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The Divine Mrs. M.Z. Hemingway has, through the ages, written more than her share of posts on this blog about the women who are holding ordination rites and then proclaiming that they are now Roman Catholic priests.
In my 11 years as a reporter, I can’t recall an editor or fellow journalist discussing the legal concept known as the “freedom of association.”
We have written before about Roman Catholic Womenpriests and how the media usually botch coverage of such groups. Roman Catholic Womenpriests wants the Catholic Church to allow women’s ordination and claims to ordain women as Catholic priests. Reporters covering these services often take them at their word that the ordination is genuine.
Republican leaders are often accused of manipulating religious Americans for their own ends. But what if Democratic leaders, who are courting religious voters, exploit them? Will reporters hold them responsible?
Back in the late 1990s, I opened a Scripps Howard News Service column about trends in megachurch worship and music with the following:
Sen. Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, is investigating six powerhouse prosperity-gospel televangelists to determine whether they are complying with federal tax laws. On Monday he sent letters to Benny Hinn, the fantastically named Creflo Dollar, Joyce Meyer and three others who flaunt the earthly wealth provided to them by their followers.
In response to reports of Web chatter, the Associated Press and other news agencies inquired with Olympic officials about whether Bibles will be allowed in the Olympic Village for the 2008 Olympics in China. Most reporters got the answer they wanted and probably expected. Yes, of course Bibles will not be banned in the Olympic Village. What kind of country do you think this is? Oh, wait.
In The New York Times Magazine on Sunday, Mark Oppenheimer built a lengthy case that the philosopher Antony Flew is, amid painfully documented memory problems, being exploited by a few evangelical authors. Oppenheimer argues that There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, “a book attributed to Flew and a co-author, the Christian apologist Roy Abraham Varghese,” bears far more editorial fingerprints by Varghese than by Flew.
