Godbeat

Christmas carol wars on the DC Metro -- not

Anyone who spends much time on subways and other forms of mass transit knows that a whole lot of religious stuff goes on while people are moving from home to work. I’m not just talking about the people with their sports pages and copies of 50 shades of hades or whatever.


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The late Rev. Fred Rogers fills his pastoral role, once again

During the past few days, how many of you have either (a) seen this picture and the following quotation on Facebook or (b) have received an email with a URL that points you toward this material?


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WWROD: What the heck is a 'denomination' anyway?

As I mentioned the other day, one of the best religion-beat professionals ever — that would be Richard Ostling of Time and the Associated Press — has opened up a weblog here in the Patheos online universe.


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How to bury a link to the Catholic scandal of this age

Anyone who has followed the mainstream media’s coverage of the Catholic Church over the past decade or so knows that the biggest story out there — for perfectly valid reasons, let me stress — has been the latest wave of evidence that some members of the church hierarchy have hidden the sins and crimes of many clergy who have abused thousands of teens and children. These scandals have been drawing waves of coverage since the 1980s, although there are reporters out there who seem to think that this hellish pot of sin, sacrilege and clericism didn’t boil over until the revelations in Boston about a decade ago.


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The Pope joins Twitter #HabemusPapam

Even though the Pope joining Twitter has been news for weeks, I was still surprised at what a big story it was yesterday. I’ve been on Twitter for years (joined the morning after an epic anti-Twitter rant at the local pub) and I don’t even have 4,000 followers. Even before the Pope had issued his first tweet, he had more than 1 million followers. He tweeted his first item yesterday. Or as Rocco Palmo put it, #HabemusPapam.


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A young, dying heart and the prayers of JPII

News reports that involve claims of the miraculous can get a bit messy (as we saw the other day in a story about India), since reporters often hesitate to quote the views of believers without a touch of snark. At the same time, it’s possible to veer the other direction and fail to report the practical, physical details that can be verified about what did or what didn’t happen in any particular case.


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Covering Catholics who are more like 'Catholics'

GetReligion readers may recall the case of young Lennon Cihak, who — at the very least — told the Rev. Gary LaMoine (in photo) that he disagreed with the Catholic Church’s teachings on sexual ethics and marriage. Thus, the priest — after long talks with the family — decided that the young man should not be confirmed as a grown-up, loyal Catholic believer.


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