Catholicism

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Papal riddle: How does Washington Post cover Pope Francis without quoting people?

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Here we go again.

Whether it's a flight of editorial fancy, as I think of it, or the increasingly popular "omniscient anonymous voice," as tmatt complains, the Washington Post has just spun out another sweeping, opinion-laced advance on Pope Francis' scheduled U.S. visit.

Francis is "often dubbed the coolest-ever leader of the Roman Catholic Church," the Post says. He's brought a "dose of magical realism" to the pontificate. He wants to be "something akin to a global Jiminy Cricket, a voice of conscience whether you believe in God or not." Who is speaking? Good question.

But wait, there’s more:

Francis has turned out to be a natural global leader. But he has also been a surprise to the cardinals who thought they were putting a cautious moderate on Saint Peter’s throne.
To the chagrin of conservatives, he has evolved into a sort of pontifical version of Reagan-appointed Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, whose judicial decisions have upended his supporters’ expectations. After two popes who concentrated on doctrine and traditional families, Francis is clearly in a different mold.

Whew. Any wonder that this story goes way over 2,400 words?

The main point is that Francis is a "riddle," a puzzling blend of opposites. He is innovative in tone and manner, welcoming gays and easing the return of Catholics who have divorced and remarried. He is liberal in social issues, calling for better care of the poor and the environment. Yet he is a moral traditionalist who opposes same-sex marriage and transgenderism. In terms if on-the-page content, in other words, he sounds rather like St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.

Externally, Francis "has become a formidable diplomat, interjecting the Vatican into everything from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to U.S.-Cuba relations," the Post says. Internally, he is a strong pope, who fired his secretary of state and two top officials of the Vatican Bank.


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Pope Francis and the Republicans: AP story has little interest in the pope and Democrats

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Republicans are jockeying to share the spotlight with Pope Francis when he comes to America this month. Democrats? (shrug)

That's a logical takeaway from an Associated Press story on views of Pope Francis by seven of the GOP's presidential candidates.

And before you can say, "Hey, wait a minute," the story fires a shotgun blast of paragraphs:

To some Republican presidential candidates, it's better to be with the popular pope than against him.
Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have deep policy differences with Pope Francis, but the senators will break off campaign travel to attend his address to Congress later this month, a centerpiece of his eagerly anticipated visit to the United States.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a devout Catholic, will attend Mass with Francis in Washington. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, another Catholic candidate, plans to attend one of the pope's East Coast events.

AP does nuance that a bit. It explains that Francis has drawn popular admiration, not only for his kindly manner, but also for his "humility and efforts to refocus the church on the poor and needy." It also says he has waded into "numerous hot-button political issues" like immigration, climate change, the Iran nuclear deal and diplomatic relations with Cuba.

So the article has Bush applauding Francis as an "amazing man" with a "gentle soul." And Rubio honors Francis as a "moral authority" but adds, "I'm a political leader and my job as a policymaker is to act in the common good."

The story also reports sidesteps by Scott Walker and Rick Santorum, who say they’ll be out of town when the pope visits Washington. That strikes me as odd to single out those two but not, say, Ben Carson, named last week in a CNN poll as GOP's current front runner.

More glaring is the omission of Donald Trump, whose religious talk has often raised eyebrows. Last month, Trump said this to CNN's Chris Cuomo:


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Bottom line in busy days ahead: Look for full texts when Pope Francis speaks

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In the days ahead, prepare for wave after wave of information about what Pope Francis does or does not believe and what his words and actions, during his visit to the all-important Acela zone that is home of all of our nation's media that, you know, really matter.

Traditional Catholics already know that it will be risky to read most of this coverage on their computers while drinking coffee, because the keyboards could be at risk. 

As for me, I will follow the usual suspects (as in the full papal texts at Whispers in the Loggia and the omnipresent John L. Allen Jr.). However out in flyover country, most of the nation;s news consumers will have to settle for cable television coverage and the Associated Press.

The trends there, alas, are not good -- unless the networks hire some quality liberal and conservative insiders who can hold meaningful debates. I cannot stress this too highly: Reading the actual papal texts will be even more crucial than ever, this time around.

We can the usual editorial templates in effect already, in some of the explainers that are beginning to turn up in the press. Take, for example, the following chunk of the Associated Press pope guide that ran under this headline at The Oregonian: "Where does Pope Francis stand on gays, women, immigration? His views, explained."

Abortion
Francis has upheld church teaching opposing abortion and echoed his predecessors in saying human life is sacred and must be defended. But he has not emphasized the church's position to the extent that his predecessors did, saying by now the church's teaching on abortion is well-known.


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Does Stephen Colbert's progressive Catholicism still make some journalists nervous?

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Forget, for a moment, whatever you are thinking right now about American politics.

Just think about journalism, for a moment.

Forget what you think about Vice President Joe Biden. If you are, like me, one of America's surviving pro-life Democrats, or you are a traditional Catholic, try to forget what you know about Biden's political career on legislation linked to abortion and how he has tried to mesh his actions with his acceptance of core doctrines in his Catholic faith. For a moment, forget his loyal-soldier work in the current administration.

Now, also try to forget for a moment what you think of the laugh-to-keep-from crying humor of funny man Stephen Colbert.

Lay aside, if you can, whatever you think he does or does not believe when it comes to the fine details, especially on moral theology, of the Catholic Catechism he taught as a leader in his New York-suburb parish during his Comedy Central years. If you are a traditionalist, when it comes to Catholic doctrine, go ahead and assume that Colbert is a "progressive," whatever that term means these days.

Then again, be honest and wrestle with the content of the nights when Colbert embraced and riffed with Catholic conservatives or shredded some liberals, on his old talk show.

Now, after saying all of that, watch the Late Night interview between Biden and Colbert and ask yourself a question about journalism: How would you deal with the content of this chat without facing the fact that its intimacy and depth (unless they are both really good fakers and I've seen people on CNN suggest that) is rooted in the fact that this is a pair of Catholic guys talking about faith and family?

Looking at Colbert, is it possible -- whether his work inspires you or troubles you -- to deal with his talent, his brain and his heart without taking into account the content of his Catholic faith and its role in his grief-haunted life? This was the subject of one of my recent On Religion columns ("From John Henry Newman to Stephen Colbert: Ancient truths on suffering and death") and the topic surfaced again in a follow-up post here at GetReligion.

Well, this past week kept adding layers of news content on top of this topic -- leading up to the Biden interview -- and provided the hook for this week's "Crossroads" podcast, with host Todd Wilken. Click here to tune that in.


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Numbers game: Maybe public opinion surveys don't amount to a hill of ...

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What a difference a month makes. In early August, the Religion News Service ran a long list of reasons why opinion polls are often unreliable. This week, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette turned to several surveys on Catholic attitudes toward the faith -- and toward Pope Francis, scheduled to visit the United States in a couple of weeks.

The funny thing is, both articles drew on some of the same bean-counting organizations -- and in one case, the same expert.

Last one first. The Pittsburgh paper aims at showing the challenges awaiting Francis in his first visit to the United States.

"There may be more American Catholics than ever, but they’re doing fewer Catholic things," says savvy religion writer Peter Smith in summing up the paradox. To make his point, he gathers from at least three of the usual sources: Pew Research Center, the Public Religion Research Institute and the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

The numbers tell him that "life-cycle events" are down: infant baptisms, first communions, church marriages and elementary school enrollment. Most Catholics affirm "basic beliefs" about Jesus and Mary, but they don’t pray the rosary, pray as families or do adoration of the Eucharist.

The Post-Gazette also cites a Pew survey that found "fewer than half of Catholics think it’s a sin to have gay sex, use artificial birth control, live with a partner outside of marriage or remarry after a divorce without an annulment. They’re evenly split on whether the church should recognize gay marriages."

But the numbers don’t overpower the human side of the piece.


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At this point, why would journalists ignore faith issues in Colbert's life? (updated)

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As far as I am concerned, there was journalism about comedian Stephen Colbert before the GQ cover story by Joel Lovell -- "The Late, Great Stephen Colbert" -- and then there is journalism on this subject after that piece.

It's not that this was some kind of stunning investigation into Colbert's career, his finances, his alleged politics, etc., etc. It's not even that this story covered totally new material about Colbert's faith and family history.

Trust me. I've had a research folder open on Colbert and Catholicism since 2005 or thereabouts and I've read most of the crucial speeches and interviews in which he talks about his beliefs. I have a pretty big collection of iTunes selections and Comedy Central URLs that feature revealing quips and comments. I've written some columns on this guy and led seminar sessions focusing on the debates about his work.

What made this interview special was the depth of the comments and the way in which they linked the wounds in Colbert's past to the strengths of his comic sensibility today. It was really quite stunning, even for people (I've heard from some) who didn't take Colbert all that seriously in the past. 

After that interview, why would journalists for a major news organization -- The New York Times leaps to mind  -- fail to explore the God questions (and answers) that haunt this guy? In a major magazine feature before his arrival last night on CBS, this is what the Times team offered while trying to talk about the "humanity" that Colbert has hidden in the past:


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New York Times advance on Pope Francis visit spins religion as economics

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It's almost become a slogan for Terry Mattingly that one of the "deadly sins" of mainstream media is to reduce all religious issues to politics.  But if he reads this New York Times story on Pope Francis' upcoming U.S. visit, he may well add economics to his complaints.

No, economics isn't the only thing in the article. It also looks at Francis' personality and his approach to church matters; the fact that he has never been here before; what he thinks of capitalism; what Americans think of him; and the differing views of politics between South America and the United States.

But a sizable chunk of the story reads like this:

He is not opposed to all America represents. But he is troubled by privileged people and nations that consume more than their share and turn their backs on the vulnerable. The message he will probably deliver when he comes, they say, is that the United States has been blessed with great gifts, but that from those to whom much is given, much is expected.
“I think what he criticizes in the U.S. is the absolute freedom and autonomy of the market,” said the Rev. Juan Carlos Scannone, a professor emeritus of philosophy at Colegio Máximo, a prominent Jesuit college near Buenos Aires. He taught the young Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who would become Francis, as a seminarian and became a friend. “We should admire the U.S.’s democracy and the well-being of its people, but what Bergoglio would criticize is the consumerism: that everything is geared toward consumerism.”

Much of the story, in fact, resembles the Aug. 30 advance by the Associated Press. It's almost like someone at the Times read AP and said, "Hey, that's a good idea!" -- then assigned their own version.

Both stories emphasize how new the experience will be for a 78-year-old pope who has never visited here. Both style him a "homebody" who prefers to hang out with the poor than jet to public appearances. The Times quotes Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York saying Francis is "a little nervous about coming."

Both articles also quote sources who say the pope isn't really anti-American -- he just opposes the social and environment harm it's caused, he believes, by our economy: "maximizing profits" in the AP story, "savage capitalism" in the Times piece.

But where AP devoted two paragraphs to Francis' economic views, the Times deals with them in four, like this one:


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Vatican conservatives rebel against Pope Francis, the pope hailed by news media

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Haven't we read this Washington Post story before? Every few months, someone big in the mainstream press writes this same basic story.

A quick summary: Conservatives hate Pope Francis because he is the liberal that we -- as in the mainstream press -- say he is, even though, dang it, he hasn't actually changed any of the loathsome doctrines that we think are so terrible. But we love this pope's quips, as opposed to his actual sermons and writings, and we'll keep printing those quotes over and over. Oh, and if your don't like the version of Pope Francis that we're describing, then you oppose this pope.

Or words to that effect. But the key is that conservatives inside the Vatican are planning a revolt of some kind. We know this because some of them are talking about "confusion" in the church, confusion that -- this is crucial -- has nothing to do with the media's consistent portrayal of the pope as a heroic liberal seeking doctrinal reform, although he hasn't changed any yet. And why does the pope keep urging everyone to go to confession? Doesn't Francis know that no one goes to confession anymore, because that would imply that sin is real?

The latest version of this parable, in The Washington Post, opens with a Vatican City anecdote in which the uber-conservative Cardinal Raymond Burke "appeared" -- no one actually heard the exchange -- to have reminded the pope that papal powers to change doctrine are limited.

Gasp. Someone arguing with a Jesuit? I have never heard of such a thing.

Burke’s words belied a growing sense of alarm among strict conservatives, exposing what is fast emerging as a culture war over Francis’s papacy and the powerful hierarchy that governs the Roman Catholic Church.


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Refugees flee ISIS: Maybe there is a religion angle in this tragic story? Maybe?

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If you have read anything about the rise of the Islamic State, you know that ISIS is crushing anyone who rejects its drive to build a new multinational caliphate rooted in its approach to Islam.

Thus, hundreds of thousands of people are either dead or fleeing. Who are they?

The answer is pretty obvious: They are the people who rejected the reign of ISIS. And who might that be? The answer is complex, but one fact is simple. It's impossible to talk about this refugee crisis without talking about the religion angle, because the refugees are either members of minority religions in the region, including thousands of displaced Christians, or centrist Muslims or members of Muslim-related sects that are anathema to ISIS leaders.

Now, the religion angle has jumped even higher in the story with the appeal by Pope Francis for every Catholic parish, school, monastery and social ministry in Europe to take in at least one refugee family. If you know anything about the Bible, you probably have a good idea what verses the pope is going to quote on this question.

But Europe is tense, not just because of the sheer number of refugees, but because of faith questions related to them.

So why, I ask, did The New York Times team basically ignore the religion content of this story in its major piece on the pope's challenge? The results are especially strange when contrasted with the corresponding international-desk story in The Washington Post. Here is the key passage in the Times piece:


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