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This time of year, it’s common to see stories about God and the gridiron. Many miss the mark. But every now and then, as tmatt found in an interview with Troy Polamalu, a reporter will hit paydirt with a story that gets both faith and football.
This week the New York Times ran a fascinating profile of a Texas Associated Press journalist whose beat has led him to witness more executions than anyone else on record. As in, more than 300. I really enjoyed the article although I enjoyed it less after I realized it was a bit of a rewrite of a CNN piece from July.
As my GetReligion colleagues and the media (particularly the Brits, of course) have again and noted this week, again portrayed Pope Benedict’s move to create a personal ordinariate for conservative Anglicans as a bold move to poach members from the world’s third-largest denomination. Terry had praise for a story in the New York Times which noted that accepting Anglican priests into the Catholic Church was by no means without precedent.
As we all know, and as numerous stacks of research have shown, only really stupid, illogical, fact-challenged people believe that God played some meaningful role in the creation of heaven and earth. Right?
So I finished the 5-part (plus epilogue!) New York Times series about the hostage-taking, captivity and escape of reporter David Rhode. I enjoyed the series, and it reminded me of the one about a similar situation involving the Christian Science Monitor‘s Jill Carroll.
Quite a few newspapers and television stations across America have posted various versions of the following short Associated Press story on their websites. For the sake of clarity, here’s the whole report:
If you’re looking to hit the movies after sundown Saturday, there is a really good, really Jewy option out there. It’s the Coen brothers’ latest film, “A Serious Man,” which Steve Rabey mentioned last month. Until sometime in the past few weeks, you also could have gotten a Jewish perspective on Nazis from “Inglourious Basterds,” though I wouldn’t have recommended taking the kids to that one. In fact, there have been a handful of good, Jewish-themed films in theaters in the past year: “Defiance” immediately comes to mind.
We’ve looked a bit at some of the hyperbolic coverage of the major Vatican news this week. Previously, for instance, the Times (U.K.) ran headlines about Catholic tanks parked on Anglican lawns, then Vatican gambits and Papal poaching.
As you can see from the numerous posts on media coverage of the pope’s outreach to conservative Anglicans this past week, clerical celibacy has been a subplot (not solely fostered, but certainly abbeted by a speculative press). And then there is of course, the shadow side we have seen covered before — the sex abuse scandals of the past 25 years. These involve mostly pederasts — clergy abusing children.
