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The Archdiocese of Washington has a new bishop. Pope Benedict XVI announced Pittsburgh Bishop Donald Wuerl (pictured) as Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s replacement. What does this mean? Well, coverage didn’t quite get to the significance of the change, although many outlets did a fantastic job of introducing Wuerl. Religion writer Ann Rodgers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette joined with Maeve Reston to provide some information:
POTUS wannabe but for now just Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., spoke at a religious institution this past weekend. This sent political reporters at the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post into a tizzy writing about how weird it was to see two man that apparently once despised each other sit there in their funny robes acting friendly with one another. An amazing political development!
I know it’s not the biggest deal in the world, but today’s correction in the Washington Post caught my eye:
It’s time for the obligatory update on you know what. In the media blitz, the most interesting angle (at least to me) is that the New York Times has joined the Los Angeles Times in wondering out loud about Sony Pictures’ decision not to allow critics to dissect the movie in advance. Here is how reporter Sharon Waxman deals with the buzz and the whispers:
Our friends on the other side of the religion-and-journalism sanctuary aisle are looking for some additional scribes. Check out this help-wanted notice from the folks at The Revealer media blog (source of the photo). Here is a clip:
A GetReligion reader named Matt, commenting on the letter from Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to President Bush, raised an insightful point that I wish I had known and mentioned. But this is the Internet and there is plenty of room for follow-up:
Back in the summer of 1983, Archbishop Desmond Tutu was allowed to leave South Africa to attend the World Council of Churches assembly in Vancouver, British Columbia. This was a major event, in large part because no one knew if the apartheid government would let him back into his homeland.
As I stressed in my recent “Who is Dan Brown?” piece for the Da Vinci Dialogue site, the author of Da Book that is being turned into Da Movie isn’t terribly fond of facing tough questions about his work or his beliefs.
