Mollie Hemingway

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Reporting on Vatican reports

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The Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education completed its report on the health of U.S. seminaries and U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops posted the report this week. The in-depth look at seminaries was prompted by the sexual abuse crisis that received so much attention a few years ago. The report was generally positive and said that the situation at seminaries had improved in certain areas. The Catholic News Service sums it up this way:


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A civil religion moment

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I live in the same neighborhood as the U.S. Capitol where we will inaugurate Barack Obama as our next president. You would not believe the chaos — some real, some manufactured — as we head into this Tuesday. There are massive parking restrictions, road closures and bridge closures not to mention restrictions on what even pedestrians can carry within the security perimeter.


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Protestants of the world, unite!

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Remember when President-elect Barack Obama picked the Rev. Rick Warren to deliver an invocation and all hell broke loose? The rioting and the pillaging and swastika-painting and what not? I couldn’t begin to quantify how many stories I’ve read on the pick and its response in the gay community.


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Sex, lies and schnitzel

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One of the journalism terms we use on this site is the “hook.” Like it sounds, it’s that thing in the lede of a story that snags reader/viewer/listener attention. There is so much news and information competing for attention that news consumers need a reason to stop and read or watch or listen to your story.


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Death on a Thursday morning

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Yesterday morning, I asked my 16-month-old daughter to pick out one of her books and bring it to me. Instead of “That’s Not My Bunny . . .” or some similar book, she picked up my latest copy of First Things and went through it page by page. It made me laugh but also made me immediately wonder how the journal’s founder Richard John Neuhaus was doing. I knew he’d been in poor health and had received last rites.


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Drilling down on the Godbeat

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There are many bright lights on the religion beat but for consistency, you just can’t beat the Public Broadcasting Service’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. The journalists there produce a great show week after week. Readers of this blog would be remiss to not check it out.


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No war on Epiphany

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The Epiphany of our Lord — Epiphany for short — is the liturgical festival observed on January 6. The oldest Christmas festival, and originally the most important, It is still the climax of the Christmas season in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, where it is celebrated as Theophany. Epiphany as a season of the Lutheran liturgical calendar lasts until the beginning of Lent and encompasses four to nine Sundays, depending on the date of Easter.


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Expanding those teen pregnancy discussions

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Many of us were born to teenage mothers or had children as teenagers. My dear father and President-elect Barack Obama were both born to teenage mothers. At this point in history, however, the general social outlook on teen pregnancy is that it is a net negative. Perhaps this is in part because teen marriage has declined significantly.


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