Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
In a way, that recent New York Times essay about the lives of Brother Julian and Brother Adrian Riester — twin Franciscan friars who died, on the same day, at age 92 — seems like the perfect example of a religion story that gets it, that shows faith as a powerful factor in the lives of these intriguing people.
Please understand that I am not saying that it is poorly reported and written. I would not be in a position to say that. In fact, I do not believe that.
Back in my days as a full-time reporter on the religion beat, I had my share of arguments with editors in which I attempted to convince them that (a) worship attendance is much higher among their readers (and former readers) than among newsroom personnel and (b) that religious people care deeply about seemingly ordinary issues linked to life in their congregations.
The calendar page at the website of the church formerly known as Mount Calvary Episcopal in Baltimore contains a number of items that should be of interest to reporters covering stories about believers who are now making their way into the Vatican’s newly created “personal ordinariate” for “Anglicans entering full communion with the Catholic Church.”
Katherine Stewart is the author of an upcoming book with one of those calm, reasoned, fair-minded titles that have become so common in the American marketplace in the past few decades — âThe Good News Club: The Christian Rightâs Stealth Assault on Americaâs Children.â
People who build high-end acoustic guitars (and people like me who just love acoustic guitars) walk around with a lot of very particular sounds in their heads.
Flash back a few years and you may remember all of those big headlines about the controversial decision by Pope Benedict XVI to park Vatican tanks on the lawn of Canterbury Cathedral and, thus, begin an ecclesiastical invasion of England. Click here for a refresher course.
In a way, it just isn’t fair to criticize the reporters and editors who work in small and even midsized newspapers. They often are forced, by the facts on the ground, to be journalistic jacks of all trades to a degree that is often staggering. It is rare to have experienced people working on specialty beats (except, of course, for stories involving religion — oh, sorry, I meant to say sports).
Another day, another mainstream news report on the Womenpriests movement that seems to have been written with the assumptions that (a) people are Roman Catholics if they say they are Roman Catholics (as opposed to being believers who are in sacramental Communion with the Church of Rome) and (b) that the Church or Rome is, or should be, operating on organizational principles that are much looser than, say, the Church of England.
