Catholicism

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Surprise! An abortion story from a major newspaper that doesn't favor pro-choice side

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Last week, we highlighted — once again — the slanted nature of so much mainstream media reporting on abortion.

We suggested that not much has changed since the classic 1990 Los Angeles Times series -- written by the late David Shaw -- that exposed rampant news media bias against abortion opponents.

We pointed out that among Shaw's findings a quarter-century ago were these:

* The news media consistently use language and images that frame the entire abortion debate in terms that implicitly favor abortion-rights advocates.
* Abortion-rights advocates are often quoted more frequently and characterized more favorably than are abortion opponents.

Why do I bring up that recent post again now?

Because I wanted to share a positive example of how journalists who want to provide impartial coverage can do so. This story, from the front page of Tuesday's Oklahoman newspaper in Oklahoma City, concerns a prayer vigil conducted by Catholic opponents of a planned abortion clinic.

 


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Plant. Face. Palm. Did Facebook team say Jesus is buried in Church of the Holy Sepulchre? (Updated)

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Just what we need, another controversy involving Facebook and its "trending" news feature, which is apparently important for legions of social-media content consumers.

But in this case, I really need to ask, "Can I get a witness?"

What I mean is this: Does anyone out there in cyberspace have evidence -- perhaps a screenshot or a URL in a way-back storage program -- to back up those #bangingheadondesk items about an alleged Facebook "trending" story that ran with this headline?

Church of the Holy Sepulchre: Renovations Begin on Site Where Christians Believe Jesus Is Buried

Oh my. And we now have an update from a reader! We have a screenshot.

Now that we have that taken care of, let me note that the principalities and powers at Facebook headquarters can take some comfort in the fact that they are not the first folks in journalism to make that error.

Some of you might remember a 2014 item on this here weblog that ran with this headline: "Revenge of GetReligion MZ: Concerning the NYTimes effort to bury Jesus."

That post focused on an MZ piece at The Federalist in which she dissected a New York Times travel feature that, while focusing on life and commerce in Jerusalem's Christian Quarter said:


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Washington Post offers one-sided (positive) look at conservatives who oppose death penalty

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As a life-long opponent of the death penalty, I have attended my share of prayer gatherings and rallies on this issue and other issues linked to it. That final clause -- "and other issues linked to it" -- is crucial.

What I have learned is that, in contemporary American life, there are basically two groups of people who are opposed to the death penalty.

The first group is made up of political progressives who oppose the death penalty and that's that. The second group (which would include me) consists of pro-life religious believers -- left and right -- who oppose the death penalty as well as legalized abortion, euthanasia and other life issues. The goal in this camp is to consistently apply a standard that all life is sacred, from conception to natural death.

In my experience, it's relatively rare to see mainstream press coverage of this second group, especially coverage that discusses the role that faith and doctrine plays in this stance. So I did a double-take the other day when I saw that Washington Post headline that proclaimed, "Meet the red-state conservatives fighting to abolish the death penalty."

Yes, this piece by New York magazine writer Marin Cogan is labeled "opinion." However, it's about as newsy as 80 percent of what runs as hard news in major newspapers today.

Let me confess that this is, in effect, a "Kellerism" piece that just happens to support a cause that floats my own boat. If you are looking for fair, accurate arguments in favor of the death penalty then this is not the piece for you. However, I wanted GetReligion readers to know about it because it does a pretty good job of handling faith-based material, while dealing with a group of believers that rarely gets much news coverage. So why an "opinion" piece?

Here is the overture:


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More on 'bathroom wars': Crux quotes several sides and lets you decide

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Crux, you had me at "varied Catholic responses."

Just about every transgender rights article I've ever read has drawn caricatures: a hidebound, monolithic bureaucracy against earnest activists who bravely state their rights. Yesterday's Crux story is different: It cites intelligent, articulate viewpoints on more than one side.

You can see the difference right in the lede:

A controversy over transgender rights at schools and public facilities in the United States that’s been dubbed the "bathroom wars" has drawn varied Catholic responses, with bishops expressing concern over a trio of disputed government actions at the local, state and federal level, and a Catholic gay rights group supporting increased access for transgender people.

No other story I've reviewed on this controversy has carried Catholic Church views on the so-called bathroom wars. Nearly all the stories major in politician quotes; most quote liberal activists; some quote their conservative opponents;  one or two have asked a pastor or two. The largest division of Christianity, the Catholic Church, is always ignored. Except for Crux yesterday.

The article focuses on North Carolina, the battleground of laws, lawsuits and boycotts. Crux explains Charlotte's ordinance that allowed people to use restrooms and locker rooms for the gender with which they identify. Crux also cites HB2, the state law that overturned the ordinance and prevented any other cities from passing similar measures.

And the 1,500-word indepth has more than sound bites. It gives lots of space to a statement by both of North Carolina's bishops, Michael F. Burbidge of Raleigh Peter J. Jugis of Charlotte:


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Is this a religion story? New HHS rules push faith-based hospitals on transgender issues

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At some point, journalists need to stop and ask the following question: Is there any part of the Affordable Care Act that doesn't raise moral and legal questions for the leaders of hospitals operated by religious groups?

What about religious believers who are doctors, nurses, medical technicians or administrators? I think we'll need to deal with that hot-button religious liberty issue another day.

Right now, let's just say that I was amazed at the lack of mainstream news coverage of a recent Health and Human Services announcement about the impact of the White House's gender identity initiatives on medical care. (Click here for the actual document.) Maybe this important story got buried under the tsunami of coverage of government guidelines affecting how public schools handle transgender issues at the level of showers, locker rooms, bathrooms, etc.

Did this HHS announcement have implications for journalists who cover religion?

Apparently not. Here is the top of the short story that ran at USA Today. I missed this story in my early searches for mainstream coverage.

Insurers and hospitals can't discriminate against patients because of their gender identity under the Affordable Care Act, federal officials said Friday, but patient groups complained the rule doesn't go far enough.
The Department of Health and Human Services finalized a rule that prohibited discrimination in health care based on a long list of characteristics ranging from race to pregnancy, gender identity and "sex stereotyping."
It doesn't mean insurers have to cover all treatments associated with gender transitioning but they just can't outright deny them either. But the rule doesn't go far enough in clarifying what is discrimination, some say.

In the final sentence, the story notes:


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Will Catholicism admit women deacons or deaconesses to ranks of ordained clergy?

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Will Catholicism admit women deacons or deaconesses to ranks of ordained clergy?

THE QUESTION:

What are the reasons the Catholic Church might, or might not, ordain women in the clerical rank of deacon? (Almost all Q and A topics are posted by our online audience, but The Guy decided to pose this timely question himself.)

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

Catholicism’s long-simmering discussion about whether to ordain women into the clerical ranks as “permanent deacons” took a dramatic turn May 12 when Pope Francis said he’ll form a commission to study the issue. His promise came during seemingly off-the-cuff answers to questions during a Rome session with the International Union of Superiors General, whose members lead nearly 500,000 nuns and sisters in religious orders.

Without doubt, female deacons would be a major change. Liberals hope — and conservatives fear — that permitting women to be deacons would be a step toward allowing female priests. However, that’s a distant prospect if not an impossibility considering Pope John Paul II’s absolute prohibition in his 1994 apostolic letter “Ordinatio Sacerdotalis.”

To explain that term “permanent diaconate”: The order of deacons in the early church gradually dwindled over centuries so that eventually ordination as a “deacon” became a mere stepping-stone for men on the path to priesthood. (That usage occurs in Anglican and Episcopal churches. Lutheran deacons, male and female, fill a permanent office, not a temporary one. Baptists use the deacon title for lay members who govern congregations with the pastor.)

Catholicism’s Second Vatican Council (1962-65) restored the “permanent diaconate” as a third, separate and ongoing ministerial order in its own right that is subordinate to priests and bishops. Particularly in North America, which has half the world total, such deacons help ameliorate the shortage of priests.


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Catholic archdiocese bullies a church to death, at least, as mainstream media see it

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OK, I get it. People come to love a church building. It's more than bricks; it's relationships and history.

Throw in a 24/7 prayer vigil for nearly 12 years, and you can see why the closing of the St. Frances Xavier Cabrini (Catholic) Church near Boston got a big story in the Christian Science Monitor. But the newspaper somehow spins the story as sex abuse and Big Bully versus the Little People.

Yes, they deserve sympathy for their loss. They feel like a church is their home and that Cardinal Sean O'Malley evicted them. The Monitor captures that feeling well:

On Sunday, about 200 parishioners of the Roman Catholic church in the coastal New England town held their last mass after years of protesting the Archdiocese of Boston over its 2004 decision to close their sanctuary. For more than a decade they took turns keeping a vigil, 24/7, to make sure that at least one person was in the church at all times.
After the United States Supreme Court declined to hear their case this month, however, letting stand the rulings of lower courts that found they were trespassing, parishioners ran out of options to keep the doors open. They agreed to vacate the building by 11:59 p.m. Monday.
"Today is like a death in the family: Sad, yet relieved that the pain is over," a choked-up and teary-eyed Margaret O'Brien told WCVB news on Sunday. The 86-year-old says she raised her family in the church.

And the paper says honestly that St. Frances Xavier was among dozens of parishes slated for closing back in 2004 in the Boston archdiocese. What's more, attendance at St. Frances Xavier itself had been falling for years, the Monitor adds.

So why does the paper take wing on the following flight of fancy?


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Washington Post reports: Hey, not all parents with lots of kids are fundamentalist wackos!

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Oh my. Folks at The Washington Post have just published an interesting story about non-religious large families that raises all kinds of questions. If you thought journalists had run out of valid new angles for coverage of the whole Pew Forum "none" phenomenon, this piece will convince you otherwise.

Nevertheless, there is a religion-angle problem -- maybe two -- in this story, which ran under the headline, "Stop assuming that families with lots of children are religious."

For starters, the Post team did a pretty good job of telling readers what parents such as Timothy and Kyla Buller do NOT believe. However, the story makes little or no attempt to describing what they DO believe. Hold that thought.

The story also managed, creating an LOL moment for this GetReligionista, to combine two of this blog's least favorite nasty and shallow labels into one all-purpose journalistic insult. Here is what that looks like:

As younger adults elect “none” as their religious preference more and more often, the number of large “none” families in the country may well rise.
But if large non-religious families are getting more common, Tracey Stoner hasn’t noticed it yet. “It’s hard to find support as a large family that’s not religious,” she said.
Raising seven children who range in age from 6 months to 16 years old, Stoner has sought advice in Facebook groups for large families. But the members seem to be “95 percent Christians,” she said, often with fundamentalist ideologies.

You got it! The Post managed to use both the journalism F-word and an ISIS-era application of the word "ideology" at the same time!


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Your weekend think piece: Is it time to allow governments to define 'real' religion?

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Back when I was doing my master's degree in church-state studies -- during an earlier era at Baylor's J.M. Dawson Institute -- one of the hot questions was this: Legally speaking, what is a "religion" and who gets to define what is and what is not a religion?

It's an old question and there are no signs that it's going away. Take, for example, those online services that will ordain you as a minister. Does a piece of paper from such an operation mean that you have the legal protections provided to clergy? How about your tax status?

You can see related questions surface in debates about, oh, the First Church of Cannabis. Is smoking weed and seeking enlightenment a tax-exempt, protected faith activity? Well, what if the people making this drug-related claim are Native Americans and the tradition goes back for centuries?

More? How about the status of Scientology in Germany?

So how do you know you are dealing with a fake or warped religious group? What was drummed into us, in our texts and lectures, was a threefold test stating that governments have every right to investigate religious groups that appear to be linked to (a) fraud, (b) profit or (c) clear threat the life and health.

But state tax officials are going to do what tax officials are going to do, which is look for more revenue.

Back in the 1980s a Colorado official decided that church-based day-care centers were not "religious." What about a non-profit organization that existed to produce books and audio-video materials for use by missionaries? That wasn't "religious," either.

It seemed like old times reading a recent piece at The Atlantic that ran under this epic double-stack headline:

Should Courts Get to Define Religion?


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