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Pope Francis attempts to mend some doctrinal divisions by rejecting Amazonian Rite

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How progressive is Pope Francis? Not as much as many may think.

In a surprise move, Francis rejected a proposal that had called for married men in remote areas of the Amazon to marry, a decision widely seen as a victory for conservative Catholics who feared such an exception would eventually lift the celibacy requirement of priests around the world.

The pope, the first ever from Latin America, also rejected a proposal that would have allowed women to serve as deacons, an even more momentous change within the church’s traditionally male hierarchy. Press reports consistently failed to note that female deacons in altar ministry would have had a bigger impact on Catholic doctrine than ordaining married men.

The pope’s rejection of an Amazonian rite came three months after bishops at the controversial Pan-Amazonian Synod had made several recommendations to the pontiff. The big change would have included allowing community elders to perform Mass and other duties of ordained celibate Catholic clergy in order to deal with the shortage of Roman Catholic priests in South America.

In Francis, progressives have (or thought they had) their man — someone who says he’s unafraid to tinker with church tradition. This passage, high in the New York Times coverage, sums up their disappointment in this decision:

The pope’s supporters had hoped for revolutionary change. The decision, coming seven years into his papacy, raised the question of whether Francis’ promotion of discussing once-taboo issues is resulting in a pontificate that is largely talk. His closest advisers have already acknowledged that the pope’s impact has waned on the global stage, especially on core issues like immigration and the environment. …

The pope’s refusal to allow married priests was likely to delight conservatives, many of whom have come to see Francis and his emphasis on a more pastoral and inclusive church as a grave threat to the rules, orthodoxy and traditions of the faith.

The papacy of Francis has frequently drawn the ire of conservative Catholics, many of them living in the United States and parts of Europe — so they were anxiously awaiting this statement from Rome. After all, the Pan-Amazonian synod, a three-week meeting at the Vatican, was fraught with controversy.


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Trying to embrace friendships at church, in the tense age of #MeToo headlines

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Trying to embrace friendships at church, in the tense age of #MeToo headlines

The email was signed "Worried Wife" and contained a blunt version of a question Bronwyn Lea has heard many times while working with women in and around churches.

The writer said her husband had become friends with another woman his own age. There were no signs of trouble, but they traded messages about all kinds of things. This was creating a "jealous-wife space" in her mind.

"Worried Wife" concluded: "I need a biblical perspective. What is a godly view of cross-gender friendships, and how should they be approached within the context of marriage?"

That's a crucial question these days for clergy and leaders of other ministries and fellowships, said Lea, author of "Beyond Awkward Side Hugs: Living as Christian Brothers and Sisters in a Sex-Crazed World." All of those #ChurchToo reports about sexual abuse and inappropriate relationships have people on edge -- with good cause.

Lea, who has a seminary degree and law-school credentials, is convinced that it's time for churches to act more like extended families and less like companies that sort people into niches defined by age, gender and marital status.

"Many people are lonely and they truly long for some kind of connection with others," she said. "But they've also heard so many horror stories about what can go wrong that they're afraid to reach out. They think that everyone will think that they're creepy or weird if they open up. … Lots of people are giving up and checking out."

Everyone knows the church is "supposed to be a family that everyone can belong to. … That's the vision that we need to reclaim," said Lea, a staff member at the First Baptist Church in Davis, Calif. Thus, the New Testament says: "Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity."

The problem is making that work at the personal level, where pastors, teachers, parents and laypeople are trying to find realistic ways to handle social media, complex career pressures, tensions in modern families and constantly-changing gender roles.


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Iran's Baha'is lose 'other religion' ID card bracket: A global story ripe for local coverage

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The world, unfortunately, is awash in cases of state-supported religious persecution.

Among the better known examples are China’s treatment of its Uighur Muslim and Tibetan Buddhist minorities. Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims and Russia’s Jehovah’s Witnesses have also drawn international attention.

Perhaps less well known is the case of Iran’s Baha’is, who have long been persecuted for their beliefs in the land where their faith first emerged in the 19th century. Since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, however, government-instituted oppression has increased substantially.

Late last month, Teheran’s rulers moved to prevent Baha’is from obtaining national identity cards. Without such cards they cannot participate in Iran’s banking system — which means they cannot cash a check, apply for a loan, or purchase property — adding to their impoverishment.

“The exclusion of the Iranian Baha’i community from national identification cards is unconscionable, and we are disturbed to see how this action against the Baha'is fits into a broader pattern of heightened persecution over the past few months,” Anthony Vance, an American Baha’i spokesman, told The National an English-language publication based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

(Other than the The National, as of this writing my quick web search turned up little other international coverage of this latest Iranian Baha’i twist. Great Britain’s The Telegraph was the best that I found. Also, Germany’s Deutsche Welle carried a piece on its English web site, as did the U.S.-financed Radio Free Europe (Radio Liberty), and Israel’s English-language daily The Jerusalem Post. I suspect other outlets will sooner or later follow suit.)

The faith’s official international website says that Baha’is, Iran’s largest non-Muslim religious minority, “are routinely arrested, detained, and imprisoned. They are barred from holding government jobs, and their shops and other enterprises are routinely closed or discriminated against by officials at all levels. Young Baha’is are prevented from attending university, and those volunteer Baha’i educators who have sought to fill that gap have been arrested and imprisoned.”

The latest affront to Baha’i freedoms resulted from Teheran’s decision to eliminate the “other religions” category from government-mandated personal identity cards. Other than Islam, Iran recognizes only Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism as acceptable religious identities. Previously, Baha’is registered under “other religions.”


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Orson Bean's wild life: Why did Los Angeles Times obit skip God's role in final chapters?

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No doubt about it, actor Orson Bean lived a wild life — even by Hollywood standards.

As you would expect, the lengthy Los Angeles Times obituary for Bean — who died at age 91 when hit by two cars — was packed with colorful details. I mean, this is a man whose early life included a run-in with the Hollywood blacklist, yet he ended up as a conservative who helped inspire the career of his son-in-law Andrew Breitbart.

But here is the GetReligion question for this day: Why would the newspaper of record in La La Land avoid one of the key elements of the final chapter of this man’s life, as in his conversion to Christianity?

Surely there was room for a phrase or two about that development in lines such as these?

Bean’s onstage antics included stand-up comedy and magic tricks as he made the rounds on game shows and late-night television. He was fondly remembered by baby boomers for bringing his wit and sophistication to “What’s My Line?,” “I’ve Got a Secret” and “To Tell the Truth” and guest-starring in variety series and talk shows, including “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson” and “The Mike Douglas Show.” Later in his career, he starred in “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” “Being John Malkovich” and “Desperate Housewives” while racking up dozens of guest appearance credits, with “Two and a Half Men,” “The Closer,” “Modern Family” and “How I Met Your Mother” among them.

Bean, who wrote several memoirs and a cookbook for cats, was briefly blacklisted, became a hippie, a peddler of a self-help method and a beloved Venice resident as he bolstered the local theater scene with wife Alley Mills. All along, his true passion was the stage, though he acquiesced to television, films and even commercials just to pay his bills.

The story gets wilder and wilder, which only points to the irony of journalists (the Times was not alone in missing the faith angle here) avoiding any discussion of Bean’s faith — which he made no attempt to hide, as one can see in the videos accompanying this post.

You can see a hint of what is missing in this colorful passage:


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At the heart of the National Prayer Breakfast was an explosion of religious debate

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Wow. Last week’s combo of the National Prayer Breakfast on the heels of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address and acquittal — along with the Sen. Mitt Romney rebellion — filled the news with so much religious content that one would have thought the event was a papal conclave.

But no. This was Washington, DC.

The timing could not have been better. The prayer breakfast, always the first Thursday each February, brings some 3,000 guests to town, creating the perfect audience for the political theater that is our nation’s capital these days. And the major players did their best to ramp up the drama.

The opening act was Romney voting last Wednesday to remove Trump from power; the lone Republican to do so. As the Washington Post noted, retribution was quick.

Mitt Romney no longer has to guess about what “unimaginable” consequences are in store for him after the Utah senator voted to convict President Trump of abuse of power: A Utah legislator has moved to censure him; Donald Trump Jr. has called for Romney to be expelled from the Republican Party; and the National Prayer Breakfast (and later White House speech) turned into a Romney rage-fest, as the president insulted both the senator’s ethics and his faith.

Romney grew emotional on the Senate floor on Wednesday, when he explained that whatever waited for him in terms of political retribution for his vote would pale in comparison to what he would lose by violating “an oath to God.”

The cascade of articles about Romney’s faith that followed was a religion writer’s dream — often with the focus is on commentary, as opposed to news coverage (see our own tmatt’s post on that topic).

The Deseret News ran a column by a Brigham Young University professor that set the debate in more of a Mormon context wavered on whether Romney should have voted as he did. Writing for the Atlantic, Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins University said Romney’s speech will go down in history as one of the great speeches in American politics. Notice how the article segues into a faith Hall of Fame.


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Thinking along with Mark Pinsky: On talking with Trump's lawyer who was raised Jewish

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I am sorry for the delay on this think piece from The Forward, since really should have run during the impeachment proceedings. However, I never thought of this as a piece about Donald Trump or any of his pack.

No, I thought GetReligion readers would want to see this because it was written by Mark Pinsky, the veteran religion-beat pro best known for his work in the heavily evangelical world that surrounds Orlando.

Pinsky is also the author of a book that I recommend when asked one of the questions that I hear all the time. That question: What is the best book to use in a college or university level course about covering religion news?

Well, of course I am going to recommend this project from my friends and former colleagues linked to The Media Project: “Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion.” It includes my essay on religion-beat strategies for editors and publishers, “Getting Religion in the Newsroom.”

But there really isn’t a religion-beat 101 book, a kind of manual for professionals who are starting the process of reading themselves up to speed on the myriad subjects, movements and vocabularies needed to cover this complex subject.

But there is a book that I recommend that does a great job of explaining WHY reporters need to take the challenges of this beat seriously and why they should strive to get inside the beliefs and worldviews of the believers they need to cover. That book is Mark Pinksy’s small volume entitled, “A Jew Among the Evangelicals: A Guide for the Perplexed.”

This brings us to the weekend think piece, that recent Forward feature that ran with this headline: “Trump Impeachment lawyer Jay Sekulow says ‘I’ve never felt not Jewish.’ “

Why did Pinsky land this exclusive interview?

Sekulow said the interview with the Forward was the only one he planned to do ahead of the impeachment trial, and that he agreed to do it because I have been writing about him on and off for more than a quarter century — and because his great-uncle, Sonya Sekular, worked for the Forward in the 1940s, Sekulow said.


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This is not a trick question: Can students pray in U.S. public schools?

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This is not a trick question: Can students pray in U.S. public schools?

THE QUESTION:

Can students pray in U.S. public schools?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

The Trump Administration’s education and justice departments, after work with government attorneys, issued policy guidance to public schools January 16 on this emotional-laden and oft-misunderstood issue. The answer is well settled in American law and agreed upon by a very wide range of religious and public education organizations.

The answer is: Yes, depending.

Yes, if a student initiates prayer and does not disrupt classes. Students also enjoy other religious rights on an equal basis with non-religious activities, as surveyed below. 

But the answer is no if public school systems, administrators or teachers authorize prayers in an official capacity. Federal court edicts say that violates the Constitution’s ban on government “establishment of religion.” (Private schools, of course, can do whatever they want about religion.)

The Trump announcement (nicely timed to boost religious enthusiasm in the 2020 campaign) merely repeats the well-settled consensus. However, the federal government might now enforce more strictly local schools’ required written certification that they keep hands off students’ voluntary religious activities, and it might investigate complaints of violations more vigorously.

Our story starts with Engel v. Vitale, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1962 ruling that saw an obvious “establishment” violation in public school recitations of a bland interfaith prayer of 22 words that was authorized by the New York State Regents.


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Podcast: Do Catholic dissenters have a constitutional right to Holy Communion?

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They are among the most famous words in journalism, combining to form a phrase that — back in the old wire-service days — defined the craft of hard-news reporting and writing.

All together now: These words are “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” “why” and “how.”

That’s the old approach to writing a good hard-news lede (especially on deadline). This formula can be a big clunky, at times, but it does force reporters to think through their material and identify the most important elements of a story.

So, with that in mind, try to identify the various pieces of the W5H puzzle when reading the Providence Journal lede that dominated our discussions during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). The key in this case is to focus on the “why” factor.

The Rev. Richard Bucci, pastor of the West Warwick church where a lawmaker’s sister has said she was sexually molested repeatedly as a child by a now-dead priest, marked the anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision by issuing a flier listing the names of every Rhode Island legislator who voted last year to enshrine the right to an abortion in state law.

So why did this Catholic pastor send out this flier? That’s pretty obvious: He did so in response to a piece of abortion-rights legislation in Rhode Island.

Now, why did the individual legislator mentioned in this train wreck of a lede believe that Father Bucci had taken this action?

It would appear that Rep. Carol McEntee thought this action also had something to do with the Catholic church — or this particular parish — hiding clergy who abuse children. Later, readers also learn that Bucci and McEntee had previously clashed over her right to give a eulogy in the middle of a Catholic funeral.

But what is the main story here? Is this a story about the new abortion law and Bucci’s list of legislators or is it a story about Rep. McEntee and this priest? Does the story offer evidence that proves that McEntee is onto something, with this claim that there are two “why” factors at play in this case? (Hold that thought.)


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Was Romney's faith taken seriously in impeachment coverage? Alas, few surprises here...

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In the end, the only drama in the impeachment vote didn’t involve the Democrats and Donald Trump.

No, it involved Sen. Mitt Romney and Trump. If you looked at this from Romney’s stated point of view, the final decision came down to Trump vs. God — as in Romney’s oath to follow his faith and his conscience, as opposed to loyalty to his political party.

The most dramatic moment in Romney’s speech on the U.S. Senate floor — that long, long, long pause as he fought to control his emotions — came as he tried to explain how his decision was linked to his faith and his family.

So how did this obvious faith factor show up in the mainstream coverage of the political story of the day? The results, for better and for worse, were totally predictable.

Take the New York Times, for example. Here is the crucial passage, pushed deep into the main Romney story.

On the Senate floor on Wednesday, Mr. Romney placed his decision in the context of his faith, his family and how history would remember it.

And that was that.

The political desk team at The Washington Post managed to get one snippet of Godtalk into its Romney story. Readers who made it to the 12th paragraph read the following:

Romney said he couldn’t let concerns over breaking with his party guide his vote, which he cast as one of conscience and rooted in his religious beliefs.

“I am aware that there are people in my party and in my state who will strenuously disapprove of my decision, and in some quarters, I will be vehemently denounced,” Romney said on the Senate floor. “I am sure to hear abuse from the president and his supporters. Does anyone seriously believe I would consent to these consequences other than from an inescapable conviction that my oath before God demanded it of me?”


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