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Differing papal perspectives

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We’ve discussed a bit of the European media’s coverage of various Roman Catholic sex scandals. The German press has been working on stories dealing with Pope Benedict XVI’s time there as a diocesan bishop, during which one child-molesting priest was transferred. The news has been terribly sad to read. And the New York Times has also gotten into the fray with some hard-hitting coverage. Here’s Laurie Goodstein’s recent story questioning whether then-Cardinal Ratzinger failed to act with one troublesome case involving untold numbers of deaf children in the scandal-plagued Milwaukee diocese.


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We're 0.8% of the coverage!

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There was some unsurprising but sobering news from the folks over at Pew this week. The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life analyzed more than 68,700 stories from 2009 and determined that religion stories accounted for 0.8 percent of the total news coverage from last year. That’s down a smidge from 2008′s 1.0 percent. By comparison, news about health care comprised 11 percent. Education and immigration, on the other hand, are about where religion coverage is.


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News flash! Eastern Rite priests get married

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Every now and then it seems that a story in the mainstream press gets under the skin of GetReligion readers and quite a few drop us notes pointing toward the same URL. This time around, it was a story in the New York Times that ran under the headline, “A Flock Grows Right at Home for a Priest in Ukraine.”


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The sudden rise of violent rhetoric

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Last week our powerful and very effective Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said, of the health care legislation the House was considering, that “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” Well, we’ve passed that bill and some of us wish the media would have concerned itself with what was in the bill a bit more before the vote, much less after. But even before the House voted in support of the bill, most stories dealt with politics. And now that has descended into some pretty partisan media coverage. The media obsession of the moment is that health care legislation’s opponents are a violent and uncontrolled mob, the likes of which we’ve never seen (or something).


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Fewer foregone conclusions, please

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Growing up as a pastor’s kid, my aversion to congregational meetings was earned honestly. I don’t know what it is about people, but time somehow becomes no object when contending for how you want the bathrooms remodeled. And I’m glad that people care about how their congregation is operating, but sometimes that concern translates into some pretty tense moments. I was reminded of my feelings about voters assemblies when reading this horribly imbalanced story about a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran congregation’s recent vote regarding a principal who had been accused of teaching contrary to the denomination’s position.


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Tebow's Christianity like NFL leprosy?

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First Tim Tebow, one of the best football players ever to play the college game, had too elongated a throwing motion to play on Sundays. Now that his delivery is no longer an issue, NFL teams are worried about the “challenges” that would come with signing a rookie so overtly Christian.


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