Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
A recurring feature in our repertoire at GetReligion is the critique of articles that posit the existence of a monolithic Catholic vote. Mindful of the need to educate reporters, TMatt has written a four-part aria harmonizing these eternal verities.
In recent weeks, there have been a number of major news stories that have — to one degree or another — pivoted on the sharp doctrinal divisions among American Catholics. Think religious liberty vs. the Health and Human Services rules. Think about the case of Father Marcel Guarnizo and the Buddhist-Catholic-artist-gay-activist Barbara Johnson.
Words cannot describe how much I pity the journalist who has to try to write — in roughly 18 inches of type — a mainstream news report on the decision by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to step down from his beleaguered throne at the ripe old age of 61.
Patrick Wade of the Champaign News-Gazette had a fascinating story about the creation of a new Torah by hand. Here’s how it begins:
Nothing hinders one act from having two effects, only one of which is intended, while the other is beside the intention. Now moral acts take their species according to what is intended, and not according to what is beside the intention, since this is accidental … . Thomas Aquinas, (Summa Theologica, Secunda Secundae Partis, Q. 64)
The Associated Press has a story about a child in Morocco who killed herself after she was forced to marry her rapist. Amina Filali was raped when she was 15 and was 16 when she took her own life. She had complained to her mother that she was being beaten during her five-month marriage and we’re told that the mother counseled patience. Here’s the top of the story:
As we traded messages the other day, your GetReligionistas enjoyed a casual discussion about the heavy load of cyber-traffic that we direct in our endeavors for this media critique weblog. I noted that, in two years of writing for GetReligion, I had accumulated 2,890 e-mail threads in my GR story possibilities folder. (That’s just the ones left undeleted.)
Perhaps this is the rare GetReligion post that should begin with a biblical reference. Grab that Bible off your newsroom reference shelf and turn to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16, verse 18. Catholic readers are encouraged to quote this from memory:
