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I’ve been admiring how much work Gary Stern, the Journal News religion reporter, has put into preparing for the upcoming visit of Pope Benedict XVI. He put up an interactive Web site and publishes regular updates on his religion blog.
I realize, of course, that Eastern Orthodox Christians can be very picky and precise when it comes to matters of doctrine and liturgy. I mean, there’s a reason that we are called the Orthodox.
I hope readers who celebrated Easter yesterday had a beautiful day. I was most intrigued by coverage of the baptism of Magdi Allam, a prominent critic of radical Islam. Here’s how Nicole Winfield of the Associated Press began her story:
When I worked at the Charlotte Observer, a long, long time ago, one of the stars of the newsroom was a feature writer named Frye Gaillard. He’s been writing books for years now, but it seems that one of his earlier works was a bit prophetic.
It’s a famous storyline from Western literature, not to mention the lives of millions of believers: a person responds to God’s call and becomes Christian. Think of St. Paul falling to the ground and hearing God’s voice or St. Augustine hearing a voice say “Take and read, take and read.”
Another day, another bomb and 43 more deaths. And this time there seem to be serious questions about what precisely happened near the Imam Hussein shrine in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, which is located inside one of the tightest security zones in post-surge Iraq.
Day after day, your GetReligionistas receive a steady stream of email from people who seem to pay little attention to what it is that we actually do at this weblog.
A few of you noted the relative lack of coverage of both the kidnapping and death of Chaldean Catholic Paulos Faraj Rahho, Archbishop of Mosul. His body was discovered yesterday.
The carving of India and the subcontinent into tense, clashing nations is, literally, the greatest tragedy of the 20th century that hardly anyone in America knows about. It was a nightmare so hellish that some of its images and stories are simply not mentioned. The denial is that deep.
