Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
It’s getting harder and harder to read the coverage of the George Tiller murder, in large part because the Associated Press Stylebook doesn’t have separate references for “pro-life” and “anti-abortion.”
The murder of a physician who performs abortions has become a bewildering ritual of individual desperation, occurring four times since 1993. It also has become a ritual test of journalists’ abilities to report the news calmly and fairly.
Over the past week, GetReligion has been pursuing this question: What is the mainstream press saying about where Judge Sonia Sotomayor falls in the spectrum of Catholic life and practice? Well, New York Times reporter Laurie Goodstein has been researching this for all of the curious minds who read that newspaper (not to mention GR readers), and here’s what she has found out:
We are getting closer and loser to an official mainstream-press language to describe the religious background of Judge Sonia Sotomayor and, to no one’s surprise, the issue that continues to drive this slow process of journalistic revelation is abortion.
Yesterday morning at Los Angeles International Airport, Brenda Lee presented herself as a journalist, a Catholic priestess, and a California citizen so concerned about gay marriage that she wanted to give a letter to President Obama. In blurring those identities — in behaving as an activist while standing amid journalists — she managed to get herself hauled away in full-throttle civil disobedience mode.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a Methodist, a Reform Jew, or a Roman Catholic. When somebody in your denomination is convicted of a crime, or behaves in a scandalous manner, it seems that the question often arises: what’s the point of belief if it doesn’t keep a John Edwards or an (ex-Catholic priest) Alberto Cutié * from betraying their vows or a Bernie Madoff from cheating people out of millions of dollars?
This week the California State Supreme Court revealed its decision regarding Proposition 8, the ballot initiative limiting marriage to a union of one man and one woman. Californians had passed the initiative and opponents had filed suit against it. The court arguments were televised which meant that no one was particularly surprised by the ruling, which the Washington Post‘s Keith Richburg writes up here:
It’s official. Judge Sonia Maria Sotomayor is a Catholic, or a “Catholic,” or something like that. Maybe.
Just what the U.S. Supreme Court needed — another Roman Catholic. This would make six out of nine, for those keeping track.
