Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
I read The New York Times religiously every morning, in the ink-on-paper version (!), and am thankful that in our increasingly post-print age this institution survives and continues to give me a daily window on the world with plenty of style and personality. Two recent articles stand out for their authors’ willingness to seek out some of the deeper layers of story beneath the surface news.
I realize that many GetReligion readers are very, very, very tired of reading posts about the mainstream press coverage of the internal Catholic disputes about the doctrinal and liturgical content of the funeral rites for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy.
An encouraging headline got me started on this memo from Cairo in Saturday’s New York Times: “Hints of Pluralism in Egyptian Religious Debates.”
The other day a reader sent in a story submission with the note, “The story does a good job of laying out the canon law of the bishops’ retirement and why this is curious.” It included a link to a very brief Associated Press report about Pope Benedict XVI accepting the early retirement of an outspoken bishop in Pennsylvania. At the time, it didn’t seem terribly noteworthy, but it was just a straightforward and concise summary of canon law.
Since starting to write for GetReligion last year, I’ve become increasingly aware that there are outposts in American religious life that rarely get much, if any attention from the mainstream media. One of these (can you say Eckhart Tolle, anyone?) is New Age spirituality — and beliefs that syncretize New Age beliefs with Christian or Jewish practices.
As Doug LeBlanc bids farewell, I say hello. Doug and I have been friends, fellow pilgrims and professional peers for many years. Now we’re more like two bloggers passing in the night.
Let’s face it, GetReligion.org already had strong ties to Colorado and now they are about to get stronger.
Okay, I know readers are getting testy about all of the Ted Kennedy coverage (believe me, it’s wearing on me, too) but I have just one final story to highlight. It’s not about Kennedy per se but it uses his death as a hook to discuss the death of large Irish-American families in general. The New York Times story by Michael Wilson is worth highlighting because it does what so few stories about fertility do — it discusses how religion plays a role in the number of children women have. Huzzah! After making the case that Irish-American family size has plummeted, we’re told:
On Saturday, a multi-bylined story in the Washington Post wrote that terrorists became helpful intelligence assets after — and only after — they were subjected to the CIA’s harshest interrogation methods, including waterboarding.
