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Liberal Catholics have scored a major coup at the Vatican, the Guardian reports as a defender of âliberation theologistsâ and former student of Gustavo Gutiérrez has been appointed head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican.
More than a decade ago, while serving as religion editor for The Oklahoman, I visited Andy Griffith’s television hometown and wrote a column about it:
So what’s up with the Associated Press, all of a sudden? It used to be rare to read an AP report that totally needed an “analysis” label, but now it seems that these stories pop up all of the time.
A few years ago, I covered an Atheist de-baptism ceremony where de-converts would blow dry their hair, attempting to reverse whatever they thought baptism meant. It was unclear how many of the few hundred officially renounced a formal membership where they had to do something specific to formally part ways, since it looked more like an excuse for a party.
Do not let the small mistakes in this article about the ordination of six former Anglican clergy as Catholic priests for the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter distract you — this article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram entitled “6 former Episcopal clergymen are ordained in Catholic Church” is one of the few I have seen that “gets religion” and understands the big picture being covered in this story.
Over at the Dickinson Press (North Dakota), reporter Amy Dalrymple has been writing a fascinating series titled “Faces of the Boom.” Whereas most of the country (outside of Washington, D.C., at least) is facing economic hardships, prolonged unemployment and housing problems, North Dakota has something of a boom. If you or anyone you know has been out of work in the last couple of years, you’ve probably heard the advice to head there for work.
Day after day, your GetReligionistas receive emails from readers that say something like this: “Please look at the following. Why do you think that (name of mainstream news organization) chose to (leave out or butcher a crucial fact) when covering this story? Is there something (some kind of politically correct policy) that requires them to do this?”
Time for a brief trip into tmatt’s massive folder of GetReligion guilt, that niche in which I stash mainstream news stories — good and bad — that catch my attention but then get trampled in the rush to react to bigger stories. This time around, I think that this particular story deserves late attention, not because it is of massive importance, but because it represents another example of the struggle at The Baltimore Sun to recognize that the Roman Catholic Church is a big, complicated institution and that it is often important to talk to a variety of Catholics to find out what is going on.
I’m so old that I remember when Catholic leaders getting involved in anything even slightly political meant that journalists would write hard-hitting pieces. Sometimes journalists would just follow the “too political” talking points of well-funded PR campaigns run by political opponents of the Catholic leaders.
