Jim Davis

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Francis gives 'Charlie Hebdo' quotes, and mainstream media don't freak!

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Gol' durn. Do the mainstream media finally "get" papal coverage?

You no doubt recall the circus after Pope Francis answered a question about gays -- “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” -- a circus that is still ongoing in some outlets. But most journos seem to realize their favorite Catholic has not, in fact, rewritten centuries of teaching on sexuality.

Well, we had another near-viral experience this week, when Francis was flying from Sri Lanka to the Philippines. A French reporter asked about religion and free speech, apparently without mentioning the jihadi massacre of the staff of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris. According to the much-quoted account in the Associated Press, Francis used the example of papal trip organizer Alberto Gasbarri:

"If my good friend Dr. Gasbarri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch," Francis said half-jokingly, throwing a mock punch his way. "It's normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others."

This time, though, most mainstream media didn't seem to freak. AP noted that Francis has also denounced religious violence as an "aberration" and has called on Muslim leaders to speak out against religious extremism.

The Washington Post folds the AP piece into its own report on Francis' remarks. The newspaper then updated its piece with a Vatican statement:


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Pass the coffee & donuts, hold the faith: KC Star looks at a non-church

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GetReligion has occasionally looked at stories about "church" for the unchurched, as tmatt did last February. But the Kansas City Star takes a close, detailed, 2,100-word look at the so-called Oasis movement, especially in the newspaper's hometown.

These "self-described freethinkers, humanists, secularists, atheists and agnostics" chat, nosh, listen to music and hear engaging messages. All without God or Bible or prayers or doctrines or other stuff that made them leave church. But with a lot of what they really value -- community:

A half-hour before everyone takes a seat, the Sunday morning coffee and doughnuts are producing their desired effect.
Fellowship: Hearty greetings, handshakes and hugs. The chatter gets boisterous as the gathering space fills.
Coffee and doughnuts are a classic element at many a house of worship. This isn’t a church, though. That’s about the last place most of these people want to be. But it’s not anti-church, either.

It's a thought-provoking story,  posing the question -- without even asking -- of the nature of the "fellowship" offered in regular congregations. But as we'll see, the story doesn't quite get to the nugget of the "community" offered at the Oasis.

Although the topic has been done and done -- invariably pegged off the Pew study on the "Nones" in October 2012 -- the Star at least featurizes the topic for its magazine. And you can't fault the story on sourcing, not with 12 quoted sources.

They include:


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How does the Catholic Church work? Miami Herald didn't get the memo

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How does the Catholic Church work? Miami Herald didn't get the memo

"Can't imagine where this piece goes, can you?" a faithful reader says in tipping us about a Miami Herald story. "At least they're clear in the headline."

They sure are. "Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski’s memo draws fire from marriage-equality groups," the headline says. Wenski, like other Catholic bishops, opposes same-sex marriage. So he's against "equality."

The story lede, too, reads like a DUN-dun-DUNNN!

After judges in Florida lifted the state’s ban on same-sex marriage this week, thousands of employees in Miami’s Catholic Archdiocese got a memo from their boss, Archbishop Thomas Wenski, that read as a warning: watch what you do or say, even after work or on social media, or you might lose your job.
Wenski’s note, after a brief reference to court decisions that he said “imposed the redefinition of marriage,” merely quoted from the employee handbook as a reminder to Church workers of longstanding policy: Every archdiocese employee, Catholic or non-Catholic, from ministerial leader to school teacher and custodian, is considered a Church representative and is expected to abide by Catholic teaching, and any conduct “inconsistent” with that can draw disciplinary action, up to termination.

As a frequent freelancer for the Florida Catholic newspaper -- and a former religion writer for the Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale -- I was naturally interested in the story. I've known Wenski since he was an earnest young priest ministering to Haitian immigrants in the 1980s. He has always struck me as a John Paul II-type Catholic: tough on doctrine but warm toward people. So the image of a ruthless overlord seemed out of place.

I also note that the story appears on the Herald's "Gay South Florida" page. So I have to ask, as the logo above says: "What is This?" News? Editorial? Commentary? If the former, why wasn’t it in sections A or B of the newspaper? If the latter, why isn't it marked as such?


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African agony: AFP story and photos keep our eyes on Muslim-Christian strife

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So virulent are outbreaks of violence like the shootings at Charlie Hebdo magazine, and the Middle Eastern plague known as ISIS, it's easy to forget or overlook slow-burning fevers like the religio-Civil War in the Central African Republic.  But Agence France-Presse has not forgotten.

AFP's Miguel Medina spent three weeks in the battle-scarred land, coming back with a story and photos that are at once gripping, insightful and despairing.

In 10 photos and 1,000 words, Medina paints a picture of battling factions in towns like Bangui. There are the Seleka, a Muslim rebel force, and the "anti-balaka," the Christian militia organized against them. And there are the French and African soldiers brought in as peacekeepers, who themselves often do killings of their own.

One paragraph especially illustrates the randomness of the violence. Medina describes a massive explosion in a neighborhood, then:

Some Burundi soldiers had hurriedly evacuated two women, Christians who’d been hit by shrapnel, toward a neighboring shack. The attack had injured three other people - a Muslim, a Burundi troop and a young man I didn't know anything about. This is how it is at the moment in Bangui. Christians and Muslims recognise each other and randomly attack one another. It's an infernal cycle of attacks and counterattacks. No one is safe.

He photographs a Chadian Muslim family cowering against a wall, saying that only French parachutists kept an angry crowd of Christians at bay. "Tensions are so high that taxi drivers -- whether Christian or Muslim -- risk being killed by people of their own faith if they dare take a client from the other community," Medina says.


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Yes, Bess Myerson was Jewish -- but don't ask mainstream media how

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I don't know if time heals all wounds, but it often smooths edges. When Bess Myerson was chosen Miss America in 1945, she reportedly still found hotels and other sites still closed to her as a Jew. But to me as a boy, she was just that pretty brunette panelist on the TV game show I've Got a Secret.

If anything, attitudes changed toward American Jews have changed even more thoroughly. Or maybe, mainstream just don't like to mention religion at all. So many media obits of Myerson, who died Dec. 14, play down her faith and heritage beyond the phrase "the first (and, to this day, only) Jewish Miss America."

CNN does one of the better jobs with Myerson's Jewish connections. It says many American Jews looked up to her as a role model, as they admired Jewish ballplayers Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax.

One of CNN's best remarks, though, is borrowed:

"Her victory was seen by many as a symbolic statement of America's post-war rejection of the crimes and prejudices that ravaged Europe as well as a representation of the vitality of the American Jewish community," noted a biography on the Jewish Women's Archive site.

Most of the report is the "classic rags-to-riches" story -- yes, CNN actually uses that phrase -- of a Bronx girl who became a media figure, then entered public service in New York and took a fling at the U.S. Senate. It also briefly reviews, as do other media, the "Bess Mess," a "mid-'80s scandal involving a romantic affair with a married contractor and an alleged quid pro quo with the judge in his divorce trial."


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An odd custom: New York Times' shallow coverage of Chinese policeman's funeral

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Religious "ghosts" pop in and out of the New York Times' coverage of the funeral of Wenjian Liu, one of two police officers killed by ambush in New York on Dec. 20. Although Chinese people have lived in New York since at least the mid-18th century, the Times seems puzzled on how and how much to add.

Some of the reporting reads almost like one of those travelogues from a couple of generations ago, head-scratching over "those" peoples' odd customs. Here's some stuff from the advance story -- which, yes, uses the word "customs":

Officer Liu will be honored at a funeral home with Buddhist monks praying. Mourners will burn ceremonial paper money and objects in front of his photograph — riches, according to Chinese custom, for the afterlife.

Later, the Times adds some dabs with the help of Hugh Mo, a Chinese former deputy police commissioner.

At a traditional Chinese funeral, mourners wail and sob throughout. Some fall prostrate on the ground. Many attendees pay their respects and leave, rather than staying for the full service. Eulogies are not usually given.
“The Catholic funeral is a celebration,” Mr. Mo said. “The person is going to a better place, the person is going to be seeing St. Peter. A Chinese funeral is not a celebration, it is a mourning.”
While Officer Ramos’s wife appeared “courageous and dignified in the face of such great loss,” containing her emotions during her husband’s funeral on Saturday, Mr. Mo said, “if you look at a typical Chinese funeral, that is not the way to behave."

Right. It's an exotic Chinese custom to wail and show expansive grief at a funeral. No other ethnic groups ever do that.


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Transgender teen's suicide: New tragedy, old advocacy script for media

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"My death needs to mean something," the teen who self-identified as Leelah Alcorn wrote in a suicide note before stepping in front of a tractor-trailer in Ohio. Whatever else the death of the troubled transgender youth means, one is clear: how easily mainstream media fall into groupthink.

Most outlets reporting this story use "Leelah," his preferred name, and call him a her. Some even seem reluctant to say "Joshua," the name on his birth certificate. Most quote friends but don’t try to reach his parents or clergy. Then they quote a transgender advocate or two who predictably call for some sort of change.

It's a familiar script from years of gay and lesbian advocacy, thinly disguised as reporting.

The Boston Globe's story is a prime example:

Early Sunday, 17-year-old Leelah Alcorn died after being hit by a tractor-trailer while walking along a stretch of Interstate 71 near her Ohio hometown.
The death was eventually ruled a suicide after a pair of social media posts, which the Kings Mill woman posted on the blogging site Tumblr, garnered notice and served as a flashpoint for transgender progress in 2014.

Only about a third of the way down does the story acknowledge that Alcorn’s mother, Carla, "posted a short note to Facebook identifying Alcorn as 'Joshua' (her name at birth) and with male pronouns." That's the only place the Globe uses his actual teen name, or a male pronoun.


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Un-hampered reporting: Al-Jazeera runs sensitive feature on laundry ministries

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"Washing your sins away" is a common phrase, but a church coalition has taken that a step further -- by doing laundry for the poor. The project, Laundry Love, is told in a sensitive, multisourced story in, of all places, Al-Jazeera.

The story is rich in quotes and atmosphere, allowing many of the principals tell their own story. It even pulls the curtain back from an area we thought we knew:

HARBOR CITY, Calif. — From the Pacific Coast Highway exit off the freeway in Harbor City, it is impossible to miss the towering exhaust stacks of the Phillips 66 petroleum refinery and the mammoth cranes of the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex. This is working-class L.A., 21 miles away and a world apart from the velvet-roped wonder of Tinseltown.
Across PCH from a payday loan shop and next door to a trailer park, King’s Laundry seems an unlikely vessel for hope in difficult times. But on a Thursday night in December, as a cheerful crowd of more than 100 men, women and children gathered in a parking lot to enjoy hot dogs, hearty soup and Christmas tunes played live by a church band, hope was exactly the thing on offer — in the form of free loads of laundry, courtesy of the volunteers who donate money, labor and laundry soap at Harbor City’s twice-monthly Laundry Love event.

Al-Jazeera neatly explains the genesis of Laundry Love: an appeal from a homeless man for clean clothes. “If I had clean clothes I think people would treat me like a human being," he said. It says the scheme works by partnering local churches with local Laundromats for the periodic wash-ups.


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Wall Street Journal ably captures Tim Keller's voice, and little else

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Pastor Timothy Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church blends a good nature, a nimble mind, leadership in evangelical circles, and a pastoral heart toward fellow New Yorkers.  A lengthy profile in the Wall Street Journal captures much of that, yet leaves much unsaid. And it says a couple of things that should have been left unsaid.

The 1,870-word profile has several strengths. It briskly marches out the basics: 5,500 attending Keller's services, 300 church plants around the world, regular members under 35 years old. It also clearly summarizes Keller's message:

“Everyone has a God, everyone has a way of salvation, we just don’t use the term,” he says. “St. Augustine would say: What makes you what you really are is what you love the most.” Mr. Keller adds that he likes “to show secular people that they’re not quite as unreligious as they think. They’re putting their hopes in something, and they’re living for it.” For ambitious, driven New Yorkers, it’s often a career, he says. “I try to tell people: The only reason you’re laying yourself out like this is because you’re not really just working. This is very much your religion.”
If there’s no God, he says in sermons, then everything you do at work will be forgotten, and nothing you can do in your career will earn lasting significance. But if Christianity is true, then “every good endeavor,” he likes to say, no matter how small, “can matter forever.” One tough part for people, he says, is coming under “God’s authority,” because “you have to find your identity in Christ, and not in just fulling yourself,” That “completely collides with what the culture is telling people.”

In classic profile fashion, the Journal fills in personal details: Keller's glasses, his 6-foot-plus height and the church’s offices in midtown Manhattan. He "looks less like a pastor than a professor," the writer says.


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