Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
A news report by The Washington Post‘s Caryle Murphy and a column by Frank Rich of The New York Times both explore the question of whether pornography helped create the atmosphere of abuse and sexual humiliation at Abu Ghraib prison.
Sen. John “Call me JFK” Kerry must be so relieved. Then again, maybe not. Another front has opened up in the Catholic Communion war and, once again, the lifestyle left wing of the Democratic Party is likely to be (a) stuck taking a stand that will fire up moral traditionalists or (b) firming up its lock on every voter who has enjoyed the Da Vinci Code.
Journalists and Catholic politicians alike have protested that some Catholic bishops are advocating Eucharistic discipline only on the issue of abortion. Now Francis Cardinal George of Chicago has expanded the scope of such discipline — but not in a way that would please the bishops’ critics.
The following is a letter to the GetReligion.org editor from one of our readers, an old-fashioned Catholic peace activist named Juli Loesch Wiley.
One of the things I love the most about being back in Washington, D.C., once a year is the joy of reading a great newspaper — on dead tree pulp. There is nothing like reading an old-fashioned analog newspaper to help you see the ghosts drifting through the lines of inky type.
Nobody could accuse singer-songwriter Richard Thompson of being a pawn of the religious right. Thompson expressed standard-issue contempt for fundamentalism in an October 2003 interview with writer Greg Kahill of metroactive.com. Discussing Thompson’s album Old Kit Bag, Kahill wrote:
Ohmygod, Madonna is on tour again (Or is it Ohmigod or Ohmagod? Google isn’t sure) and the pop press is treating it like the 12th coming.
Thomas Chu of the Los Angeles Times has written a vivid feature about the copyright battle involving the 125-foot Christ the Redeemer statue that looms over Rio de Janeiro. Chu explains:
