Catholicism

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Did you hear about ISIS razing an ancient monastery and desecrating saint's tomb?

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What is there to say about the never ending Islamic State horrors being reported out of Syria? Clearly the soldiers of ISIS are equal-opportunity oppressors, when it comes to the lives and cultures of religious minorities unfortunate enough to cross their path.

When it comes to crushing truly ancient, irreplaceable wonders linked to the lives and histories of apostates, the ISIS jihadists may view one ruin or sanctuary as the same as the next.

The same, however, cannot be said of how most American journalists view these horrors. Apparently, some travesties are more important than others. Things are quite different on the other side of the Atlantic, however.

Right now, for example, journalists on both sides of the pond are -- as they should -- devoting quite a bit of coverage to the destruction of a priceless ruin in Palmyra. These was the news insiders had been fearing for weeks, especially after the shocking and disgraceful beheading of antiquities expert Khalid al-Asaad.

This solid Washington Post report -- pointing to the BBC -- was typical:

The Islamic State has reportedly destroyed another significant landmark in the ancient city of Palmyra, Syria.
The temple of Baal Shamin stood for nearly two millennia, honoring the Phoenician god of storms and rain, as the BBC reported. Destruction of the site would be directly in line with the Islamic State’s campaign not just against people of other faiths, but against their culture. 
“Oh Muslims, these artifacts that are behind me were idols and gods worshipped by people who lived centuries ago instead of Allah,” one militant said of antiquities in Mosul, Iraq, earlier this year. After the Islamic State captured Palmyra in May, Baal Shamin seems to have fallen to the group’s philosophy.

As I said, this is major news that deserved solid coverage. We've been dealing with the complexities of these topics for weeks, as in this Ira post.

However, did you hear about the destruction of the irreplaceable frescos and sanctuaries at the Mar Elian monastery?


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Commercialized cathedrals? Telegraph story has much to Compline about

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People are flocking again to England's grand old cathedrals, and the Telegraph says it knows why: The churches have adopted tactics from the world of retail.

Attendance is sliding at most U.K. parishes but rising at cathedrals, says the newspaper -- more than 10 million last year, up almost a quarter in a decade, says the Telegraph. The churches still boast their historic appeals, the article concedes, but they're also trying new things:

Cathedral clerics say people are often drawn by the traditional music, the contemplative atmosphere and the fact that large city-centre churches offer services at different times of the day and throughout the week.
But several cathedrals have benefited from moves to attract late-night shoppers by opening late themselves.

Like how? Prepare to be amazed, or not:

St Nicholas Cathedral in Newcastle upon Tyne, has introduced a “night church” idea, opening late on Fridays and inviting people to experience stillness and contemplation.
It also regularly attracts around 300 people for late night compline services.
Salisbury Cathedral has been offering late night classical concerts by candle-light during the summer and Liverpool Cathedral opens its tower late on Thursday evenings.

Not convinced? How about Truro Cathedral? Last Christmas the church "offered its own late night shopping, setting up charity stalls and opening its own Christmas shop and restaurant late, while inviting community music groups to play to lure shoppers in." As if churches have never done anything like that. Try googling "church bazaar" and "church night concert" and you'll find out differently.


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Your weekend think piece: A different take on America's shortage of minority journalists

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For several decades, one of the primary goals of those who run American newsrooms has been (and justifiably so, from my point of view) increasing the number of mainstream journalists who are African-American, Latino, Asian, Native Americans and part of other minority groups, defined by race.

At the same time, there have been less publicized debates -- mostly behind the scenes -- about the need to bring more intellectual and cultural diversity into our newsrooms. As one journalist friend of mine once put it, what's the use of bringing in more African-Americans, Latinos, etc., if they all basically went to the same schools as everyone else and have the same set of beliefs between their ears?

You can see these two issues collide in William McGowan's the much-debated 2003 book, "Coloring the News: How Political Correctness Has Corrupted American Journalism." He argues that years of diversity training in American newsrooms has actually made them more elitist and narrow, purging many professionals who come from blue-collar and non-urban backgrounds.

Before you write that theory off as conservative whining, what was that statement near the end of the famous New York Times self-study entitled "Preserving Our Readers' Trust (.pdf)"?

Our paper’s commitment to a diversity of gender, race and ethnicity is nonnegotiable. We should pursue the same diversity in other dimensions of life, and for the same reason -- to ensure that a broad range of viewpoints is at the table when we decide what to write about and how to present it.
The executive editor should assign this goal to everyone who has a hand in recruiting.
We should take pains to create a climate in which staff members feel free to propose or criticize coverage from vantage points that lie outside the perceived newsroom consensus (liberal/conservative, religious/secular, urban/suburban/rural, elitist/white collar/blue collar). 

And also: 


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NPR leaves several big holes in report on non-Catholics struggling with Irish schools

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On American shores, attending a private religious school is an expensive privilege.

Such schools only accept certain people and tuition per student easily eats up $5,000 or more a year. My daughter was briefly enrolled in a kindergarten at a classical Catholic school and although we were allowed in on the “Catholic rate” versus the extra $3,000 most non-Catholics were charged, the extras really added up. We’re talking uniforms, mandatory contributions to the school operating fund and required volunteer hours by the parent.

But what if the only school available to you was Catholic? That’s what NPR tried to describe in this broadcast: 

In the U.S., parents who want to give their children a religious education have to pay for it for the most part. In Ireland, it's the opposite -- 92 percent of state schools are run by the Catholic Church. That's even though growing numbers of people in Ireland no longer identify as Catholic. And this is creating new tensions for parents trying to find schools for their kids. Miranda Kennedy has been digging into this from Dublin. ...
MIRANDA KENNEDY, BYLINE: Nikki Murphy is showing me around the small house she shares with her husband, Clem Brennan, and their two young children. She loves their neighborhood. … But when their older son Reuben turned 4, they discovered a problem with their neighborhood.
MURPHY: One huge obstacle is trying to get Reuben into school. Yeah, it's been horrendous.
KENNEDY: Nikki and Clem chose not to baptize their son.


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Pope Francis and abuse victims: Washington Post pro shows how to report

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To harp on a favorite theme of mine, you need experienced specialists to cover religion news. Today's case in point is a positive one: the Washington Post's in-depth piece on Catholics who want Pope Francis to address clerical sex abuse during his upcoming U.S. visit.

Rather than relying cheap shots from pressure groups, the Post's Godbeat veteran Michelle Boorstein draws her sources from Catholic authorities or those who have had direct experience with the abuse problem -- some as victims. Their viewpoints range from support to opposition, and the usually neglected points in between.

In the 1,800-word article, victims of priests confess their hopes of pressing a single point to Francis during his September visit to Philadelphia: Do more to root out sex abuse and bring justice to the abused. But the piece adopts an attitude that is not skeptical but adversarial.

The Post gives about half the story to John Salveson, an abuse survivor who has been pressing church authorities for answers off and on since the early 1980s. It reports Salveson's initial letters to his bishop, which got non-answers; then his part in a class-action lawsuit against his diocese, which failed because of a statute of limitations; then his creation of a pressure group, "which advocates for longer criminal statutes of limitations and expanded civil windows for victims to sue."

The article also quotes others, in varying tones of rage and hope.

For rage, we have the father of a deceased victim: "All he does is talk. . . . You think this guy ever worked a day in his life? How could he have empathy for people like us?”  

For hope, another victim: “I think he’s a rock star. He really seems to be someone who genuinely seems to want to get to the bottom of this and stop it.”


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Uh, that historic church that burned down? We are missing a key fact ...

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Every now and the, a GetReligionista (or in this case a GetReligionista emeritus) reads a short news report about some religion event or topic then pauses, a bit perplexed. It's like something basic is missing.

Consider the following perfectly ordinary story from The Argus Leader, a smallish Gannett newspaper in Sioux Falls, S.D. Does anything strike you as strange about the top of this story? Is something missing?

Three Dewey County men have been federally charged with arson and burglary, accused of burning down a nearly 100-year-old historic church.
Cody Yellow, 27, Robert Grindstone, 28, and Ake Kyle Eagle Hunter, 28, are charged with third-degree burglary and arson. Each faces 30 years in federal prison if convicted.
According to court records: Eagle Hunter told authorities he picked up Yellow and Grindstone in Eagle Butte then drove to the church on July 19. He said he went to the church to visit a friend’s grave.
Eagle Hunter said he was walking from the cemetery towards the front of the church when he heard a crash. He said he walked back to the front of the church a saw Yellow going into the church and knocking things over.
Grindstone, then, came in with some diesel fuel and started dumping it everywhere. Then, Yellow leaned down and lit the fuel, starting the fire.

OK, this is an interesting event. Perhaps even some kind of hate crime? Is this a church burning or merely a church that was burned? 

But what very basic, key fact is missing? How about this: What is the NAME of this historic little church? Isn't that a rather crucial detail?


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Campus ministry: Last shot at focusing on Catholic 'nones' before the exit door?

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Campus ministry: Last shot at focusing on Catholic 'nones' before the exit door?

On one level, this week's GetReligion "Crossroads" podcast is about young Catholics, Confession and campus ministry, using my Universal Syndicate column from this past week as a starting point.

But "campus ministry," narrowly defined, is not what this podcast is about.

What host Todd Wilken and I ended up discussing (click here to tune that in) was a much broader topic. The key is that my column grew out of a very specific statistic that I saw in a blog post by Marcel LeJeune, who is assistant director of the massive campus ministry program at St. Mary's Catholic Center across from Texas A&M University. He wrote:

We know that of those that no longer identify as Catholic 79% do so by the age of 23 (Sherry Weddell, Forming Intentional Disciples, Page 33). So, young adults should be the focal point of our efforts and if we want to get even more narrow, then the best way to influence young people is to start with the most influential ones in their age group, the leaders. Most who end up becoming influential leaders will go to college. Finally, since 90% of Catholic college students go to non-Catholic schools, we MUST focus our energies on continued growth and dynamic evangelization in campus ministries at non-Catholic schools (mostly public).

Now, that reference to young Catholics leaving the church by age 23 made me, as a journalist, think -- yes, here we go again -- about one of the interesting wrinkles in that "Nones on the Rise" study back in 2012, by the Pew Research Center. Let's jump back in time to a column I wrote about that:


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Just asking: Does anyone know faith identity of Croatian killed by ISIS in Egypt?

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These stories are, of course, becoming old news.

There is another semiprofessional video modeled on trailers for entertainment media. Another image of a captive kneeling in a desert in an orange jump suit. Another Islamic State soldier, face covered, holding a knife. More bloody photos that mainstream media cannot use, yet become fodder for the dark side of social media and independent websites.

The coverage is fading, along with -- apparently -- any interest in the faith element of these stories. This time around, the key was not who ISIS killed but where, apparently, the latest victim was located at the time he was killed. The Washington Post coverage was typical of what ran in numerous publications, Here is the top of that report:

CAIRO -- An Islamic State affiliate claimed ... to have beheaded a Croatian national held hostage for weeks in what would be the group’s first killing of a foreign captive in Egypt.

If confirmed, the death would mark a fresh challenge to Egypt’s economy and the country’s effort to stem a rising Islamist insurgency that has targeted major tourist sites and military outposts.

The Croatian hostage, Tomislav Salopek, worked for a French geoscience company in Egypt, which depends on many foreign firms for construction and other major projects.

A purported photo of Salopek’s decapitated body was posted Wednesday by an Islamic State-linked Twitter account. The caption said Salopek was killed because of his country’s “war” on the Islamic State but gave no further details.

Yes, and who -- in addition to tourists -- might ISIS threaten in Egypt?


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North Dakota's InForum showcases some solid stories about faith in Fargo

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Every so often I like wandering the cyber highways and byways to find religion reporting that’s off the beaten track -- especially out here in the West.

One state that intrigues me is isolated North Dakota, which has more religion stories than one might think. 

There’s the Baptist-turned-Catholic Bethlehem Community in Bathgate. There’s Becky Fischer, the Pentecostal trailblazer for children’s ministry best known to the outside world for her role in the 2006 film “Jesus Camp.” Her ministry is still going strong in Mandan.

Or there’s Lutheran Social Services in Fargo, which is resettling refugees in this sparsely populated state even though the locals aren’t happy about it.  This story just broke in InForum, a Fargo newspaper also known as The Forum along with another story that explains how new arrivals from Somalia and Bhutan aren’t exactly fitting in with the local culture. 

Well, this post isn’t about that topic, fascinating as it is.

It’s about a columnist for InForum, a freelancer who has taken it on herself to report on faith in Fargo. North Dakota is a state of mostly small newspapers and no fulltime religion reporter (listed with the Religion Newswriters Association, that is). What caught my eye was a simple advance for an upcoming visit to town by Bible teacher Beth Moore:


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