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Looking ahead to Justice Scalia's funeral, with a flashback to wisdom from his son, the priest

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Looking ahead to Justice Scalia's funeral, with a flashback to wisdom from his son, the priest

So what mattered the most in the end, the contents of Justice Antonin Scalia's heart or his head?

Where did the work of the Catholic believer (some journalists called him a "fundamentalist") end and the fierce advocate of Constitutional "originalism" begin?

At mid-week, when host Todd Wilken and I recorded or next "Crossroads" podcast -- click here to tune that in -- I was still wrestling with the following quote from Notre Dame University law professor Richard Garnett, which was featured in a Time magazine think piece about Scalia's impact on American law and culture.

“A big part of his legacy will be how navigated the relationship between one’s deeply held faith commitments and one’s role as a judge,” Garnett, of Notre Dame, says. “For him, the way to navigate that relationship, it was not to compromise one’s religious faith or water it down, it was to distinguish between the legal questions the judge has the power to answer and the religious commitments that a judge has the right to hold, just like all of us do.”

In other words, something like this? "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." That is never an easy task.

While the news media remains focused on the political fallout after Scalia's death, I think it will be interesting to note the fine details of what is sure to be a grand funeral service in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. We know that President Barack Obama will be missing, but how many bishops, archbishops and cardinals will find their way into the "choir"? To what degree will the service -- as the justice desired -- focus on basic Christian beliefs about eternity, as opposed to hints about legal wars in the here and now?


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Turn, turn, turn: It's time to take religious stock of the Obama Era

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Turn, turn, turn: It's time to take religious stock of the Obama Era

As journalists look back to take stock of President Obama’s legacy, religious aspects deserve some attention. The Washington Post’s “Acts of Faith” blog posted an example January 12 from  Peter Manseau, co-founder of the pleasantly skeptical KillingTheBuddha.com, who scanned America’s history of pluralism in last year’s “One Nation Under Gods.”

Pursuing his book’s theme, Manseau proposed that this president “has embraced a more inclusive approach to religion than any of his predecessors.” But in making himself “the nation’s pluralist-in-chief” Obama “seems to have had an opposite effect in much of the country.” As his presidency wanes, he “leads a nation more divided along religious lines than at any other time in recent history.”

All of Manseau’s assertions are open to debate and worth pursuing by journalists.

Biographical recap: The president’s father Barack Senior, who abandoned Barack Junior, was born Muslim in Kenya but was an atheist as an adult. (Nonetheless, under a strict interpretation of Islamic law the son is automatically a Muslim, and in certain jurisdictions would be subject to execution as an apostate for forsaking his birth religion.)

Obama Junior was raised by a freethinking mother who taught her son about various religious paths. During their years in Indonesia he attended both Muslim and Catholic schools. Later, Obama was raised by grandparents who had been sometime Unitarians.

As an adult, the president-to-be converted to the liberal wing of “mainline” Protestantism. He was baptized at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, led by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, attended regularly, was married at Trinity and had his daughters baptized there.


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Viagra humor and simplistic journalists: Pssst, it really is OK to quote both sides on abortion

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A pro-abortion lawmaker in Kentucky thinks she's pretty funny.

And apparently, so do the media.

The Louisville Courier-Journal, NBC News, Reuters and the Washington Post are among news organizations highlighting a bill that Rep. Mary Lou Marzian filed poking fun at pro-life advocates.

The lede from Reuters:

A Kentucky lawmaker fed up with anti-abortion laws in her state has introduced a bill that would require men seeking erectile dysfunction drugs to visit a doctor twice, get a note from their wives and swear on the Bible to be faithful.
Representative Mary Lou Marzian, a Democrat from Louisville who has been a lawmaker for 22 years, told Reuters on Monday the bill is symbolic but she is glad that it has gotten attention because she is trying to make a point about government intrusion.
"My point is to illustrate how intrusive and ridiculous it is for elected officials to be inserting themselves into private and personal medical decisions," Marzian said by telephone.

How did pro-life folks respond? Ha ha ha ha ha. Reuters doesn't bother to quote anyone but Marzian. (Didn't you get the old memo about pro-abortion bias seeping in the news?)


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Trump, Sanders and how globalization has brought European political values to the U.S.

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Trump, Sanders and how globalization has brought European political values to the U.S.

There's a great deal of wisdom encapsulated by the idiom, "be careful what you wish for." The inevitability of unforeseen -- or perhaps just conveniently ignored -- consequences routinely popping up to bite humanity's collective posterior seems obvious.

Which brings me to the 2016 American presidential campaign. The connection? How about the human revolution we call globalization. Obviously, there is a religion angle here.

Sure, globalization gave American consumers cheaper foreign-made goods. But how was it not obvious to all that in return for T-shirts from Bangladesh we were sentencing American manufacturing to economic collapse? The ensuing loss of middle class jobs took quite a bite out of the American backside.

Love it or hate it, there's little doubt that globalization has reconfigured notions about the relationship between us and them. What was once foreign is now domestic. Their problems are now ours to an unprecedented degree.

GetReligion readers know that globalization has shaken up the American religious landscape. (Notice all the new mosques? That some American Episcopalians are now Anglicans loyal to African bishops?)

And politics? Immigrants and refugees, international trade pacts, overseas military entanglements and the limits of U.S. power, what constitutes authentic American culture and religion in a period of demographic transformation -- these issues loom large in the presidential campaign.

Perhaps the clearest illustration of globalization's influence on the candidates are the separated-at-birth outsider campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.


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Ghosts in Syria: Christians caught in the war are ignored in Washington Post

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Ghosts, it might be said, hover over every battlefield. Once you’ve heard or read the haunting World War I poem In Flanders Fields, you may never forget it.

Tragically, the ghosts of Christian communities in Syria -- even the plight of Christians still living there -- are in danger of being forgotten in the rush of secular coverage of the civil war in that cratered land. A story yesterday in the Washington Post stands as a sad example.

The newspaper paints an artful, ominous picture of the "mini world war" it says now rages in Syria:

KILIS, Turkey — Across the olive groves and wheat fields of the northern Syrian province of Aleppo, a battle with global dimensions risks erupting into a wider war.
Russian warplanes are bombing from the sky. Iraqi and Lebanese militias aided by Iranian advisers are advancing on the ground. An assortment of Syrian rebels backed by the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are fighting to hold them back. Kurdish forces allied both to Washington and Moscow are taking advantage of the chaos to extend Kurdish territories. The Islamic State has snatched a couple of small villages, while all the focus was on the other groups.

The Post notes that Russia's involvement affirms its "stature as a regional power" in the Middle East. It says also that, through proxies like Hezbollah and other Shiite militias, Iran is stretching Shia influence far beyond its original centers. But the article doesn't forget the human price -- at least, the price for most humans. Its sources say that driving out civilians has actually become a military tactic: “It’s a much cheaper and easier way to occupy territory than by trying to win hearts and minds. They’re simply going to push people out so that there is no insurgency.”

I say "for most humans" because I see nothing of Christian humans in this story. It interviews a refugee from town that is 95 percent emptied in the contested area of Syria. He and others "tell stories of entire villages being crushed and communities displaced," the newspaper says.

But while talking of Shiite Iraqi and Lebanese militias "extending the sway of Iran far beyond the traditional Shiite axis of influence into Sunni areas of northern Syria," the article forgets that some of those areas have also been Christian.


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Let's face it: White evangelical voters are totally schizophrenic, and here's why

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Time for a quiz.

Let's assess the state of white evangelical voters, circa 2016.

Such voters are (pick one):

A. "Feeling under siege." 

B. "Going through an identity crisis."

C. "Concerned about Islamic terrorists."

D. Who really knows? Can this election please be over already?

E. All of the above.

As the Republican presidential contest moves down South, major news organizations are attempting — with varying levels of success — to go inside the minds of conservative Christian voters.

In a piece that drew banner attention last week on the Drudge Report, McClatchy's Washington bureau proclaims that Christian conservatives are "pivotal in the South" and "feeling under siege." (Just last week, Muslims were the ones "under siege." Hmmmm ...)

To prove its point, McClatchy takes readers to a laundromat next door to a Piggly Wiggly:

ROBERTA, Ga. — Inside the Sunshine Coin Laundry near the Piggly Wiggly supermarket, Lagretta Ellington removed her family’s clothes from one of the large dryers and began to neatly fold them on a nearby table.
The air was moist and smelled of detergent. The floor was concrete. Her views of the presidential race were anything but. She was unsettled, and distrustful. The candidates just seemed like entertainers.
“I’m going to pray on it,” the 48-year-old Ellington said. “Hopefully, God will lead me in the right direction.”


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New York Times (#saywhat) interrupts papal tour for a dash of 'Da Vinci Code'

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After a shallow and at times confusing dip into church history and the theological clout of Vladimir Putin -- coverage of the summit of Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow -- the mainstream press has returned to its comfort zone with full-scale papal tour coverage.

As always, most journalists seem to think that the key to covering a papal tour, especially during the Francis era, is to stress whatever the pope says about social justice and politics, while ignoring almost everything he says about Christian faith on other topics. Thus, the papal tour is all about immigration and the need for Catholic bishops to face the real lives of the poor and these important and valid themes are not framed -- in Francis style -- with appeals for confession, repentance, mercy, evangelization and truly radical grace.

In other words, journalists tend to offer wall-to-wall social gospel with as little Gospel as possible. Pope Francis, of course, is a both-and kind of spiritual father.

However, in one of these stories -- "Francis Admonishes Bishops in Mexico to ‘Begin Anew’ " -- the news team at the New York Times decided to push beyond this kind of ordinary papal tour editing and add a dash of actual heresy.

First, ponder this question: What does the Catholic Church teach about Mary, the mother of Jesus? This is a huge subject and one that confuses many people, both inside and outside the church. When in doubt, check the Catechism.

Suffice it to say, there are people who -- hearing phrases such as "Mother of God" (a statement supporting the divinity and humanity of Jesus) -- accuse the ancient churches of trying to edit Mary into a new wing of the Holy Trinity, turning her into some kind of goddess. With that in mind, ponder this passage in that Times report:


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It's impossible to praise or attack Justice Scalia without covering his Catholic faith

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This is an ironic day in American political life, a day in which lots of labels are being tossed around by journalists -- in some cases, once again, with little thought given to whether those labels are still relevant or accurate.

That thunderclap you just heard was, of course, the news that Justice Antonin Scalia had died. The timing is stunning, to say the least, with a White House race unfolding and a U.S. Supreme court schedule packed with major cases linked to the First Amendment and church-state issues.

There is too much coverage, already, to try to take a look at it all. But let me make a few suggestions for some guidelines for readers as they dig into the coverage.

Look for coverage that quotes Scalia's friends as well as his enemies. You will know that you're in good company, in terms of journalism, when you hit features that note that some of his fiercest opponents, when it came time to argue law, were also among his closest friends. 

Scalia was a conservative in several senses of that word, especially when it came to law and to faith. Yet, like the word "liberal," that is a word that is often of little use when discussing matters of law and now politics. Right now, an old-school First Amendment liberal, or literalist, increasingly looks like a cultural conservative.

So look for stories that refuse to pin simplistic labels on Scalia.

Then, alas, there is this early NPR piece, as a negative example. Yes, it involves use of the f-word that journalists love to use in ways that directly contradict the Associated Press Stylebook.

Also note that the written work of this justice -- famous and infamous for his use of wit and sarcasm -- is reduced to one of those shallow verbs that journalists use when, basically, they want to call someone simplistic or even dumb:


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Silence on sex abuse? Nope, 'The Vatican' didn't tell that to its bishops

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It's doubly nice to see a concise, incisive media critique like Bill Donohue of the Catholic League wrote yesterday. Nice to have someone do some of our work on a frantic Friday afternoon. Also nice to remind us at GetReligion that we're not the only ones who notice these things.

Donohue took mainstream media to task for saying the Vatican has told its new bishops they don’t have to report instances of sexual abuse. The flap revolves around remarks of a French monsignor, and whether he was spelling out church policy.

The highly cited Guardian, for instance, reported on this new "Vatican document":

The Catholic church is telling newly appointed bishops that it is “not necessarily” their duty to report accusations of clerical child abuse and that only victims or their families should make the decision to report abuse to police.
A document that spells out how senior clergy members ought to deal with allegations of abuse, which was recently released by the Vatican, emphasised that, though they must be aware of local laws, bishops’ only duty was to address such allegations internally.
“According to the state of civil laws of each country where reporting is obligatory, it is not necessarily the duty of the bishop to report suspects to authorities, the police or state prosecutors in the moment when they are made aware of crimes or sinful deeds,” the training document states.

Things are no different on this shore of the Atlantic.  


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