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As anyone who has been near a good Catholic blog today knows, there’s big news in the story of Deal Hudson, the outspoken conservative who used to be active in White House efforts to woo traditional Catholics. Veteran religion writer Julia Duin at the Washington Times has broken the story that Hudson has been forced out as publisher at Crisis.
Well, what do you know? For all of its weaknesses, it does seem that this experimental little blog must be doing something right. At least, the principalities and powers at the World Wide Web’s most prominent interfaith free-for-all think so.
A friend at the Baton Rouge Advocate once remarked on the cognitive dissonance of singing the folkie Communion song “Sons of God,” which uses a chirpy melody for its chorus of “Eat his body, drink his blood / And we’ll sing a song of love: / Allelu, allelu, allelu, alleluia!”
Word Spy rightly honors journalist Alex Heard as the father of the word hathos, which he defined as “a mixture of hatred, disgust, embarrassment, and pathos” (The New Republic, Feb. 11, 1985).
Stephen Bates of the Guardian reports today on something remarkable: a “senior North American bishop” says the Episcopal Church is willing to punish African dioceses financially if it is disciplined for consecrating Gene Robinson as an openly gay bishop. Patrick Mauney of the Episcopal Church Center has previously said, “The disbursements are offered without strings attached.”
At first glance, it was a simple hard-news lead for a follow-up story on the deadly path of the remnants of hurricane Ivan into the misty blue ridges of Western North Carolina. Reporters Kristin Collins, Michael Biesecker, Josh Shaffer and Andrea Weigl of the Raleigh News and Observer wrote:
I got the strangest telephone call yesterday, one that is directly linked to a common problem/challenge/sin on the Godbeat.
Here’s David Gates, in the Sept. 20 issue of Newsweek, reviewing Philip Roth’s novel The Plot Against America, in which Charles Lindbergh is elected president (as the Republican candidate, naturally) and turns America into a fascist state:
So far, the Paul Crouch story has proceeded along the traditional lines of a low-level conservative sex scandal, by which I mean a scandal that is not part of some hypernews event (think Jim Bakker era) or a political crusade (think minister with strong ties to the White House).
