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It’s official. Catholicism has little or nothing to do with the giant, heartrending story here inside the other Beltway — the closing of 13 of 64 schools in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore.
Okay, so we’ve already looked at some other coverage of DC’s new law permitting same-sex marriage. A few readers sent an early version of the following story, which has been improved with an update later in the day. It’s about how the former chief operating officer of DC Catholic Charities vehemently disagrees with Archbishop Donald Wuerl’s decision to cancel new spousal benefits for employees of Catholic Charities. The move was made so that the church could comply with both DC law and church doctrine. We discussed previous coverage here and here.
Cohabitation was never up for discussion as my husband and I dated long-distance for two-and-a-half years before we exchanged nuptials.
It was only four years ago that Catholic Charities of Boston announced that it was getting out of the adoption business in order to comply with new state laws dealing with sexual orientation discrimination and same-sex marriage. Last month the District of Columbia, where I live, voted to legalize same-sex marriage.
I’ll be the first to admit that I did a double take a few days ago when I saw this shocking headline and opening salvo in the New York Times. I bet that many other old-fashioned Democrats had the same reaction.
A fair piece on abortion? Believe it or not, it can be done. I was pleasantly surprised by the ground covered in Saturday’s front-page article on anti-abortion groups courting blacks in The New York Times. This isn’t necessarily a new phenomenon, but it has been in the news lately because of 80 billboards appearing in Georgia (right).
If you’re part of an organization trying to get your message out, you usually have to spend money to place ads where people can see them. Communications shops usually prefer getting stories written about them. Not only is it free but you can communicate more thoroughly with your audience. So while Focus on the Family seems to have been running more advertisements as of late, they have to be taking note of all the earned media they’re getting.
Semester after semester, I tell my students at the Washington Journalism Center that some of the hardest news stories to cover — period — are personnel disputes inside private colleges and universities. The simple fact of the matter is that the administrations on these campuses do not have to talk about the proceedings in these cases and, often, they cannot talk about the facts of these cases because of valid legal concerns about privacy.
I have a friend who is an Army doctor. Turns out he knew Major Nidal Hasan back when they started school together. I asked him if he was surprised to find his former classmate accused of killing 13 Fort Hood soldiers. He told me that while he was completely shocked — as were all the other colleagues who knew him years ago — the ones who had continued their studies with him or who had worked with him more recently were in no way shocked. Apparently they felt that he’d become completely radicalized.
