Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
If you have followed this blog from Day 1, then you are almost certainly familiar with the work of Dr. Paul Marshall of the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House. As I mentioned during my recent visit to England, Marshall is also one of my colleagues at the Oxford Centre for Religion and Public Life.
That’s a cliche, I know, but that’s how I felt when reader Josh Carlton sent me a link for a Rolling Stone photo essay titled “Young and Pious: A Rock & Roll Story.” Then it offered a read-out that told you what you needed to know: “Photojournalist Stephanie Keith goes inside the Christian rock subculture and finds sexy girls, hardcore bands and the strange marriage of rock and rapture.”
The bad news is that we know almost nothing concrete about what happened during the discussions between Pope Benedict XVI and his former students this past weekend — those talks about evolution and philosophy. We have clips and snips from here and there, with the spin being that Intelligent Design was not on the agenda. What was on the agenda? Well, precisely the kinds of philosophical concerns that are at the heart of the ongoing debates inside the Vatican about clashing evolutionary theories (plural).
The other day I received a blunt, fiery, angry email. It was from an anti-Semite who was mad at me for writing a Scripps Howard News Service column in which I quoted several Orthodox Jews discussing the meaning of repentance and forgiveness in Judaism and, in particular, why they thought that Mel Gibson — if he is a serious Catholic believer of one form or another — was going to need to do more than seek out a few good photo opportunities on a holy day or two.
You can tell that key journalists in the mainstream media are watching Pope Benedict XVI like a hawk right now. Everyone is waiting to see what he is going to say about the controversial question of whether God had anything specific to do with the creation of the world and, in particular, humanity.
I have been missing in action, most of the past few days, because of the start of the very first semester of the classes here at the Washington Journalism Center. If that really interests you, take a quick trip to this site to see the weblog that has just opened up. It will grow as the students get the hang of things in the first few weeks of classes and, ultimately, their internships in mainstream newsrooms.
Try to imagine that you are reading a news report about complicated, emotional issues linked to death and the burial of the dead in the city of Jerusalem.
As I noted the other day, the leaders of the First Baptist Church of Palm Beach elected to try to stonewall reporter Jane Musgrave of the Palm Beach Post. Why? She was checking into rumors, reports and documents that suggested that the Rev. Steven Flockhart — the congregation’s new minister and a nationally known pulpit star — had some financial skeletons in his closet. That led to a lengthy report that, to my amazement, did a good job of quoting the young minister’s many admirers, as well as his critics.
After reading the article several times, I really do not know where to start when it comes to chasing the ghosts in the sprawling New York Times feature story on pedophilia in cyberspace. It was called "On the Web, Pedophiles Extend Their Reach," and I've been haunted by it for a week. But we can start with the obvious: It does appear that the Times has found a moral absolute that it can affirm when dealing with the various armies of the sexual revolution.
So pedophilia is bad -- period -- even though the piece briefly waves at several issues related to this behavior without explicitly passing judgment. Would the newspaper's editorial board, for example, back conservative calls for stricter enforcement of statutory rape laws? Even if that led to investigations of allegations against Planned Parenthood for protecting offenders?
But some of you will view that as a digression from the main issue -- pedophilia. And you would be right. But that leads to one of my basic questions about the Times piece: What precisely is pedophilia? How is the newspaper defining this term? What are the origins of this condition, as science has struggled to understand them?
To be more specific, where does the Times draw the line between "pedophilia," sexual activity by adults involving prepubescent children, and "ephebophilia," illegal sex with underaged boys and girls in their teens?
Let me offer the blunt illustration that explains the difference, as told to me once by an expert on the topic. A 40-year-old man who wants to have sex with a 16-year-old Britney Spears is sick and disturbed and being tempted to commit a crime. But this man is not sick, disturbed and a criminal in precisely the same way as a 40-year-old man who wants to have sex with a 6-year-old Britney Spears. The same would be true of a gay adult male.
Where did the Times draw this line in its research?
