Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
It’s been two months since I began blogging for GR and I’ve learned something very important: I don’t like blogging. And so, I am writing to bid the GR crowd farewell. This will be my last post.
Over the past week, GetReligion has been pursuing this question: What is the mainstream press saying about where Judge Sonia Sotomayor falls in the spectrum of Catholic life and practice? Well, New York Times reporter Laurie Goodstein has been researching this for all of the curious minds who read that newspaper (not to mention GR readers), and here’s what she has found out:
Day after day, your GetReligionistas receive emails that contain tips about religion-news stories across America and sometimes from around the world. We are extremely grateful that readers do this, because there is no way we can read even a 10th of the coverage that we would like to review here on the blog.
We are getting closer and loser to an official mainstream-press language to describe the religious background of Judge Sonia Sotomayor and, to no one’s surprise, the issue that continues to drive this slow process of journalistic revelation is abortion.
Yesterday morning at Los Angeles International Airport, Brenda Lee presented herself as a journalist, a Catholic priestess, and a California citizen so concerned about gay marriage that she wanted to give a letter to President Obama. In blurring those identities — in behaving as an activist while standing amid journalists — she managed to get herself hauled away in full-throttle civil disobedience mode.
Obviously, there are converts to the Episcopal Church and then there are CONVERTS to the Episcopal Church.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a Methodist, a Reform Jew, or a Roman Catholic. When somebody in your denomination is convicted of a crime, or behaves in a scandalous manner, it seems that the question often arises: what’s the point of belief if it doesn’t keep a John Edwards or an (ex-Catholic priest) Alberto Cutié * from betraying their vows or a Bernie Madoff from cheating people out of millions of dollars?
Let’s face it, this is a spectacular hook for a story that blends sports with spirituality. The headline gives you an idea where the Washington Post team is going: “For Jaeger, the Point Is Love — Tennis Prodigy-Turned-Nun Wishes to Show Compassion She Once Craved.”
This week the California State Supreme Court revealed its decision regarding Proposition 8, the ballot initiative limiting marriage to a union of one man and one woman. Californians had passed the initiative and opponents had filed suit against it. The court arguments were televised which meant that no one was particularly surprised by the ruling, which the Washington Post‘s Keith Richburg writes up here:
