Jim Davis

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Will Francis loosen academic reins? Education journal calls for it, but doesn't prove point

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You can just imagine the buzz at the Chronicle of Higher Education: "Hey, Pope Francis is coming! And he's going to speak at Catholic University of America! Let's use that as a story hook!"

So the journal ran a piece on academic freedom at American Catholic colleges. Even though, as the article admits, Francis' Wednesday visit at the school in Washington, D.C., was only to canonize Father Junipero Serra -- and he planned no visits to any other Catholic universities on this tour.

No matter -- off we go with 1,100 words on the tug-of-war between freethinking intellectuals and the church's push to keep "inculcating students in orthodoxy." But the story wanders around, making strong statements, then failing to support them -- and sometimes weakening them.

The main indictment here is that previous popes, especially John Paul II, tightened control over Catholic colleges and universities, thereby stifling the flow of ideas that is basic to good education. Francis, however, is a different kind of pope who warrants hope for change:

As the first Jesuit pontiff, Pope Francis emerged from a free-thinking religious society known to question Vatican directives and church teachings, giving him a much different perspective on the relationship between the Vatican and Catholic colleges than such institutions have operated under for 25 years. In response to a 1990 call by Pope John Paul II for closer ties between the church and Catholic colleges, the nation’s bishops had issued new rules that many such institutions chafed against.
The Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a senior analyst at the National Catholic Reporter, says many academics at the nation’s more than 220 Roman Catholic colleges "felt their academic freedom was constrained" by the last two popes. Under Pope Francis, he says, they now "feel much freer" to openly discuss such matters as birth control or whether women should be allowed to become priests.
Noting that Pope Francis has encouraged bishops to express disagreement with him, Father Reese says that "even though he is not an academic, he is more open to the kind of academic discussions and freedom of debate which is very close to the heart of the academic community."

You’ve heard of a chilling effect? Well, Reese is suggesting a warming effect, in which debates among bishops may encourage freer discussions on college campuses. It's a hard hypothesis to prove, but at least the article gets it from a respected priest-journalist.

For evidence of church bullying, though, the journal reaches back to 1987, when Catholic University banned the Rev. Charles E. Curran from teaching theology there because he questioned church doctrine on matters like contraception: "Pope Francis has encouraged his bishops to express disagreement with him, but Catholic University remains under censure from the American Association of University Professors for its 1987 decision to bar there because he had questioned church doctrine on matters such as contraception."


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New York Times celebrates Pelosi's 'unwavering faith' in opposing Catholic teachings

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Every few weeks, it seems, mainstream media celebrate a "devout" or "faithful" Catholic who takes a brave stand against church structures and strictures. This week in the New York Times, it's Nancy Pelosi.

"Strong Catholic Faith," says the headline about the California Democrat. "Unwavering faith," says the lede. And papal teachings? She reads encyclicals with "rapt attention."

With one exception: abortion. That's a "core value" for her politics and her right as a woman.

The time peg, of course, is the planned address of Pope Francis at a joint session of Congress on Thursday -- a Congress, as the Times reports, that is more than 30 percent Catholic. A further ingredient is the current debate over defunding Planned Parenthood, in the wake of widely publicized videos said to show that the group profits from selling aborted fetal body parts.

Where to bring all this together? For the Times, it's one of the best-known members of Congress , who champions "family planning" and embraces a "strong Catholic faith:"

For Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, the issue of abortion rights has always been ancillary to her unwavering faith and deep approbation for generations of popes. “I actually agree with the pope on more issues than many Catholics who agree with him on one issue,” Ms. Pelosi said in an interview in her office at the Capitol last week.
But that one issue, abortion, is adding a thick layer of tension to the otherwise convivial mood as Congress prepares for the arrival of Pope Francis this week. The Capitol is ensnared in an imbroglio over funding for Planned Parenthood and a host of other abortion-related fights that could lead to a government shutdown next week.

Pelosi's Catholic creds? Well, she grew up in a "large Catholic family, for which faith was central and reverence for the pope was assured." She attended a Catholic high school and a Catholic women's college.  And she has met an amazing four popes, starting with Pius XII while she was in eighth grade.

She also reads papal teaching letters avidly, the Times says:


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RNS feature on Yom Kippur misses the basics: What's the day about?

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As Yom Kippur approaches on sundown tomorrow, the Religion News Service runs a heartfelt story on non-Jews who support the Jewish community.

A heartfelt story that’s nevertheless haunted by religious ghosts. But let's praise its merits first.

The article looks at a decade-old trend among Reform synagogues: calling non-Jewish congregants to the bima, or platform, for a formal blessing from the rabbi. It begins with the leader who started it, Rabbi Janet Marder of California.

Back in 2004, as RNS tells it, Marder called 100 people, mostly spouses of Jews, to the bima, then said:

“What we want to thank you for today is your decision to cast your lot with the Jewish people by becoming part of this congregation, and the love and support you give to your Jewish partner.
“Most of all, we want to offer our deepest thanks to those of you who are parents, and who are raising your sons and daughters as Jews,” she continued. “In our generation, which saw one-third of the world’s Jewish population destroyed … every Jewish boy and girl is a gift to the Jewish future.”
The reaction to the blessing that followed — an outpouring of emotion and gratitude  — surprised Marder. “I thought it would be a nice thing to do,” she said. “I was not prepared for the way people were weeping.”

Journalistically, the story is a creative break from the usual Yom Kippur fare, which often takes the form of politics (this year, Pope Francis' visit to the U.S.) or food (tasty ways to follow the all-day fast).  The RNS article instead takes some well-known facts -- like the insularity of many synagogues and the percentage of Jews who marry outside the faith -- and tells what a group of temples are doing about it.

And rather than coast on assumptions or low-level reactions, RNS digs up data and interviews leaders like Rabbi Rick Jacobs of the Union for Reform Judaism:


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New York Times writes evocative feature on who will meet Pope Francis in America

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When Pope Francis visits the United States next week, he will visit not only the high and mighty but the low and humble. Other mainstream media have often made that point. The New York Times proves it in its advance feature that ran yesterday -- with old-school enterprise reporting.

Fast-reading despite its nearly 1,600 words, the Times story offers both an overview and specifics. And it weaves them into prose that can be sweeping without getting flowery:

A papal visit is always an occasion of high ceremony and high-level politics. When Francis comes to the East Coast next week, he will, like his predecessors, visit the president and address the United Nations. He will pray with bishops. He will celebrate Mass before enormous crowds.
But to an unparalleled degree, this pope is making a point of spending time with people on the bottom rungs of American society: day laborers, refugees, the homeless, underprivileged schoolchildren and prisoners.
Like no pope before him, Francis is using the grand stage of his trip to the United States to demonstrate that the church exists to serve the poor and marginalized, and that this is the responsibility of all Catholics — whether pontiff or parishioner.

Many such articles would continue pretty much that same tone throughout -- that know-it-all, omniscient tone about this "people's pope." The Times doesn't; in this story, it fans out and talks to some of the 900 people who expect to meet the pope.

And it doesn't just say that Francis will visit inmates, for instance. It gives specifics on the offenses -- that Amanda Cortes, the subject of the lede, "worked for years as a phone-sex operator" and has been "awaiting trial in Philadelphia on charges that she brutally murdered her infant son." The article also doesn't just say that Francis will meet a refugee from Central America. It says the refugee "fled Honduras alone at age 14 and made his way through Guatemala and Mexico dodging armed gangs and riding atop freight trains."


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Papal riddle: How does Washington Post cover Pope Francis without quoting people?

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Here we go again.

Whether it's a flight of editorial fancy, as I think of it, or the increasingly popular "omniscient anonymous voice," as tmatt complains, the Washington Post has just spun out another sweeping, opinion-laced advance on Pope Francis' scheduled U.S. visit.

Francis is "often dubbed the coolest-ever leader of the Roman Catholic Church," the Post says. He's brought a "dose of magical realism" to the pontificate. He wants to be "something akin to a global Jiminy Cricket, a voice of conscience whether you believe in God or not." Who is speaking? Good question.

But wait, there’s more:

Francis has turned out to be a natural global leader. But he has also been a surprise to the cardinals who thought they were putting a cautious moderate on Saint Peter’s throne.
To the chagrin of conservatives, he has evolved into a sort of pontifical version of Reagan-appointed Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, whose judicial decisions have upended his supporters’ expectations. After two popes who concentrated on doctrine and traditional families, Francis is clearly in a different mold.

Whew. Any wonder that this story goes way over 2,400 words?

The main point is that Francis is a "riddle," a puzzling blend of opposites. He is innovative in tone and manner, welcoming gays and easing the return of Catholics who have divorced and remarried. He is liberal in social issues, calling for better care of the poor and the environment. Yet he is a moral traditionalist who opposes same-sex marriage and transgenderism. In terms if on-the-page content, in other words, he sounds rather like St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.

Externally, Francis "has become a formidable diplomat, interjecting the Vatican into everything from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to U.S.-Cuba relations," the Post says. Internally, he is a strong pope, who fired his secretary of state and two top officials of the Vatican Bank.


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Pope Francis and the Republicans: AP story has little interest in the pope and Democrats

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Republicans are jockeying to share the spotlight with Pope Francis when he comes to America this month. Democrats? (shrug)

That's a logical takeaway from an Associated Press story on views of Pope Francis by seven of the GOP's presidential candidates.

And before you can say, "Hey, wait a minute," the story fires a shotgun blast of paragraphs:

To some Republican presidential candidates, it's better to be with the popular pope than against him.
Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have deep policy differences with Pope Francis, but the senators will break off campaign travel to attend his address to Congress later this month, a centerpiece of his eagerly anticipated visit to the United States.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a devout Catholic, will attend Mass with Francis in Washington. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, another Catholic candidate, plans to attend one of the pope's East Coast events.

AP does nuance that a bit. It explains that Francis has drawn popular admiration, not only for his kindly manner, but also for his "humility and efforts to refocus the church on the poor and needy." It also says he has waded into "numerous hot-button political issues" like immigration, climate change, the Iran nuclear deal and diplomatic relations with Cuba.

So the article has Bush applauding Francis as an "amazing man" with a "gentle soul." And Rubio honors Francis as a "moral authority" but adds, "I'm a political leader and my job as a policymaker is to act in the common good."

The story also reports sidesteps by Scott Walker and Rick Santorum, who say they’ll be out of town when the pope visits Washington. That strikes me as odd to single out those two but not, say, Ben Carson, named last week in a CNN poll as GOP's current front runner.

More glaring is the omission of Donald Trump, whose religious talk has often raised eyebrows. Last month, Trump said this to CNN's Chris Cuomo:


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Islam in public schools: Educators and media alike miss a crucial point

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Every human heart has a "God-shaped vacuum," Pascal famously said. This month, he might say that a Tennessee curriculum has an Islam-shaped hole -- and so do most mainstream media covering the controversy over it.

Ground Zero is Maury County, where parents of seventh-graders have complained that their children were being forced to learn the basics of Islam in seventh-grade social studies classes.

As part of curricula in history, geography and government, middle school children are required to learn about several religions, including Buddhism and Hinduism. But parents were startled this year when a unit on Christianity was skipped in favor of teachings like the Five Pillars of Islam.

Brandee Porterfield, who has a daughter at Spring Hill Middle School, complained to the Columbia Daily Herald:

The mother said she was concerned about her child being taught the “Shahada,” the Muslim profession of faith which was contained in a foldable teaching material.
One of the translations of the creed reads, “There is no god but Allah; Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.”
“I have no problem with the teacher at all. It’s just that yellow foldable seems to be teaching our children religion in schools, and only that religion,” Porterfield said. “From a religion point of view, if the schools are going to be teaching religion in history, they need to teach them all equally.”

Other parents complained that children were told to write and recite the Shahada, which they said amounts to teaching Islam. Parent Brandee Porterfield told the Spring Hill Home Page:


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Numbers game: Maybe public opinion surveys don't amount to a hill of ...

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What a difference a month makes. In early August, the Religion News Service ran a long list of reasons why opinion polls are often unreliable. This week, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette turned to several surveys on Catholic attitudes toward the faith -- and toward Pope Francis, scheduled to visit the United States in a couple of weeks.

The funny thing is, both articles drew on some of the same bean-counting organizations -- and in one case, the same expert.

Last one first. The Pittsburgh paper aims at showing the challenges awaiting Francis in his first visit to the United States.

"There may be more American Catholics than ever, but they’re doing fewer Catholic things," says savvy religion writer Peter Smith in summing up the paradox. To make his point, he gathers from at least three of the usual sources: Pew Research Center, the Public Religion Research Institute and the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

The numbers tell him that "life-cycle events" are down: infant baptisms, first communions, church marriages and elementary school enrollment. Most Catholics affirm "basic beliefs" about Jesus and Mary, but they don’t pray the rosary, pray as families or do adoration of the Eucharist.

The Post-Gazette also cites a Pew survey that found "fewer than half of Catholics think it’s a sin to have gay sex, use artificial birth control, live with a partner outside of marriage or remarry after a divorce without an annulment. They’re evenly split on whether the church should recognize gay marriages."

But the numbers don’t overpower the human side of the piece.


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New York Times advance on Pope Francis visit spins religion as economics

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It's almost become a slogan for Terry Mattingly that one of the "deadly sins" of mainstream media is to reduce all religious issues to politics.  But if he reads this New York Times story on Pope Francis' upcoming U.S. visit, he may well add economics to his complaints.

No, economics isn't the only thing in the article. It also looks at Francis' personality and his approach to church matters; the fact that he has never been here before; what he thinks of capitalism; what Americans think of him; and the differing views of politics between South America and the United States.

But a sizable chunk of the story reads like this:

He is not opposed to all America represents. But he is troubled by privileged people and nations that consume more than their share and turn their backs on the vulnerable. The message he will probably deliver when he comes, they say, is that the United States has been blessed with great gifts, but that from those to whom much is given, much is expected.
“I think what he criticizes in the U.S. is the absolute freedom and autonomy of the market,” said the Rev. Juan Carlos Scannone, a professor emeritus of philosophy at Colegio Máximo, a prominent Jesuit college near Buenos Aires. He taught the young Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who would become Francis, as a seminarian and became a friend. “We should admire the U.S.’s democracy and the well-being of its people, but what Bergoglio would criticize is the consumerism: that everything is geared toward consumerism.”

Much of the story, in fact, resembles the Aug. 30 advance by the Associated Press. It's almost like someone at the Times read AP and said, "Hey, that's a good idea!" -- then assigned their own version.

Both stories emphasize how new the experience will be for a 78-year-old pope who has never visited here. Both style him a "homebody" who prefers to hang out with the poor than jet to public appearances. The Times quotes Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York saying Francis is "a little nervous about coming."

Both articles also quote sources who say the pope isn't really anti-American -- he just opposes the social and environment harm it's caused, he believes, by our economy: "maximizing profits" in the AP story, "savage capitalism" in the Times piece.

But where AP devoted two paragraphs to Francis' economic views, the Times deals with them in four, like this one:


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