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Does the Vatican's quasi-official newspaper have a 'fake news' problem?

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The Vatican gets its fair share of coverage from news organizations around the world. Even those newspapers who don’t have a dedicated religion beat writer have Vatican coverage in its pages, either in the form of a foreign correspondent or via subscribing to wire services such as The Associated Press or Reuters.

It isn’t lost on Pope Francis that the news media ecosystem, saying this past May that journalists should use the power of the press to search for the truth and give voice to the voiceless.

Conservative news websites in the United States have increasingly set their sights on Francis in recent years. Catholic news sites that lean left doctrinally have also have a strong readership. Both need to be read by journalists who cover the Vatican and the pope. Another source they need to read is L’Osservatore Romano, a once great and influential newspaper that has over the years declined in both influence and stature.

For those who have never heard of it, L’Osservatore Romano is a daily newspaper printed in Italian with weekly editions in six languages, including English, and once a month in Polish.

The newspaper reports on the activities of the Holy See and owned by the Vatican — but is not considered an official publication. The Holy See’s official publication is the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, which acts as a government gazette. The views expressed in L’Osservatore Romano are those of individual writers unless they appear under the byline “Nostre Informazioni” (Italian for “Our Information”) or “Santa Sede” (Holy See). In other words, one needs a media literacy course in order to fully understand what this newspaper is reporting.

The publication founded in 1861 — and available at newspaper stands across Rome, via subscription and online — continues to play a major role in interpreting the papacy and the role of the Vatican in the loves of Roman Catholics around the world. Problematic for the Vatican’s semi-official newspaper has been its editorial standards as of late.


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Religious Freedom Restoration Act: AP story shows why this is a law liberals could love

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Many of us may have heard of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which has been in effect since 1993 during the administration of President Bill Clinton. This was an era in which a broad coalition of liberals and conservatives often worked together on religious liberty issues.

Of course, RFRA has been vilified by liberals as a sop to conservatives, chiefly because it was used successfully in the 2014 U.S. Supreme Court “Hobby Lobby” case that allowed the crafts store chain to not provide birth control coverage for its employees. RFRA is frequently connected to religious liberty debates linked to LGBTQ issues, as well.

But now, many critics of RFRA are praising it after it was employed in the defense of Scott Warren, a Unitarian who was charged with harboring illegal aliens near a border crossing in the Arizona desert in January 2018. Our own Bobby Ross wrote about this case here and here.

A new Associated Press analysis describes why RFRA suddenly became important again:

Religious liberty is often a high priority for conservatives, but last week’s acquittal of an Arizona man prosecuted for aiding migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border is spotlighting the ability of religious freedom law to shield people of faith regardless of political ideology.

The case of Scott Warren, a college instructor and volunteer with a humanitarian group that helps migrants, gained nationwide notice as he challenged what he called the government’s “attempt to criminalize basic human kindness.”

Much of that attention focused on Warren’s acquittal on felony charges of harboring. But he was also acquitted Wednesday of a separate misdemeanor charge after his lawyers argued that his religious beliefs motivated him to leave water for migrants crossing through a desert wilderness area.

This was written by Elana Schor, the AP reporter for religion and politics who is part of AP’s new global religion reporting team, announced Sept. 5 that’s being paid for by a grant from the Lilly Endowment. (I broke the story about the grant here back in April 2018).

Warren’s acquittal this past week was a huge victory for the Religious Left.


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Greek Orthodox leader arrested: Reporters who follow the money will hear all kinds of questions

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This is the kind of New York Times headline that tends to inspire emails that show up in my computer inbox: “Ex-Director of Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America Charged.”

In this case, we are dealing with an Associated Press report that has run all over the place — covering the latest installment in a long-simmering scandal that has created a major embarrassment for Eastern Orthodox Christians here in North America.

On one level, this is a Greek Orthodox story. However, I think that reporters need to understand that many Orthodox believers — in America and around the world — are intensely interested in what happens in this case.

Why is that? You see this scandal is linked to a highly symbolic 9/11 memorial project at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. Check out the images and emotional language used in the video at the top of this post, back when work finally started moving on the long-delayed project to rebuild St. Nicholas Orthodox Church.

Let’s start with the top of the AP report:

NEW YORK — The former head administrator of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America was arrested Monday on charges he embezzled over half a million dollars from the organization even as the church ran out of money trying to build a shrine to replace a church crushed in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Jerry Dimitriou, 55, of Greenlawn, New York, was freed on $150,000 bail after he was charged with two counts of wire fraud, accused of pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars illegally while serving as the administrator from 2000 until late 2017.

Dimitriou oversaw construction of a new church and Sept. 11 shrine at the World Trade Center until the project ran out of money in 2017. The St. Nicholas National Shrine, designed by renowned architect Santiago Calatrava and estimated to cost $50 million, was supposed to replace a tiny church that was crushed by the trade center’s south tower.

That $50 million price tag?

If you dig around you will find all kinds of other numbers for that, starting at $80 million and heading way, way higher. The funds for the project came from donors all over the place, with gifts both large and small.

So what went wrong? Here is some language in the new AP story. Read carefully:


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About those media reports that Rick Perry believes God 'ordained' Donald Trump to be president

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Rick Perry, the outgoing U.S. energy secretary and former longtime governor of Texas, stirred up a pre-Thanksgiving social media storm with his comments on Fox News about God’s role — as Perry sees it — in choosing the president.

Not surprisingly, some major media reports boiled down Perry’s perspective to say that Donald Trump was “ordained by God” to lead America.

That is an accurate but wholly incomplete assessment of Perry’s words.

“How media misinformation spreads...” is how one Twitter user — Steve Krakauer — characterized CNN Politics’ tweet.

The thing is, for those who bothered to click the CNN link, the actual headline and story (by religion editor Daniel Burke) were pretty good. The headline mentioned Trump and Obama, and Burke put Perry’s words — all of them — into a helpful context:

(CNN) Like a lot of evangelical Christians, Energy Secretary Rick Perry believes in a God who gets involved in every aspect of our lives -- including the election of Donald Trump as President.

"I'm a big believer that the God of our universe is still very active in the details of the day-to-day lives of government," Perry told Fox News in remarks aired on Sunday.

"You know, Barack Obama doesn't get to be the President of the United States without being ordained by God. Neither did Donald Trump."

Perry went on to say that being God's instrument on Earth doesn't mean that Trump is a perfect person. Echoing the argument of other white evangelical Christians, the Texas Republican went on to cite several biblical figures, including King David, whose private lives didn't always align with biblical standards.

Perry is just the latest evangelical Christian in the Trump administration to say they believe the President is divinely ordained.


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Rolling Stone purrs for Buttigieg's generous accusations of right-wingers' spiritual hypocrisy

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Rolling Stone has devoted 2,200 words to a brief Q&A interview with Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg, and it should surprise nobody that interviewer Alex Morris is a fan. On the bright side, the interview likely dabbles in more theology per square inch than Rolling Stone has published since its last lengthy interview with Bono.

On the less bright side, the chat is nearly obsequious because Morris presents Buttigieg as a promising solution to Democrats’ long-bewailed failure to outperform Republicans in playing the God card. 

Worse, what Rolling Stone’s headline calls “The Generous Gospel of Mayor Pete” is weighed down with motives-bashing and presumptions about people’s interior lives. He refers repeatedly to conservatives’ hypocrisy, as though there is no other explanation for their making political decisions after facing a Hobson’s choice.

Morris quotes the now-iconic speech in which Buttigieg addressed Vice President Mike Pence’s purported problem with the mayor. This was a conflict wholly of Buttigieg’s making, unless it is now apostasy to disagree with the biblical interpretations of Mayor Buttigieg, or to make political choices that bother him.

Morris observes that “the Democratic Party has allowed itself to be cast as not just [areligious] but also anti-religious,” but the candidate she perceives as the antidote attacks the beliefs and character of any Christians who have supported President Donald Trump.

Even Blaise Pascal, one of the subtlest theologians in Christian history, falls afoul of Morris, and Buttigieg does nothing to suggest there may be more to the man than one of his arguments for believing in God:


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NYTimes highlights 2020 Democrats' unapologetic support for abortion rights, sans religion

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Is it possible to write a consequential news story on the role of abortion in the 2020 presidential race without mentioning religion?

The New York Times has attempted it with an in-depth piece on a survey it did on Democratic candidates’ positions on the issue.

The Times reports that 2020 Democratic contenders — all of them — “unapologetically support abortion rights.”

The lede boils down the survey’s major findings:

The Democratic presidential field has coalesced around an abortion rights agenda more far-reaching than anything past nominees have proposed, according to a New York Times survey of the campaigns. The positions reflect a hugely consequential shift on one of the country’s most politically divisive issues.

Every candidate The Times surveyed supports codifying Roe v. Wade in federal law, allowing Medicaid coverage of abortion by repealing the Hyde Amendment, and removing funding restrictions for organizations that provide abortion referrals. Almost all of them say they would nominate only judges who support abortion rights, an explicit pledge Democrats have long avoided. 

Very few support restrictions on abortions late in pregnancy. Seven say abortion pills should be available over the counter. Nine want a federal approval process for state abortion laws. And Joseph R. Biden Jr., whose ambivalence on abortion rights has been a theme for decades, is seeking to recast himself as a full-throated champion of them.

Click the link by Biden’s name, and a previous Times story delves into some of the issues related to the former vice president’s Catholic faith and his position on abortion. That’s a topic that we’ve covered at GetReligion recently (here and here, for example).

But the word “Catholic” does not appear in this new report on Democrats and abortion. Nor do terms such as “religion” and “faith” or even “pro-life” or “anti-abortion.”


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Des Moines Register offers master class on writing a slanted United Methodist-LGBTQ story

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I have never been a full-time police-and-cops reporter, but I have pulled an occasional shift on that difficult beat — which tends to involve lots of work with legal terms linked to crimes and trials.

At the same time, I have covered religion news in various capacities for 40-plus years and — this is a commentary on the divisive times in which we live — that kind of work also requires a working knowledge of legal lingo.

In the past, I have noticed that when someone is “charged” with breaking a law, that means there are debates about whether the person has committed the acts in question. In other words, officials have “charged” that a person did x, y or z, but there needs to be some kind of trial to determine if that charge is true.

With that in mind, please note the overture in this amazingly slanted Des Moines Register story — circulated via the USA Today Network — about another LGBTQ ordination conflict inside the bitterly divided United Methodist Church. Here’s the headline: “Iowa pastor facing church trial for being 'self-avowed practicing homosexual' takes leave of absence.”

An openly queer Iowa City pastor charged with "being a self-avowed practicing homosexual" in violation of United Methodist Church law will take an indefinite leave of absence, according to an agreement announced Wednesday.

A trial date had already been set when the Rev. Anna Blaedel requested a "just resolution," which focuses on "repairing any harm to people and communities," according to the Iowa Conference of the United Methodist Church. 

Blaedel, who identifies as queer and uses the pronouns they and them, expressed frustration and disappointment in a letter published in full by the Gazette. …

"Today we are naming together the truth that it is not currently possible for me to continue my ministry in the context of the Iowa Annual Conference, nor the UMC," wrote Blaedel, the former director of the Wesley Center at the University of Iowa. "That is not the truth I want to come to, but it has been, is being, revealed as true. ... I am no longer willing to subject my body and soul and life to this particular violence.

Now, let’s read this carefully.


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Los Angeles Times vs. Fuller Seminary: Is fair, accurate coverage even possible these days?

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The Los Angeles Times hasn’t had a religion reporter in years and the newspaper’s lapses in religion coverage get embarrassing after awhile.

Such was their Nov. 21 story about a lesbian student at Fuller Seminary who is suing the school because they expelled her after they learned she was married to a woman. As I read it, certain parts sounded quite familiar until I realized I’d commented on a similar story by Religion News Service last July.

Once again, I have to remind folks that doctrinal covenants, creeds and behavior codes are something students agree to, and often sign a document attesting their compliance to, when they enroll. They are choosing to join a voluntary association defined by a set of doctrines, some about moral theology.

So here we go, again.

Joanna Maxon, a 53-year-old Christian mother of two, was searching for ways to advance in her career as a supervisor and began looking into graduate schools.

She decided on Fuller Theological Seminary, a religious graduate school based in Pasadena, because it combined things she valued: her faith and her studies.

We know the middle of this story — they kicked her out.

Now, Maxon, who lives with her wife Tonya Minton in Fort Worth, is suing Fuller, alleging the college violated Title IX rules that forbid educational institutions from discriminating against students on the basis of sex.

Paul Southwick, Maxon’s attorney, alleges the school also violated the Unruh Civil Rights Act and is seeking compensation of at least $500,000 to cover attorney fees and Maxon’s federally funded student loans, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in a U.S. District Court in Central California.

Southwick said that because Fuller accepted federal aid and had not received a religious exemption, it must adhere to federal laws, including Title IX.

OK, did anyone bother to look at the sexual standards page on Fuller’s web site?


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Think about this: Digging down into that all-to-familiar 'God gap' in American politics

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I think that the first time I encountered the term “pew gap” was in the middle-to-late 1980s, as the side effects of the post-Roe v. Wade era began to emerge.

That was when people started talking about the impact of the Religious Right on the Republican Party and the growing secularization of the elites at the top of Democratic Party structures, where old-school labor union Catholics were being replaced by various kinds of white-collar groups linked to academia and feminism.

At the end of the 20th Century, the “pew” or “God gap” was a given. I know that I have used it before, for this piece of the “Blue Movie” essay that The Atlantic ran in 2003 remains perfect:

Early in the 1996 election campaign Dick Morris and Mark Penn, two of Bill Clinton's advisers, discovered a polling technique that proved to be one of the best ways of determining whether a voter was more likely to choose Clinton or Bob Dole for President. Respondents were asked five questions, four of which tested attitudes toward sex: Do you believe homosexuality is morally wrong? Do you ever personally look at pornography? Would you look down on someone who had an affair while married? Do you believe sex before marriage is morally wrong? The fifth question was whether religion was very important in the voter's life.

Respondents who took the "liberal" stand on three of the five questions supported Clinton over Dole by a two-to-one ratio; those who took a liberal stand on four or five questions were, not surprisingly, even more likely to support Clinton. The same was true in reverse for those who took a "conservative" stand on three or more of the questions. (Someone taking the liberal position, as pollsters define it, dismisses the idea that homosexuality is morally wrong, admits to looking at pornography, doesn't look down on a married person having an affair, regards sex before marriage as morally acceptable, and views religion as not a very important part of daily life.) According to Morris and Penn, these questions were better vote predictors — and better indicators of partisan inclination — than anything else except party affiliation or the race of the voter (black voters are overwhelmingly Democratic).


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