Catholicism

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The unorthodox life of Kamala Harris: The future of interfaith American politics?

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Hang on for a wild ride.

Try to avoid whiplash.

Yes, it was another crazy week in the world of religion news and we’re going to cover the highlights in a hurry.

Starting with the obvious: Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s selection of U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris of California as his running mate brings plenty of faith angles.

Elana Schor, the national religion and politics writer for The Associated Press, notes that the 55-year-old Harris “attended services at both a Black Baptist church and a Hindu temple growing up — an interfaith background that reflects her historic status as the first Black woman and woman of South Asian descent on a major-party presidential ticket.”

Bob Smietana, editor-in-chief of Religion News Service, dubs Harris “the interfaith candidate,” and RNS national correspondent Yonat Shimron offers “five faith facts about Biden’s VP choice.” In a separate story, Shimron suggests that Harris “is also the future of American religion.”

But the crucial angles related to Harris and religion aren’t all positive, even if some news coverage is. Can you say “Knights of Columbus”?

Her selection prompted the National Review’s Alexandra DeSanctis to write about what DeSanctis’ article called “Kamala Harris’s Anti-Catholic Bigotry.” Even before the Harris pick, Kelsey Dallas, the Deseret News’ national religion writer, had reported last week on Biden’s “tough road ahead on religious freedom.”


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Catholic news outlets reporting on church vandalism when mainstream media won't

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This endless summer ravaged by political divisions, civil unrest and statue-toppling (did we mention there’s also a deadly virus out there!) has made for a very busy time in journalism. For news sites, this deluge of events to report on has meant long hours for remote-working staffs who have also had to endure furloughs and layoffs in a worsening economy.

We live in a culture hijacked by politics.

It has become exhausting to follow the news (especially via social media) because of this political prism through which everything is now viewed. It has become our country’s new religion for millions.

As mainstream news outlets increasingly abandon objectivity and transition into advocacy, some very important stories and trends never get to readers. The internet has fueled “filter bubbles” and newspapers transitioning to digital rely increasingly on subscribers (as a business model) and less on general readers. It also helps spread misinformation. For example, a new Pew study revealed that people who get their news through social media actually knew less.

That means editors now give readers want they want to read (often reporting on the unchecked assertions of lawmakers within their bubble), rather than presenting an unbiased view of what happened. At the same time, the tech companies got an earful from Republicans who argued that giants like Facebook and Amazon for “empowering” people who “traffic in hate” against religion.

While the mainstream press failed to focus on this angle of the hearing (see tmatt’s post from and podcast), Timothy Nerozzi, writing at Religion Unplugged (where I also regularly contribute news articles, commentary and reviews), didn’t. This is how he started his news story:

During an hours-long antitrust hearing in Congress July 29 with CEOs of Amazon, Facebook, Google and other tech companies, Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) accused Amazon and Facebook of “empowering” people who “traffic in hate” against mainstream American religions.

Gaetz called out Jeff Bezos specifically during the hearing, accusing him of unknowingly partnering with institutions that hold intolerance towards religious charities and foundations.

“I am not accusing you as someone who would ever traffic in hate,” Gaetz said. “But, it seems that you have empowered people who do. And I’m particularly talking about the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a legal non-profit founded in 1971 that describes itself as “dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society.” The SPLC has faced backlash in recent years for perceived overeagerness in designating individuals and organizations as “extremist.”

Gaetz continued, “The Southern Poverty Law Center, who you allow to dictate who can receive donations on your Amazon Smile platform, has said the Catholic Family News, Catholic Family Ministries, Federation for American Immigration Reform, the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, the Jewish Defense League, and even Dr. Ben Carson are extremists, and should be treated differently.”

Why go into all this?


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Question for 2020: Can Episcopal clergy consecrate bread and wine through the Internet?

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Question for 2020: Can Episcopal clergy consecrate bread and wine through the Internet?

In the late 1970s, the Episcopal Ad Project began releasing spots taking shots at television preachers and other trends in American evangelicalism.

One image showed a television serving as an altar, holding a priest's stole, a chalice and plate of Eucharistic hosts. The headline asked: "With all due regard to TV Christianity, have you ever seen a Sony that gives Holy Communion?"

Now some Anglicans are debating whether it's valid -- during the coronavirus crisis -- to celebrate "virtual Eucharists," with computers linking priests at altars and communicants with their own bread and wine at home.

In a recent House of Bishops meeting -- online, of course -- Episcopal Church leaders backed away from allowing what many call "Virtual Holy Eucharist."

Episcopal News Service said bishops met in private small groups to discuss if it's "theologically sound to allow Episcopalians to gather separately and receive Communion that has been consecrated by a priest remotely during an online service."

Experiments had already begun, in some Zip codes. In April, Bishop Jacob Owensby of the Diocese of Western Louisiana encouraged such rites among "Priests who have the technical know-how, the equipment and the inclination" to proceed.

People at home, he wrote, will "provide for themselves bread and wine (bread alone is also permissible) and place it on a table in front of them. The priest's consecration of elements in front of her or him extends to the bread and wine in each … household. The people will consume the consecrated elements."

Days later, after consulting with America's presiding bishop," Bishop Owensby rescinded those instructions. "I understand that virtual consecration of elements at a physical or geographical distance from the Altar exceeds the recognized bounds set by our rubrics and inscribed in our theology of the Eucharist," he wrote.

However, similar debates were already taking place among other Anglicans. In Australia, for example, Archbishop Glenn Davies of Sydney urged priests to be creative during this pandemic, while churches were being forced to shut their doors.

During a live-streamed rite, he wrote, parishioners "could participate in their own homes via the internet consuming their own bread and wine, in accordance with our Lord's command."


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Cornel West and Robert George keeping fighting for tolerance in public square

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Cornel West and Robert George keeping fighting for tolerance in public square

America is so divided that 50% of "strong liberals" say they would fire business executives who donate money to reelect President Donald Trump.

Then again, 36% of "strong conservatives" would fire executives who donate to Democrat Joe Biden's campaign.

This venom has side effects. Thus, 62% of Americans say they fear discussing their political beliefs with others, according to a national poll by the Cato Institute and the global research firm YouGov. A third of those polled thought their convictions could cost them jobs.

That's the context for the efforts of Cornel West of Harvard University and Princeton's Robert George to defend tolerant, constructive debates in the public square. West is a black Baptist liberal and George is a white Catholic conservative.

"We need the honesty and courage not to compromise our beliefs or go silent on them out of a desire to be accepted, or out of fear of being ostracized, excluded or canceled," they wrote, in a recent Boston Globe commentary.

"We need the honesty and courage to recognize and acknowledge that there are reasonable people of good will who do not share even some of our deepest, most cherished beliefs. … We need the honesty and courage to treat decent and honest people with whom we disagree -- even on the most consequential questions -- as partners in truth-seeking and fellow citizens, … not as enemies to be destroyed. And we must always respect and protect their human rights and civil liberties."

They closed with an appeal to Trump and Biden, reminding them that "victories can be pyrrhic, destroying the very thing for which the combatants struggle. When that thing is our precious American experiment in ordered liberty and republican democracy, its destruction would be a tragedy beyond all human powers of reckoning."

It's distressing that this essay didn't inspire debates in social-media and the embattled opinion pages of American newspapers, noted Elizabeth Scalia, editor at large of Word on Fire, a Catholic apologetics ministry. After all, West and George are influential thinkers with clout inside the D.C. Beltway and they spoke out during a hurricane of anger and violence -- literal and verbal -- in American life.


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Podcast: What did those Big Tech hearings have to do with religious life in America?

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There have been some wild clashes between religious groups and the czars of the Big Tech institutions that have tremendous power in American public discourse. Certainly there have been more important skirmishes than Twitter shutting down that inspirational Tim Tebow mini-sermon the other day.

Many of my friends — as an Orthodox Christian layman — started paying close attention to this issue back in 2015 when a strategic set of cyber-lords informed these believers’ priests, all of a sudden, that they couldn’t put “Father” in front of their names on their Facebook pages.

This was part of a general policy about honorary titles of all kinds. But the title “Father” plays a different role in the lives of people in ancient Christian flocks. It’s not a professional title, it’s a sacramental title.

My own Orthodox godfather — the popular online scribe Father Stephen Freeman — responded by putting “(Father Stephen Freeman)” after his name. Other priests found clever ways to add their identity to the top of their Facebook pages. That, of course, doesn’t help people find their sites with searches for their actual names, including the word “Father.”

Like I said, there have been more consequential clashes between the Big Tech czars and religious believers, but that one was symbolic.

The key is that faith is part of daily life, for millions of folks. These days, social media software has a massive impact on how people live their lives. Thus, Big Tech is a powerful force in the lives of believers and their families. That’s why “Crossroads” host Todd Wilken and I talked about this week’s Big Tech Congressional hearings, during this week’s podcast (click here to tune that in).

So what were these hearings all about? Apparently, the answer to that question depended on one’s political ties. As I wrote the other day:

Democrats have their own reasons to be concerned about Big Tech, whose clout in the lives of modern Americans make the railroad tycoons of the Gilded Age look like minor-league players. These companies, after all, resemble digital public utilities more than mere Fortune 500 powerhouses.

Meanwhile, you know that — at some point — Republicans are going to roll out a long list of cases of viewpoint discrimination against cultural, moral, religious and — oh yeah — political conservatives.

So what happened, when the mainstream press covered the Hill showdown with the glowing digital images of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Apple’s Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos of Amazon and The Washington Post?


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Is it time to discuss this? New book surveys possible candidates for Chair of St. Peter

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he speculation over who will be the next pope is often a preoccupation of the Italian press and the subject never really fades away.

Newspapers up and down the peninsula love to handicap the race among the cardinals who are thought to be the most likely candidates to be elected pope. Indeed, the Italian term “papabile,” coined by Vatican watchers, has become mainstream over the last few decades.

Which man is “pope-able” (that is, able to become pope) is often debated in Rome and anywhere Roman Catholics gather.

Who will follow Pope Francis? The pontiff turns 84 in December, fueling speculation over who will be his replacement once he dies and the College of Cardinals meets to elect a new leader. Of course, there is now the possibility that he could retire — like Pope Benedict XVI.

A new book out, “The Next Pope: The Leading Cardinal Candidates” (Sophia Institute Press) by the National Catholic Register's longtime Rome correspondent Edward Pentin (you can read his wonderful work here), delves into the lives and beliefs of the cardinals most likely to ascend to the Chair of St. Peter. Extremely well-researched (thanks to the help of international scholars), this book is a must-read for all Catholics and anyone who wants to take a peek into what the future and what personal experiences and philosophies these various men bring to the table.

In all, Pentin helped to pinpoint 19 men who could replace Francis once his pontificate is over. Becoming the spiritual leader of more than one billion Catholics worldwide and one of the most influential moral and religious figures in the world isn’t a matter to take lightly. What this book does well is offer up an in-depth look at these cardinals (their ecclesiastical life as priests and later bishops), many of whom remain unknown to most people — journalists included.


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Post-Trump, how will U.S. evangelicals deal with internal rifts and external hostility? 

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The Donald Trump Era will end, whether in 2025 or 2021, and current state-by-state polls suggest it's the latter.

Reporters who get religion need to prepare for coverage whenever U.S. evangelical Protestantism reassesses its Trump-free past and future. That’s a big story, since this remains the most vibrant segment of U.S. religion, indeed, one of the nation’s largest movements of any type.

Evangelicalism first has internal rifts to work through. Make that white evangelicals. For the most part, Black, Latino and Asian-American evangelical churches, distinctly different in political sentiments, are unified, thriving and granted cultural respectability by the press..

White evangelicals’ public media image is all but overwhelmed by a coterie of Trump enthusiasts (think Jerry Falwell, Jr., Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, Paula White). There’s also a dogged faction of Trump skeptics (David French, Michael Gerson, Peter Wehner, or on occasion Sen. Ben Sasse or Southern Baptist spokesman Russell Moore).

But is evangelicalism merely a political faction? Of course not.

Largely ignored by the media, there’s a vast apparatus of denominations, local congregations, “parachurch” agencies, charities, mission boards and schools where leaders (whatever they think personally about Trumpish political histrionics) focus on traditional ministry and education.

The Trump years have created a gap between that non-partisan leadership elite and grassroots folk who identify as “evangelicals” with pollsters (whatever that means in belief or practice). Innumerable news articles have reported they gave Trump 81% backing in 2016.

But white evangelicals always vote heavily Republican. The Guy advises journalists that white Catholics will decide Trump’s fate. Our own tmatt notes the evidence showing that the 2016 vote was more anti-Hillary Clinton than pro-Trump.

While the evangelicals try to overcome their political squabbles to recapture past morale, they face hostility from culture-shaping higher education and (yes) the mass media that enhances their image problems.


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What is a priest worth? Latest Ted McCarrick news says it depends on the lawsuit

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There’s a book out there asking: “What is a Girl Worth?” Written by former gymnast Rachael Denhollander, it asks who is going to tell little girls that the abuse done to them years ago was monstrously wrong and that it actually matters that their perpetrators are punished.

There also needs to be a book asking “what is a priest worth?”

For two years now, we’ve been looking at the news reporting about the sex scandal that surrounded the now-former Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and how “everyone” knew he was dallying with seminarians and sharing beds with them at his New Jersey beach cottage back in the 1980s.

After the news about McCarrick broke on June 20, 2018, it took the MSM a month to get all the major details together — and still they missed a few. This New York Times piece says the sexual activity that McCarrick carried on with his protégé Robert Ciolek stayed above the waist. The paper hinted in the next paragraph that another seminarian or young priest involved with McCarrick had endured far worse sexual abuse, but unless you knew how to read between the lines, you missed it.

But the late Richard Sipe, a Benedictine priest-turned-psychotherapist, had posted on his web site 10 years beforehand accounts of very R-rated sexual activity McCarrick foisted on his underlings. Many journalists read it, but we didn’t know how to prove it. At the time, the church attitude I picked up was that nothing happened at that cottage and that the seminarians and young priests involved should get over it.

The thought that some could be scarred sexually for life never occurred to anyone. Who could they talk about this with? Who’d believe them? Because of what had been done to them, they were abandoned to mull over some very dirty thoughts while at the same time berating themselves for not fighting back.

Finally, last week, a bunch of media, including a consortium of New Jersey newspapers, reported a juicy lawsuit against McCarrick that threatens to expose some of the nastier details. Written by Newark Star-Ledger reporter Ted Sherman on the NJ.com site, the story was worth the wait.

He is known only as “Doe 14.”

Raised in a devout Catholic family, he attended St. Francis Xavier in Newark and Essex Catholic in East Orange in the Archdiocese of Newark, participating in church and youth activities.

And by the time he was a teenager, his lawyers say he was being groomed for a role in what they called a “sex ring” involving then-Bishop Theodore McCarrick, the 90-year-old now defrocked and disgraced former cardinal who was cast out of the ministry last year over decades-old sexual abuse allegations.


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Joe Biden, Democrats face tough religious issues in public life that will not go away

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Joe Biden, Democrats face tough religious issues in public life that will not go away

It didn't matter where Pete Buttigieg traveled in Iowa and the early Democratic Party primaries -- voters kept asking similar questions.

Yes, they asked about his status as the first openly gay major-party candidate to hit the top tier of a presidential race. But they also wanted to know how his faith journey into the Episcopal Church affected his life and his take on politics.

"Those who are on my side of the aisle, those who view themselves as more progressive, are sometimes allergic to talking about faith in a way that I'm afraid has made it feel as if God really did have one political party," said Buttigieg, addressing a webinar for clergy and laypeople in his denomination's House of Deputies.

"It was very important to me to assert otherwise, but also to talk about the political implications of the commandments to concern ourselves with the well-being of the most marginalized and the most vulnerable and the idea that salvation has to do with standing with and for those who are cast out in society. … That energy carried the campaign, in ways that I never would have guessed."

But highly motivated religious believers are, of course, often divided by conflicts about doctrine that then spill over into politics.

Buttigieg waded into one such controversy during the campaign when candidate Beto O'Rourke said congregations and religious institutions that reject same-sex marriage should lose their tax-exempt status.

“If we want to talk about anti-discrimination law for a school or an organization, absolutely. They should not be able to discriminate," said Buttigieg, on CNN's State of the Union broadcast. "But going after the tax exemption of churches, Islamic centers or other religious facilities in this country, I think that's just going to deepen the divisions we are already experiencing."

Other Democrats face similar hot-button issues. Former vice president Joe Biden, during his fight over the "soul of the nation" with President Donald Trump, is sure to hear questions about his Catholic faith and his evolving beliefs on moral and political issues.

Biden backed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993 and the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. His views changed, while serving with President Barack Obama.

A key moment came in 2016, when Biden performed a same-sex marriage rite.


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