Godbeat

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Crux rescued by Knights partnership; yes, major LGBT Catholic group is worried

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For those of you who were out of the loop at the end of this past week, there was a second major election about the Crux website. Check here to see round one: "To be or not to be -- What will become of Crux after that Boston Globe tie is cut?"

It didn't take long for the next shoe to drop, in the form of a second major announcement at the website: "Crux will continue with the Knights of Columbus as its partner."

Key parts of that short text include:

Veteran Vatican reporter John L. Allen Jr., associate editor of Crux, and the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization, have announced that they will enter into a partnership in which Crux will remain an independent news outlet headed by Allen and Vatican correspondent Inés San Martín.
Allen said the joint project is designed to make one of the world’s best known Catholic news platforms even stronger. The partnership will combine the Knights’ resources and spirit of service with the journalistic experience and commitment of Crux.
As part of the project, Catholic Pulse, a news and commentary website operated by the Knights of Columbus, will merge with Crux, adding its resources to Crux’s blend of staff-generated reporting and analysis with pieces by respected guest contributors. The Crux website will feature the tagline: “Keeping its finger on the Catholic Pulse.”

Allen and Co. will retain their deep online archives, which is crucial to the coverage of ongoing news and controversies. And what about the size of the new editorial team? It will be smaller, but some freelance scribes may be added in the future.

But, wait. Aren't the Knights, uh, rather doctrinally conservative?


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Religion-beat professionals: Yet another reference work that belongs on your desk

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Religion-beat professionals: Yet another reference work that belongs on your desk

Our previous religion-beat Memo puffed “The Study Quran,” a truly path-breaking production.

The Religion Guy now outpoints a  standby that belongs on the desks of journalists who don’t have one of the two earlier editions: “The Catholic Study Bible” (Oxford University Press, available in paperback for US$39.99).

The volume includes the latest (2010) version of the New American Bible, the official English translation used in the U.S. Catholic Church, alongside numerous articles and detailed verse-by-verse commentary from a 20-member team. The new edition adds, for instance, surveys of archaeological finds regarding the Bible, by Ronald Simkins of Creighton University in Omaha (Old Testament) and Dominican Sister Laurie Brink of Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union (New Testament).

In addition to keeping this book handy for future reference, newswriters could use it as a hook to analyze trends in Catholic scholarship on the Bible. The book bears the hierarchy’s  declaration that all material “is free from doctrinal and moral error.” Yet a spot check indicates the latest edition continues and somewhat reinforces the secular and liberal Protestant sort of scholarship that influenced the first two editions.

A fascinating in-depth project could compare the Study Bible’s approach with the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s conservative declarations from 1905 through the 1962 opening of the Second Vatican Council, as indexed right here.   

Among other things, prior commission decrees affirmed Moses as the “substantial” source of the first five Old Testament books; single authorship for Isaiah’s prophecy; the historical veracity of Genesis 1-3, the Book of Acts, and the Gospel of John; and that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke were written prior to A.D. 70.

Today, those sorts of views are largely confined to conservative Protestant or Orthodox Jewish scholars.


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Exorcism growing among Catholics? San Francisco Weekly offers flawed investigation

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There are some publications that treat religion-news coverage like a trip to some mysterious planet where the inhabitants are incomprehensible. Such was the San Francisco Weekly’s recent take on a local exorcist. It was so crammed with mistakes, one wonders if anyone bothered editing or fact checking the piece.

The Weekly has had some decent religion stories in the past, but this was not one of them.

Which is a shame, because the issue of exorcism is wildly interesting, the stuff of movies and best-selling books. The reporter identifies himself as a lapsed Catholic non-believer, which makes it odd that the research would be so sloppy.

We begin:

Every Thursday evening, a few dozen people file into Immaculate Conception Chapel, a small Catholic church on the steep slope of Folsom Street on Bernal Hill's north face, carrying bottles of water, tubs of protein powder, small bottles of booze, watches, rosaries, and cell phones...
The people stir a few minutes past 7 p.m. when a tiny man wearing white robes -- a long rectangle of cloth with Vegas-worthy golden sparkles hanging around his neck -- appears from a door to the left of the altar. A few weeks shy of his 89th birthday, Father Guglielmo Lauriola walks slowly across the raised altar area to a waiting chair. Here he sits, facing away from his congregation in the style of the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass, to read from laminated card prayers and songs devoted to the Virgin Mary. Aside from Jesus on the cross, she is the principal figure of veneration here at the 104-year-old church.

So the scene is set. This priest conducts a Mass, after which, we're told "the show really starts."


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No surprise here: Godbeat all-star produces stellar journalism on a sickening subject

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The details are sickening.

Even reading the lede on Wednesday's story by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette religion writer Peter Smith makes one want to vomit.

Yet the felony charges revealed in Pennsylvania this week against a Catholic religious order's superiors demand strong news coverage.

And that's exactly what Godbeat all-star Smith provides:

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — One of his Franciscan superiors knew Brother Stephen Baker had sexually abused a minor and ordered a psychological evaluation in the early 1990s. The evaluation came back with a caution — to keep Baker away from one-on-one contact with children, and no overnight trips with them.
Even so, the Very Rev. Giles A. Schinelli admitted under oath to a grand jury that he assigned Baker to work at Bishop McCort Catholic High School here in 1992, and Baker had plenty of one-on-one contact with students.
Baker became an athletic trainer there despite lacking any professional qualifications, and under the guise of offering massages or other treatment, Baker handled boys’ bare genitals with his hands and digitally penetrated their anuses, among other offenses.
A statewide grand jury, saying that he enabled a nearly two-decade rampage of abuse that claimed at least 100 victims, recommended that Father Schinelli and the two who succeeded him as head of a Hollidaysburg-based Franciscan province face almost unprecedented felony charges.
Each is charged with one count of endangering the welfare of children and criminal conspiracy, which are third-degree felonies.
The charges represent one of the broadest-ever drives to hold Roman Catholic higher-ups to account in any American criminal court for the sexual abuse of minors by those under their supervision. And they’re the first religious-order superiors to face such charges.

Producing quality journalism on a story such as this requires both factual reporting — with details attributed to named sources — and fair treatment of the various parties cited in court documents.

Smith's 1,200-word breaking news report illustrates his commitment to each of those essentials.


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Flawed Pew survey question produces flawed answer on how many Israeli Jews want Arabs kicked out

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Flawed Pew survey question produces flawed answer on how many Israeli Jews want Arabs kicked out

A Pew survey released last week had all the ingredients for another damning story about Israel and its Jewish citizens. Nearly half of Israeli Jews surveyed, Pew reported, said they favored the expulsion or transfer of Arabs out of Israel.

Given the superficial manner in which most news media, American and otherwise, cover the extraordinarily complicated, and sadly dehumanizing and deadly, Middle East -- and its long-running Israel-Palestinian subplot in particular -- the Pew story seemed a natural headline-grabber.

It turned out to be otherwise. Nonetheless, it did underscore the importance of raising journalistic red flags when reporting on dumbed-down, highly generalized and potentially inflammatory survey questions that purport to accurately measure real-world complexities.

Let's start with these telling New York Times stories about the survey. Click here to read the first one. Then click here to read the second.

Why are they telling?

Because The Times'  initial Web offering was a standard wire service report that led -- predictably -- with the international red-meat angle, the more easily written expulsion aspect that, given the hostility to Israel in much of the world, was virtually assured of gaining wide play.

But also because the second piece, written by a Times' Jerusalem bureau staffer that ran in the dead wood edition the following day, buried the expulsion angle and led instead with the more complicated to report survey results dealing with the deep religious and political rifts within Israeli Jewish society.

The expulsion angle wasn't mentioned until the eighth paragraph.


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Yo, journalists: Mother Teresa would be quick to explain that she cannot perform miracles

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Now it's on the calendar. The "saint of the gutters" will, on Sept. 4 -- the eve of the anniversary of her death in 1997 -- become a Catholic saint. The tiny nun who millions hailed as "a living saint" will officially become St. Mother Teresa.

Obviously, this announcement by the pope required journalists to describe the somewhat complicated process that led to this moment. Thus, this assignment -- trigger warning! -- required descriptions of complicated doctrinal concepts such as "prayers" and "miracles."

The key word you are looking for, as you scan the mainstream media coverage, is "intercede."

However, if you want to see a perfect example of HOW NOT to describe this process, note this passage from USA Today:

She was beatified in 2003 by Pope John Paul II after being attributed to a first miracle, answering an Indian woman's prayers to cure her brain tumor, according to the Vatican. One miracle is needed for beatification -- described by the Catholic Church as recognition of a person's entrance into heaven -- while sainthood requires two.
Francis officially cleared Mother Teresa for sainthood on Dec. 17, 2015, recognizing her "miraculous healing" of a Brazilian man with multiple brain abscesses, the Vatican said.

Note that we are dealing with paraphrased quotes. Did an official at the Vatican actually say that Mother Teresa, on her own, "healed" these two people? Or did the Vatican say that they were healed by God after believers asked Mother Teresa to pray for them, to "intercede" with God on their behalf?

Here is the key doctrinal fact that journalists need to grasp in order to get this story right: Saints pray. God heals.


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Mirror-image news: So 1,800 Catholics show up for solemn, holy rite at Planned Parenthood ...

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It's time for another round of the religion-beat exercise that your GetReligionistas call the "mirror-image game." The goal is to look at the coverage, or lack of coverage, of a news event and then try to imagine the coverage that would have resulted with a few details of the story switched around.

Yes, the "mirror-image" debate of all time would be the shouting matches about mainstream news coverage, or lack of coverage, of the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. People have been studying aerial photos and videotapes of that gigantic march for decades, trying to imagine the coverage it would receive if that many marchers were on hand for a cause on the cultural left (think "War on Women").

Now, this "Got News?" item focuses on a Catholic march, literally, around and around a Planned Parenthood facility near Denver. What made this march different was that it focused on a specific, holy rite called a "Eucharistic Procession (or Corpus Christi procession)," in which worshipers march behind a "monstrance" (images here) containing a large host that has been consecrated as the Body of Christ.

In other words, this was not a rowdy demonstration. Here is the top of the National Catholic Register report about this recent event:

A powerful, solemn scene unfolded at Planned Parenthood in Stapleton, Colorado ... as Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila led some 1,800 Catholics in a Eucharistic procession seven times around the abortion center.
“It was truly a moment of grace, a moment of blessing, a moment of praying to our Lord that hearts may be changed,” Archbishop Aquila said. “It was wonderful to see how many turned out today.”

The liturgical nature of the event is crucial to this story:


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To be or not to be: What will become of Crux after that Boston Globe tie is cut?

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That unsettling disturbance that you felt yesterday in the religion-beat force was some very bad news.

As you may have heard, or have seen in secondary coverage via Twitter, that The Boston Globe has decided to pull the plug on its support of Crux, its must-read online Catholic news publication that has been built around the work of the omnipresent (I will keep using that word since it is accurate) John L. Allen, Jr. The funds dry up at the end of March.

Globe Editor Brian McGrory admitted the obvious, in a letter speaking for every newsroom manager who has tried to pay the bills with digital advertising forms that readers tend to ignore, or actually hate:

"The problem is the business," McGrory wrote. "We simply haven't been able to develop the financial model of big-ticket, Catholic-based advertisers that was envisioned when we launched Crux back in 2014. ...
"We also need to be able to cut our losses when we've reached the conclusion that specific projects won't pay off," his letter reads.

Now, a letter to readers from Crux Editor Teresa Hanafin (read it all) answers the crucial questions that religion-news readers and professionals will want to know. Here is a crucial chunk of that:

... The good news is that John Allen plans to continue the site, with assistance from Inés San Martín, our Vatican correspondent. National reporter Michael O’Loughlin, columnist Margery Eagan, and our stable of freelancers will find other places for their work. I’ll move over to BostonGlobe.com. ...
We’re thrilled that John is taking on the challenge of keeping Crux alive.


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Attention journalists: A Muslim landmark that belongs on your desk

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Attention journalists: A Muslim landmark that belongs on your desk

Media personnel obviously are giving far more attention to Islam than they did years ago -- because they need to.

Therefore “The Study Quran” (HarperOne, 1,988 pages, US$59.99, e-book US$19.99) that was noted in a post by GetReligion’s Julia Duin should be in media company libraries (if they still exist) or in the private collections of all newswriters whose work is in any way linked to religion in the news.

This classy landmark, nine years in preparation, imitates Christians’ many “study Bibles,” a couple of which also belong on newsroom desks. The totally new English translation of Islam’s holy book is accompanied by an extensive verse-by-verse commentary, 16 related essays, an index and other “helps.” The work provides a much-needed option to the useful but somewhat outdated 1934 translation and commentary by A. Yusuf Ali that Saudi Arabia has distributed widely.

To The Religion Guy’s eyes the one big negative is the translators’ ill-advised reversion to fusty King James-ish phrasing, as though it's somehow more reverent: “Dost thou not know?” “God is wroth.” “Thou grant me reprieve till a term nigh.” While the commentary is invaluable, the recent translations by M.A.S. Abdel Haleem or Majid Fakhry may be more useful for journalistic quotations.

With this book, English-speakers can now gain ready access to authoritative scholarship representing the grand tradition of this massive religion. Since much of the relevant literature is in Arabic, the material drawn from 41 standard commentators, and the 43 pages of citations from hadith traditions of Muhammad’s teachings, are especially important for western Muslims and non-Muslims.

The editor-in-chief was the well-respected Seyyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington University, working with former students Caner Dagli of the College of the Holy Cross, Maria Massi Dakake of George Mason University (a female scholar’s participation is significant), Joseph Lumbard of American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates and Mohammed Ruston of Canada’s Carleton University. Dakake and Lumbard are converts from Christian backgrounds, a plus in this situation, but it’s a thoroughly Muslim reference work, from a team with expertise in the Sunni, Shi’a and Sufi branches.


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