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Movie junkets, and the stories that result from them, share a certain predictability â and it doesn’t usually involve any depth of discussion about faith issues.
It numbers a recent U.S. Postmaster General (John Potter), and a current associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (Sonia Sotomayor) as alumni, but that’s not why Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx, New York, is making headlines right now.
The editorial team of The Washington Post has published a direct quotation from an outside voice, a figure of authority, who supports the doctrines and disciplines of the United Methodist Church, which reflect centuries of Christian tradition on marriage and sex. This is the first time that this old-school journalistic device — a throwback to the days in which balance and fairness were journalistic virtues — has been used in the newspaper’s national-level coverage of this local-news story in rural Pennsylvania.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has stated the Church of England was moving away from using faith as a criteria for admission to its church-supported schools, The Times of London reported last week.
After years of covering the sexuality wars in America’s oldline denominations, I am well aware that different camps within these churches interpret the rites and vows of their traditions in different ways. The wordings in their rites have been known to change from decade to decade, as well.
All the necessary components were there: 83-year-old woman, beloved and career adjunct professor, cancer patient, devout and traditional Catholic, poor both in spirit and pocketbook, released unceremoniously from Duquesne University after 25 years of semester-to-semester service.
As we have watched the gossipy headlines roll past in recent days, I have found myself contemplating this question: Is it possible for anyone whose last name is “Cheney” to take a public stand that is not purely based on political considerations?
ROYCE WONDERS: (Paraphrasing) Whatâs the origin of Mormonismâs official name, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and do those two âofâ phrases mean Saints are on equal footing with Jesus, or that Jesus was Mormon, or what?
Did the editors at The Irish Times print the obituary of Olivia Durdin Robertson, who it described as, “the self-styled ‘high priestess’ of a Co Carlow-based cult devoted to an ancient Egyptian goddess, [who] has died aged 96,” without any comment or further investigation to avoid a scandal in the Church of Ireland? Or were they unaware of what they had in front of them?
