Catholicism

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How AI may be able to improve journalism when it comes to reporting on Catholicism

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How AI may be able to improve journalism when it comes to reporting on Catholicism

One of the things I enjoy about the summer is catching up with people I haven’t seen all year to discuss news, politics and culture. Since so many of my friends are in the news business, inevitably the state of the mass media comes up as a topic.

The one constant subject that has arisen from these conversations is the rise (and potential threat) of artificial intelligence. Specifically, the topic of how AI can (and will) replace humans who report and write for a living.

While machines have yet to replace all writers, the threat is real. This isn’t just limited to journalists. AI has impacted Hollywood (look at the current writers strike), education (from grade school to college) and the retail industry. And yes, journalism is up there to when it comes to an industry seen as under threat, according to a poll conducted earlier this year.

AI a either a new technological monster or a friend to journalists. The industry is divided by the issue. Like the internet back in the 1990s, AI is both astonishing and perplexing.

How has AI and machine learning impacted journalism? Can it make it better or worse? These are just two valid questions people in newsrooms are asking. The question here at GetReligion is how AI could affect religion-beat work and, in this case, the state of Catholic news and publications.

For starters, consider that there will be 10 new AP Stylebook entries to caution journalists about common pitfalls in coverage of artificial intelligence. Here’s what the Associated Press said:

While AP staff may experiment with ChatGPT with caution, they do not use it to create publishable content.

Any output from a generative AI tool should be treated as unvetted source material. AP staff must apply their editorial judgment and AP’s sourcing standards when considering any information for publication.


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Today's complicated politics: Are evangelical pews 'red' while more pulpits are 'blue'?

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Today's complicated politics: Are evangelical pews 'red' while more pulpits are 'blue'?

Like everybody else, American religion writers are caught in a politics-drenched environment that for Republicans gets hot with the first debates August 23 and September 27 and presumably wraps up with the Ohio primary March 19, if not before.

Given the pertinence of the religion factor in U.S. politics, kudos to Yonat Shimron of Religion News Service for her piece last week spotlighting a significant article — “Clergy-lay political (mis)alignment in 2019–2020” — in the September issue of the international academic journal Politics and Religion.

The authors, Duke University sociology Professor Mark Chaves and post-doctoral researcher Joseph Roso, set out to decide whether there’s a significant gap on politics between clergy leading local congregations and the lay members in each of U.S. religion’s four largest Christian niches — “Evangelical” Protestant, “Mainline” Protestant, Black Protestant and Catholic.

The conclusions are based upon reliable and representative sets of data (see the article for particulars), The Guy perpetually chides political reporters for neglecting Catholics, who are almost always the pivotal swing voters. But reporters, who must assess hyper-newsmaker Donald Trump’s prospects for nomination and election, will be especially interested in whether there’s a significant gap between the loyally Republican white evangelical clergy and laity.

Answer: No. Their pastors and lay members are overwhelmingly the same politically, and that’s also the case with Black preachers and parishioners. However, unity on conservative politics may or may not be the same thing as unity on a particular candidate.

Meanwhile, “misaligned” differences occur with Catholics and especially with Mainline Protestants, whose pulpits vs. pews gap has been a topic of lively conversation for a half-century.

Check out the article for the full numbers and analysis. All the findings are important, but here are some key ones.


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Life, death, eternity, golf: Can reporters spot Baby Boomer religion ghosts at The Villages?

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Life, death, eternity, golf: Can reporters spot Baby Boomer religion ghosts at The Villages?

I think it was “Doonesbury” creator Garry Trudeau who summed up the Baby Boomer aging process by saying it would be really depressing to have a heart attack while wearing your faded 501 Levi jeans.

I get that, as a Boomer who was born at the peak of that demographic wave (think January 1954). It seems like 75% of the ads during every noon ESPN Sports Center broadcast are aimed at me and my Medicare benefits. On top of that, I also spent several years in South Florida (I turned 50 there), where half the houses (it seemed to me) were in a development with “villages” in the name.

Thus, I understand why people are reacting to that recent feature. “Shadow on the Sun,” that ran in The Lamp Magazine, “A Catholic Journal of Literature, Science, the Fine Arts, Etc.” This long article by Sam Kriss isn’t a “news” feature, but I would argue that religion-beat journalists should dig into it.

Why? Well, as the Grateful Dead prophet Jerry Garcia put it — “What a long, strange trip it’s been.” And for millions of Boomers, the end of that trip is getting closer (like the Firesign Theater’s Antelope Freeway exit that never seems to arrive). Thus, there are lots of news hooks in this piece linked to death, dying and the Boomers, especially for reporters in Florida.

This brings us to The Villages, the largest retirement community in the world. The feature opens with a real-estate agent named Jason at the wheel during a tour.

Scholl Foot Care. Urology Associates. Cracker Barrel. Jason told me about The Villages. He explained that The Villages occupies around eighty square miles of central Florida, which makes it substantially larger than the island of Manhattan. It’s home to some one hundred forty thousand happy, active retired people, with more constantly arriving: this is the single fastest-growing metro area in the entire United States. It contains nine state-of-the-art hospitals, four gun ranges, two one-thousand-seat concert venues, and eight vast churches. It has more than fifty free golf courses, enough for you to play on a different range every week of the year. Ninety swimming pools, not counting the ones in people’s backyards. Twenty of them are Olympic-sized. Something like ten million square feet of commercial space, including a dozen sprawling shopping centers and over one hundred restaurants and bars. Residents also have their pick of around three thousand community social clubs. The Acting Out Theater Club produces its own original musicals. The Red Sox Nation Club has more members in The Villages than it does in Boston. The MAGA Club has hosted members of the Trump family. You can sail or scuba dive or line dance or learn the ukulele or discuss Ayn Rand. The Villages has its own radio station (W.V.L.G.), TV channel (V.N.N.), and newspaper (the Daily Sun), and somewhere north of eighty thousand homes. Jason couldn’t give me a more precise figure because it’s constantly changing. The Villages builds four hundred new houses every month.

What does this have to do with religion, morality and culture?


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Catholic archbishop offers some candid thoughts to a conservative Lutheran crowd

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Catholic archbishop offers some candid thoughts to a conservative Lutheran crowd

Serious fasting is hard, even for a Catholic archbishop, especially when the aroma of spaghetti sauce is wafting through a church during an Italian community dinner.

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone learned that lesson during California's bitter battles over the meaning of "marriage," "family" and other common terms that had become controversial. But he had promised to join in 100 days of prayer, and 40 days of fasting, as part of an ecumenical coalition's efforts to defend centuries of teachings on sexuality.

It was evangelical Protestants who proposed the fast, even though traditional Catholics have practiced that discipline for centuries.

"They meant serious fasting — like not eating, or eating very little, just one meal a day. So, not just giving up dessert, you know?", said Cordileone, during this summer's "Issues, Etc." conference at Concordia University in Chicago, sponsored by Lutheran Public Radio. (This independent online network also produces my GetReligion.org podcast.)

The inside joke about Catholics "giving up dessert" hit home, even though he was speaking to Missouri Synod Lutherans.

There was a time when Lutherans would not have invited a Catholic archbishop to this kind of event, said Cordileone. There was a time when it was rare for Catholics to cooperate with evangelicals and other believers seeking common ground on moral and social issues.

"To tell you the truth, I actually long for the good old days when we used to have the luxury to fight with each other over doctrinal issues," said Cordileone, drawing laughter. "But right now, the ship is going down. … The crew cannot afford to stand on the bridge and discuss the best kind of navigation equipment to use — when the ship is going down."

The "ship," he stressed, is not the church — "It's our civilization." If clergy cannot work together to defend ancient doctrines on marriage and family, while also striving to convince their own flocks to live by them, then "our civilization is … hanging by a thread."


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When covering women's ordination news, don't ignore the Protestant little guys  

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When covering women's ordination news, don't ignore the Protestant little guys  

One of 2023’s major religion-news events was the decision by the Southern Baptist Convention, by far America’s largest Protestant denomination, to expel two congregations and to exclude any others that ordain women to be “any kind of pastor,” thus barring assistants, educators, chaplains and ordained missionaries as well as lead pastors.

The 2000 rewrite of the SBC’s crucial Baptist Faith and Message document had stated somewhat ambiguously that “the office of pastor is limited to men.” Debate continues to swirl on a new constitutional amendment, which needs second and final approval at next June’s meeting.

That’s a big story. Journalists tend to ignore smaller denominations that also provide news potential on these issues along the following lines.

Many conservative evangelicals are “egalitarians” who favor women clergy and lay office-holders, but an interesting example on the opposite “complementarian” side is the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA),  based in Lawrenceville, Georgia. As it happened, the PCA General Assembly was discussing the role of women in ministry during meetings in Memphis the same week as the Baptists’ New Orleans showdown.

The PCA is a story in and of itself.

This denomination began in 1973 as 41,000 southern Presbyterians broke from a more liberal “mainline” church and then managed notable northern outreach. While the SBC slowly shrinks, as of this year’s 50th anniversary the PCA boasted nearly 400,000 members in 2,000 congregations, 600 career missionaries, annual proceeds exceeding $1 billion and a new church opening on average every two weeks. The career and then death of its well-known New York City Pastor Timothy Keller earned MSM coverage.

From the beginning, the PCA has opposed female clergy. Its Book of Church Order states regarding clergy, lay elders, and lay deacons that “in accord with Scripture, these offices are open to men only.” But there’s continual agitation. Some prominent PCA congregations formally “commission” female deaconesses or deacon “assistants” (.pdf here) who help the fully “ordained” deacons.


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Questions for journalists: What would it take for Catholic church attacks to become news?

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Questions for journalists: What would it take for Catholic church attacks to become news?

I am venturing into Clemente Lisi territory with this post, and I know that. However, there are questions about the national wave of attacks on Catholic churches and sacred sites that have started to bother me. Maybe this is a test case of how the post-American Model of the Press marketplace is really going to work? Just how biased is the acceptable bias going to get?

Let’s start here: If bad people attack African-American sanctuariess, is this a news story? The answer, of course, is “Yes.” Everyone agrees, with the exception of unrepentant racists.

Now, if bad people attack Roman Catholic churches, is that a news story? The answer appears to be “No.” This is news for “Catholic,” “religious” and “conservative” newsrooms. It appears to be a minor story, zip code by zip code, in local news. This violent trend is not news for elite, national-level media.

Why is that? Possible answers include: (a) These attacks are being done by people who are “good” in the eyes of journalists because their cause is just. (b) These are bad Catholic churches (they do not fly Pride flags, etc.). (c) There are just too many of these attacks for them to be considered “news.”

Finally, (d) if these attacks were news, public officials would have to ponder whether they are “hate crimes.” This would violate the unspoken law that it’s impossible to commit a hate crime against a group that has not been declared “oppressed” by The New York Times, National Public Radio, Yale Law School and others.

Would this trend be a story if the world’s second most famous Catholic delivered an Oval Office address on the subject? Maybe we will see, if President Joe Biden sees trouble brewing in New Hampshire.

Oh well, whatever, nevermind. Here is yet another one of those “local” stories: “Cross cut down at Santiago Retreat Center in Silverado Canyon, investigators looking for suspect.” The familiar details:

A 14-foot wooden cross at the Santiago Retreat Center was sawed down this week, leaving staff and counselors shocked while Orange County sheriff’s officials try to identify a suspect, authorities said.


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Elite press skips doctrine at World Youth Day in favor of (#surprise) scandal and politics

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Elite press skips doctrine at World Youth Day in favor of (#surprise) scandal and politics

This summer has been a very busy one for Pope Francis and the church. Adding to all this news was World Youth Day held in Lisbon, Portugal. Last held in 2019, the event — often nicknamed the “Catholic Woodstock” — was initiated by Saint Pope John Paul II in 1985.

The concept of World Youth Day has been influenced by the Light-Life Movement that has existed in Poland since the 1960s, where Catholic teens celebrated a “day of community” during youth camp retreats. This has morphed into the five-day event that ended yesterday.

The journalists in the mainstream press have never known what to do with this event. This is, after all, a positive gathering that brings together millions of people, mostly young Catholics. This is not an everyday thing. It shows young Catholics happy to embrace the church, while celebrating its teachings — a stark contrast to the secular world and the messages of hopelessness and sin we get each day.

As a result, the mainstream press covers World Youth Day and the pope’s appearances through a lens of scandal and (#ShockedShocked) politics.

Doctrine, as is often the case, is simply swept aside. Anything positive that can be gleaned from the gathering of so many young people is tossed aside. World Youth Day is a snapshot of the church’s future — but you wouldn’t know it from much of the coverage of the last week. For example, going to confession (with the pope helping out) is a major part of the World Youth Day experience. Valid story?

For great — and complete — World Youth Day coverage, the Catholic press did its job, once again. Places such as Crux, The Pillar on Substack and Catholic News Agency created pages where all their stories could be found. In other words, a one-stop-shop for all things World Youth Day.

How did the mainstream media do?

Take a guess.

I understand there are different audiences to satisfy, but ignoring what’s in front of their eyes — large masses of young Catholics excited about their faith — in favor of what I saw as negative coverage isn’t a snapshot of reality. It is, instead, a focus on what editors and journalists think their own loyal niche audiences want to read about the modern church.


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Plug-In: Justice in the Tree Of Life synagogue shooting -- will killer be executed?

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Plug-In: Justice in the Tree Of Life synagogue shooting -- will killer be executed?

I’m back in Oklahoma after spending big chunks of the last week in California and Texas.

This is our weekly roundup of the top headlines and best reads in the world of faith. We start with the killer’s sentence in the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting.

What To Know: The Big Story

Antisemitic attack: “The man who killed 11 congregants at a Pittsburgh synagogue was formally sentenced to death Thursday, one day after a jury determined that capital punishment was appropriate for the perpetrator of the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history.”

That’s the lede from The Associated Press’ Peter Smith (a religion writer who has covered this case from the beginning) and Michael Rubinkam.

Painful process: Survivors characterized Robert Bowers’ trial as extremely difficult to endure and a necessary accounting, according to the New York Times’ Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Anna Betts and Jon Moss. The Times:

“Most families of the victims have said that they supported a death sentence, but some have been outspoken in their opposition to it. One, Miri Rabinowitz, whose husband was killed, said executing the gunman would be a “bitter irony” because her husband had been devoted to “the sanctity of life.”

What’s next: But a big question remains: When will Bowers be put to death?

An even bigger question: Will he actually be executed?

As Religion New Service’s Yonat Shimron points out, “it will take years and likely decades for the sentence to be carried out, if it happens at all.” RNS explains:

Bowers will join 41 others on federal death row. Sixteen people have been executed by the federal government since Congress reinstated capital punishment in 1988.


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Washington Post fires distress rockets about another religious liberty vs. LGBTQ+ case

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Washington Post fires distress rockets about another religious liberty vs. LGBTQ+ case

Yes, here we go again. The first time I read through this Washington Post story — “Firing of gay Catholic school teacher could test latest Supreme Court ruling” — I thought it was another botched mainstream press story about a case in which a doctrinally defined academic community (in this case a Catholic school) fired a teacher who could not affirm the school’s doctrines (think Catholic Catechism).

That’s part of what is happening here. Once again, the journalists involved in reporting and editing this story failed to mention whether the school did or did not require teachers, staff and students to sign a covenant in which they affirmed Catholic teachings or, at the very least, agreed not to take public actions that rejected them.

That’s a classic “ministerial exception” case. The key issue is whether administrators have clearly stated the role that a doctrinal covenant plays in the life of their school. Hold that thought.

But this story has another goal — which is to fire distress rockets that the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent 303 Creative decision could strengthen the case of religious school leaders that want to employ faculty members and staff who affirm the teachings of their faith. The key word here is “bolster,” as in this secondary definition: “support or strengthen; prop up.” Look for that in the Post overture:

When Lonnie Billard announced on Facebook in October 2014 that he was engaged to his partner of 14 years, he knew not everyone in his social circles would celebrate the news. Same-sex marriage had only been legal in his home state of North Carolina for two weeks.

“If you don’t agree with this,” he wrote, “keep it to yourself.”

He received only congratulations in reply. But two months later, while the substitute teacher and his fiancé were celebrating Christmas with one of his colleagues at Charlotte Catholic High School, Billard mentioned that he hadn’t heard from the school about filling in during her post-holiday vacation.

That’s when Billard learned he was no longer being employed by the Catholic school because he was marrying a man. Billard sued the school for sex discrimination and won in 2021. That decision is being challenged by a nonprofit firm involved in multiple high-profile fights on behalf of religious conservatives, which says last month’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of a web designer who did not want to work for gay couples bolsters its case.

In other words, the 303 Creative case might strengthen the already established First Amendment right of doctrinally defined religious institutions — think voluntary associations and private schools — to hire and fire personnel based on doctrinal standards. That would be bad. There is no need for the Post to consider how these First Amendment cases would defend the rights of progressive believers.


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