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Due to a horrible cold, I have been hiding out at home almost all weekend. Thus, I was not able to go to the funeral rites for Father George Calciu at Holy Cross Romanian Orthodox Church in Alexandria, Va. The Divine Liturgy began several hours ago and the actual funeral is beginning as I type this.
Sorry for the delay on this one folks. I have, for some time now, been meaning to post the link to some interesting comments from the noted Vatican watcher John L. Allen Jr. of the National Catholic Reporter. In a way, it’s a meditation on the need for reporters — especially when covering Roman and American Catholicism — to dig past the easy layers of official sources and talk to real people on both sides of the church aisle.
In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas law against sodomy. “Freedom extends beyond spatial bounds. Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court.
One of the most important things that journalists get to do is pick the right words to describe complex situations, especially when defining what religious believers do or do not believe.
I generally like lists. But only if they’re good lists. And by good I mean lists that generally agree with how I see things. In other words, this week’s Washington Post “Ranking the League” (about the National Football League) is a bunch of garbage. The Indianapolis Colts are not #1. Somehow the geniuses over on 15th Street think that the San Diego Chargers and the Chicago Bears are better than the Peyton Manning’s Colts. Go figure.
It is a very gray, rainy day here in Maryland, the kind of day that makes it easy to mope around (especially if one has a shocking cold) and feel rather sorry for oneself.
Back in December of last year, a federal judge ruled against a Dover school board including intelligent-design theories in curriculum. The ruling basically said that intelligent design is religion-based and therefore false science. Mainstream coverage pounced on this. I raised a question about the coverage then:
You knew that when Gayle Haggard wrote the following words, there would be reporters as well as church members who took her at her word.
The Los Angeles Times did us all a favor earlier this week by posting the text of a sermon given in 2004 that has All Saints Episcopal Church under an Internal Revenue Service investigation. In the age of the Internet, all reporters need to follow this practice because there is really no reason not to.
