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A story in Thursday’s Daily Mirror about the first English patient suffering from dementia to have traveled to the Dignitas clinic in Zurich to kill himself by physician assisted suicide has prompted several “me too” stories in the British press.
The meaningless drivel that passes for public language these days was the major theme of my chat last week with Todd Wilken, the host of Issues, Etc. In our conversation broadcast on 24 May 2013, Todd and I discussed my article âScotland the confused: Did Presbyterians back gay clergy?”, posted at GetReligion and talked about all that double-talk.
One of the most common fallacies of our age is the assumption that simply because we prefer a certain set of social policies they must therefore be compatible.
For this post, we’re not going to critique past the first sentence of this New York Times story on Pope Francis headlined “Francisâ Humility and Emphasis on the Poor Strike a New Tone at the Vatican.” To be fair, that headline might have caused half of our Roman Catholic readers to spasm in response. But we’re not touching it. We’re going to look at just the first line. Here:
I spent most of last week on the other side of the planet (a Media Project-Poynter.org event in Bangkok) or getting to the other side of the planet and an odd little post I had been planning slid down into the tmatt file of guilt.
Details are continuing to emerge on Wednesday’s murder of British soldier Lee Rigby near the Woolwich barracks in London — a crime described by Prime Minister David Cameron as a terrorist attack.
Let’s start with the actual words spoken by Pope Francis, in his much quoted, and often warped, sermon on Mark 9:38-40 and the work of Jesus Christ in redeeming all of creation, including the people in it.
It’s kind of charming that all popes have to deal with bad media coverage and global press frenzies. This week we’ve seen some awful media coverage of Pope Francis, including coverage of his blessing of a man after Mass on Sunday. Part of the blame must go to the Italian press, which really went crazy with the story in a way that might not be prudent. But I’ll restrict myself to the English-language media. Let’s begin with the Telegraph (U.K.):
Something happened on Monday at the General Assembly the Church of Scotland — they appear to have become Anglicans. No — they didn’t change from a Presbyterian to Episcopal form of church government. They did something more Anglican than combining bishops with Calvinism. Â They’ve accepted the sacred “yes/but” Â Anglican doctrine of deliberate confusion, Â and have adopted a policy on gay clergy that no one quite seems to understand.
