Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Any discussion of when the U.S. Catholic bishops began to get more interested in religious liberty issues needs — at the very least — a flashback to March 10, 2006. That’s when Catholic Charities of Boston did the unthinkable.
It’s safe to say that several major themes continue to manifest themselves in most — but not all — of the mainstream news reports about the religious liberty cases linked to those Health and Human Services mandates on religious organizations.
It’s one thing to try to drag political labels over into religion coverage. That’s inevitable, I guess, in this highly politicized world in which we live today.
Anyone who has read GetReligion for a month or two knows that, from time to time, journalists get a bit confused about some of the language that is used in ancient, liturgical churches and other religious bodies.
Back in my college days, a missionary kid-journalist friend of mine (who later spent some time as a presidential speechwriter) turned me on to that fabulous “Sittin’ In” album by Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina. The songs were OK, he said, but his advice was to check out the horn charts and keyboards. We both said: Who in the world is Michael Omartian?
Let’s set the way-back machine for last summer, when the Womenpriests movement held one of its ordination rites in Baltimore. As one would expect, this event was glowingly covered — sort of — by The Baltimore Sun. I focused, in posts at the time, on this particular passage:
The mainstream press has been on a tear ever since President Barack Obama announced that his liberal Christian faith had inspired him to change his beliefs on the definition of marriage. One of the most common stories, produced by news outlet after news outlet, has focused on the ways that this doctrinal issue has divided various groups of believers.
Time to catch up with a recent story that got buried in all of the coverage of President Barack Obama’s evolution on the definition of marriage and Mitt Romney’s adventures in Moral Majority territory.
If you are interested in religion news (as opposed to pure politics), and you are willing to look at Mitt Romney’s Liberty University commencement speech from the point of view of the audience, then it’s pretty clear which paragraph deserves the most attention. Here it is:
