People

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Birthing babies and other delights

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Okay, I know readers are getting testy about all of the Ted Kennedy coverage (believe me, it’s wearing on me, too) but I have just one final story to highlight. It’s not about Kennedy per se but it uses his death as a hook to discuss the death of large Irish-American families in general. The New York Times story by Michael Wilson is worth highlighting because it does what so few stories about fertility do — it discusses how religion plays a role in the number of children women have. Huzzah! After making the case that Irish-American family size has plummeted, we’re told:


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But was it right?

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On Saturday, a multi-bylined story in the Washington Post wrote that terrorists became helpful intelligence assets after — and only after — they were subjected to the CIA’s harshest interrogation methods, including waterboarding.


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Tryin' to make me go to rehab...

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Bacchanals at his residence, liaisons with prostititutes, an ambiguous relationship with a teenage girl — allegations against the Italian Prime Minister have been roiling the country for months.


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Poking the Jedi

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Sometimes the most interesting religion stories are about some small angle in daily life. And the Washington Post‘s William Wan has found a great one. He looks at how folks have filled out the “religious views” box on Facebook. Mine says “Confessional Lutheran,” for instance.


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Rites, wrongs and a letter from Rome

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In terms of political content, the unofficial state funeral (video here) of Sen. Edward Kennedy was pretty normal, with pews full of presidents and prose full of allusions to legislation that helped the masses, with President Barack Obama in full civil-religion flight.


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On threesomes and marriage

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The mainstream media really hasn’t done a very good job covering the heated debate over whether to extend the institution of marriage to same-sex couples. It’s been a problem for years and the coverage has been so amazingly one-sided that it’s surprising that all 30 states that have asked voters to define marriage as a heterosexual institution have done so. Part of it is that the mainstream media has long been an elite institution with views on homosexuality somewhat out-of-step with the general populace.


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Yep, Catholic Church still pro-life

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We’ve been complaining a bit about the meager inclusion of religion angles in some of the political coverage of the various legislative efforts to reform health care and health insurance. So David Kirkpatrick’s piece in the New York Times this week was welcome. Headlined “Some Catholic Bishops Assail Health Plan,” here’s how it began:


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