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Boston Globe religion reporter Michael Paulson has been covering an interesting story. The local Catholic hospital chain and a secular insurance company are forming a joint venture. Cardinal O’Malley supports the move but many critics are concerned about whether the arrangement will entangle the church with abortion. For his latest, he surveyed moral theologians:
It hardly seems nine years since Roman Catholics and Protestant foes vowed to co-exist peacably with one another in the 1998 Good Friday agreement. Last week’s killing of a Catholic policeman and two British soldiers (two splinter I.R. A group’s claimed responsibility for the killings) could have threatened that peace.
If you are one of the scores of people who still get the tiny, dead-tree-pulp edition of The Baltimore Sun on Saturdays — the cartoons are now in the SPORTS section, because there’s no logical place to put them — then you may have seen a sad little page of religion content this morning in the all-purpose news section. If you hit the auto ads, you went too far.
It’s would be very hard to write a feature-length obituary for an internationally known Roman Catholic priest while avoiding religious images and content.
I am of the opinion that what drives some media narratives is less overt bias than a love for drama that pits one protagonist against another in competition for the lowest common denominator. But most people don’t live their daily lives on protest lines, or suing one another, or testifying before Congress.
The world’s economic troubles have many journalists writing articles about how the global society is changing as a consequence of the recession. For example, the Atlantic had this cover story on how communities like New York City will benefit from the financial crash (not exactly original or surprising considering the author). The Economist writes about how we may see a return “of economic nationalism.”
Earlier this week, the California Supreme Court heard arguments for and against Californians’ right to define marriage as a union of one man and one woman. There are many reports about those oral arguments and almost every account says that the justices seemed inclined to uphold the voters’ decision in passing Proposition 8.
Dan Gilgoff, who runs the God & Country blog over at U.S. News & World Report, picked up on a little noticed but terribly interesting development in civil religion. Apparently President Obama’s public events are now being launched with prayers from local leaders.
