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There have been no surprises so far in the first day coverage of the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams’ decision to retire at year’s end. A little before noon London time the archbishop’s press office released his resignation statement. Within the hour a Press Association interview and a background item for editors were released.
Words cannot describe how much I pity the journalist who has to try to write — in roughly 18 inches of type — a mainstream news report on the decision by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to step down from his beleaguered throne at the ripe old age of 61.
Patrick Wade of the Champaign News-Gazette had a fascinating story about the creation of a new Torah by hand. Here’s how it begins:
Nothing hinders one act from having two effects, only one of which is intended, while the other is beside the intention. Now moral acts take their species according to what is intended, and not according to what is beside the intention, since this is accidental … . Thomas Aquinas, (Summa Theologica, Secunda Secundae Partis, Q. 64)
The Associated Press has a story about a child in Morocco who killed herself after she was forced to marry her rapist. Amina Filali was raped when she was 15 and was 16 when she took her own life. She had complained to her mother that she was being beaten during her five-month marriage and we’re told that the mother counseled patience. Here’s the top of the story:
There are, of course, no references to religious faith in the recent Atlantic Monthly business section report that ran under this promising headline: “Europeâs Real Crisis — The Continentâs problems are as much demographic as financial. They wonât go away soon.”
As we traded messages the other day, your GetReligionistas enjoyed a casual discussion about the heavy load of cyber-traffic that we direct in our endeavors for this media critique weblog. I noted that, in two years of writing for GetReligion, I had accumulated 2,890 e-mail threads in my GR story possibilities folder. (That’s just the ones left undeleted.)
Several things are becoming clearer here in Beltway-land, as coverage continues of the clash between Father Marcel Guarnizo and the Buddhist-Catholic-artist-gay-activist Barbara Johnson. Before addressing a few key themes, here’s the top of the recent Washington Post article that covered the latest development in the case.
