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Death and dying are intricately tied to the subjects of God, religion and faith. The Los Angeles Times made this clear earlier this week in its detailed look at why some statistics show that cancer patients deemed terminally ill requested intensive, but useless medical treatment, such as breathing machines, at a much higher rate if their faith was a significant factor in the their medical decision.
I wish the mainstream media would cover more denominational news. Or, should I say, more denominational but non-Episcopalian news. I also wish we’d see more balanced coverage of disagreements related to homosexuality.
I know, it’s hard to read the following story and not get mad about the central image of a pastor spanking a 12-year-old girl with a piece of wooden crown molding, with the permission of her parents, because these adults in her life doubted her claims that she had been sexually molested.
Trust me, I realize that what I am about to write falls into the “there he goes again, saying the same old things” category. I wish that wasn’t the case, but I know that it is.
In the April issue of The Atlantic, Robert D. Kaplan has written an informative and sometimes chilling profile of Narendra Modi, chief minister of the northwestern state of Gujarat. Modi is important because of his increasing influence within the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, and allegations that he helped encourage Hindu riots against Muslims in 2002.
On the same day that Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput was critiquing media coverage of the church, we got a real time example of some less-than-stellar religion reporting. Pope Benedict XVI landed in Africa this week and received breathless coverage because, as Amy Welborn put it over at Beliefnet, “the Pope has not booked a seat on the condom train.”
I don’t watch American Idol, but I think that if I lived in a foreign culture, that country’s version of the show would be a great place to learn about that particular society. This rather amazing Guardian story on Afghanistan’s Afghan Star television show gives readers a glimpse into a society that we generally only hear in the news when it relates to war, terrorism and international politics. As a reader noted, how often do we hear about the regular people from Afghanistan, the ones who have put up with multiple invasions, governments and a bleak future.
Yesterday Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput addressed a gathering of top religion journalists at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in Washington, D.C. His speech was billed as a discussion on the political obligations of Catholics but he also spent a great deal of time discussing the strengths and weaknesses of media coverage. I had the privilege of attending, while also getting to put the names of reporters we discuss here with their faces.
To disagree on an appropriate response to a tragedy, as a few Vatican church officials have done, is not to disagree on a core doctrinal belief. But the way the debate among high-ranking Vatican clerics has “gone public” may portend another, more interesting trend–the Pope’s willingness to allow sunlight in arenas formerly keep priviate.
