad news. Once again, it’s time for a major urban archdiocese to shut down some schools — permanently.
