, , , , , , , , , ,

Thinking with Ryan Burge and Rod Dreher: Where did all those American Catholics go?

, , , , , , , , , ,

Are you managing to keep up with political scientist Ryan Burge on Twitter?

Well, why the heck not?

Trust me, I know that it’s hard to keep up. I have a jam-packed online file on Burge items — he is a GetReligion partner — that I want to use and it keeps growing. You don’t have to agree with this progressive Baptist minister all the time (predictable people are of little use to journalists) to be able to see the trends and insights in his charts, graphics and bites of commentary that come with them.

The crucial skill here is the ability to spot the obvious, then jump to the trends that reporters really need to dig into.

Consider the item at the top of this weekend’s think piece. There are four lines of commentary and each one is worthy of coverage. Here’s the gist: Nones are still growing. The active members of evangelical and mainline churches are (independent of membership statistical trends) still going to church has much as ever. African-American Protestant churches are holding steady.

But it’s the bottom line that Rod “Benedict Option” Dreher focused on in a recent blog item:

What has happened to Catholics? I suppose it could be that Catholics still identify as Catholics, even if they have ceased to participate in the life of the Church. I’ve known plenty of Catholics who for all intents and purposes have ceased to be Catholic, but who still call themselves Catholic, despite being unfaithful to their baptism. Protestants who have ceased going to church tend not to continue to identify as Methodist, or Evangelical, or whatever. I would expect that natal Orthodox Christians who have ceased to practice the faith would nevertheless identify themselves as Orthodox to a pollster.

Still, that can’t explain the entire Catholic collapse, can it? I shared Burge’s tweet with a friend who is a churchgoing Millennial Catholic. It made him disconsolate and angry at the leadership class of the Church. “Well, what a friggin’ disaster,” he texted back. “And there will be only a shrug. Nothing to see here. Just another reminder of the Catholic dumpster fire.”

As always, Burge’s thoughts led to lots of interesting comments and questions.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , ,

New podcast: Coronavirus crisis claims life of NYC doctor who had a 'calling,' not just a job

, , , , , , , , ,

Some people talk about their “jobs” and their “careers.”

People who discuss this topic in faith-based terms will say that they have “vocations” or “callings.”

How do you know the difference between these two ways of thinking?

That was the subject that loomed in the background this week when “Crossroads” host Todd Wilken and I discussed news coverage of the suicide of Dr. Lorna M. Breen, medical director of the emergency room at New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital. The final weeks of her life were dominated by the coronavirus crisis since — in addition to her work at the center of the New York City crisis — she contracted the disease, beat it and then went back to the ER.

The hook for the podcast (click here to tune that in) was my post: “Faith played major role in life of New York ER doctor who took her own life: What was it?” A fine New York Times story about her death featured moving testimonies about her leadership and self-sacrifice during this emergency, including her own efforts to increase safety for her team. Then, way down in the story, there was this:

Aside from work, Dr. Breen filled her time with friends, hobbies and sports, friends said. She was an avid member of a New York ski club and traveled regularly out west to ski and snowboard. She was also a deeply religious Christian who volunteered at a home for older people once a week, friends said.

The faith reference — with its connection to her volunteer work with the elderly — was like a door that opened for a second and then closed.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Note that the “friends said” attributions are plural. Apparently several people who knew Breen thought that her faith was linked, at the very least, to her volunteer work. I think it’s safe to say she was volunteering her services as a doctor, as a kind of companion and healer (in several senses of that word).


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , ,

Calling BS on NC-17

, , , , , , , ,

The Ringer has published an odd report by Keith Phipps that traces the doomed path of the NC-
17 rating in a time when streaming TV has eclipsed the importance of films. Its headline is an
engaging two-sentence summary: “Thirty Years Ago, Hollywood Won the Battle Against the X
Rating. But It Lost the War.”

Phipps devotes nearly 2,600 words to this topic.

You just know that simple-minded religious people play a major role in this drama. His one reference to cultural conservatives (“a religious right eager to protest whatever they [sic] felt to be an affront to their values”) is as predictable as a media release from Americans United. He adds this:

“They didn’t lack targets and, in fairness, those targets felt closer at hand thanks to neighborhood video stores with curtained ‘adults only’ sections and scandalous music videos just a click away on cable.”

That’s as far as the fairness extends, though. This isn’t hard-news journalism, of course. Still, it would have been nice — interesting even — to see some serious discussions of the views of people on both sides of this issue. Diversity is often interesting.

Phipps makes no effort to demonstrate such eagerness or easily affronted values, but simply notes
these factors as though they were universally established realities.

But here comes an informative turn, as Phipps presents a few examples of films that were
harmed by the dreaded adjective controversial:

Though ultimately more talked about than seen, Jean-Luc Godard’s 1985 film Hail Mary — featuring a modern day retelling of the nativity story — earned protests and the condemnation of Pope John Paul II. But that was a mere prelude to what greeted Martin
Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988. …


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , ,

Now that everybody is homeschooling, a newsworthy elite assault slams the usual version

, , , , , , , , , , ,

The COVID-19 Era has produced a temporary revolution in American education.

Call it universal homeschooling. Just about everyone from kindergarten through grad school is studying at home. Unlike usual homeschooling, where parents are teachers, Covid coursework is led by schools’ regular teachers online, though parents often manage matters.

Right at this odd moment, normal homeschooling has come under a major attack that provokes vigorous reactions. The coronavirus news hook offers an ideal moment to take a substantial look at the pros and cons of this growing phenomenon that involves some 3% of American children and young people. The story fits the education and religion beats alike, since the majority of homeschool families are religious.

The big new development here is an 80-page anti-homeschool blast in the current issue of the Arizona Law Review by Harvard University Professor Elizabeth Bartholet (click for .pdf), who directs the law school’s Child Advocacy Program. She also makes her case in an interview with Harvard magazine.

The bottom line: Bartholet wants courts and legislatures to ban homeschooling, for the most part, as Germany and Sweden do.

She thinks government should permit exceptions case by case, for instance to accommodate the regimens of talented young athletes or artists. Such permission would be reviewed annually.

Less drastically, Bartholet thinks states are far too lax and should require home schools and public schools to meet similar standards. States would set qualifications for parents to teach (she favors college degrees for high school teachers and high school diplomas for the lower grades), ensure that the curriculum meets minimum state standards, check up via home visits, and require annual standardized tests. If home schools don’t measure up, states would transfer children to public schools.

Policy-makers might see those as common-sense proposals well worth debating. But her advocacy of virtual prohibition signals a strong aversion to the whole idea of homeschooling and a particular hostility toward religious subcultures.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , ,

Faith played major role in life of New York ER doctor who took her own life: What was it?

, , , , , , , ,

Back in my Charlotte News (RIP) and Charlotte Observer days, I sat across a desk from a truly fantastic general assignment and police and cops reporter — a kind, soft-spoken ex-U.S. Marine.

Over and over, I heard him make difficult calls to people involved in tragedies, including the families of people who died in all kinds of accidents, crimes or acts of nature. This has to be one of the hardest jobs in journalism, for a reporter who needs information but doesn’t want to inflict emotional pain.

The goal, he once told me, was to avoid pushy questions about feelings and emotions. Instead, he tried to ask calm, factual questions they only a parent, spouse of sibling would know. The goal was not to waste their time or hurt them — but to find other voices (at specific institutions or networks of people) to interview. So he would ask if a young person had a favorite teacher or was active in a sports team or musical ensemble. Frequently, in Charlotte, he asked about friends and pastors at a religious congregation.

I thought of this reporter, and this issue, when reading a stunningly tragic New York Times coronavirus crisis story that ran with this headline: “Top E.R. Doctor Who Treated Virus Patients Dies by Suicide.” Let me stress that I want to praise this story, while also noting that — at a key moment — the Times team mentioned a strong religion angle, and then dropped the topic. First, here is some of the overture:

A top emergency room doctor at a Manhattan hospital that treated many coronavirus patients died by suicide on Sunday, her father and the police said.

Dr. Lorna M. Breen, the medical director of the emergency department at New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, died in Charlottesville, Va., where she was staying with family, her father said in an interview. …

Dr. Breen’s father, Dr. Philip C. Breen, said she had described devastating scenes of the toll the coronavirus took on patients.

“She tried to do her job, and it killed her,” he said.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , ,

Catholic media highlights trend in young people gravitating towards faith during pandemic

, , , , , , , , ,

The ever-evolving coronavirus pandemic has upended our world in ways no one could have ever expected. Journalists still don’t know where this story is going.

But one thing is clear. While death tolls climb and fall depending on which countries are effectively flattening the curve, the vast majority of those of us who are healthy and staying at home still have to deal with loneliness.

How does faith play a part in mitigating isolation? A survey released four weeks ago by Springtide Research Institute, which studies trends of those ages 13 to 25. What did they find? The survey revealed the following regarding young people, faith and the novel coronavirus. The following summary is long, but essential, especially for religion-beat professionals:

… For many young adults, shelter in place and social distancing provokes fear and uncertainty, leading to increased levels of isolation, loneliness, and anxiety. The survey found that the single most important way to mitigate loneliness is for trusted adults to reach out and connect with young adults.

* The survey consisted of a national panel of 508 respondents ages 18–25, with a margin of error of +/- 4% at a 95% confidence level, administered between March 24 and March 31, 2020.

* One in three respondents are sheltering in place alone.

* 63% of all respondents say that they do not feel as alone or isolated when people reach out to them.

* Among young adults who are sheltering in place with others, half still say that they feel alone, and nearly eight out of ten report feeling less lonely when a trusted adult from outside their household checks in on them.

* About 58% say they feel scared and uncertain, and 66% of those who feel this way say they don’t have anyone to talk to about their emotions. Thus, they feel isolated because no one is reaching out to them.

* Respondents are not experiencing a decrease in their faith; in fact, 35% increased their faith and 47% stayed the same.

* Nearly 46% have started new religious practices, and 43% have participated in at least one religious service online.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , ,

Dawn of the dead: Faith-based colleges face challenges even bigger than coronavirus

, , , , , , , , , ,
Dawn of the dead: Faith-based colleges face challenges even bigger than coronavirus

Every week or so, John Mark Reynolds does something that presidents of academic institutions rarely do -- he cleans his office at Saint Constantine School.

This isn't a symbolic gesture in an age of ominous trends, and now a global pandemic, that threaten private education. Reynolds always takes his turn -- with other members of his team -- cleaning administration offices at this classical school in Houston.

"We have no administrators who are just administrators. Everyone teaches. Everyone shares many of the jobs that need to get done," said Reynolds, reached at his "sheltering in place" home office. "We have a maintenance team, but we all help out. The first lady and I plan to water some plants later today. …

"We call this the economy of small."

Saint Constantine is a K-16 Orthodox Christian school, which means it offers four years of college credits. College tuition is $9,000 per year.

"Our whole model was created to survive the collapse of liberal arts education, while striving to preserve the core of liberal arts education through an Oxford-style tutorial system," said Reynolds. "This pandemic is only exposing the weaknesses of what was already a business model fraught with peril."

College educators have long known that painful challenges were coming in 2025, due to falling birth rates and the end of high millennial-generation enrollments.

Now, the coronavirus crisis is forcing students and parents to face troubling realities. A study by McKinsey & Company researchers noted: "Hunkering down at home with a laptop … is a world away from the rich on-campus life that existed in February."

What happens next? The study noted: "In the virus-recurrence and pandemic-escalation scenarios, higher-education institutions could see much less predictable yield rates (the percentage of those admitted who attend) if would-be first-year students decide to take a gap year or attend somewhere closer to home (and less costly) because of the expectation of longer-term financial challenges for their families."


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , ,

Slavic Pentecostals, coronavirus and California politics make a confusing mix at Sacramento Bee

, , , , ,

It isn’t often that a newspaper does such an awful job on a coronavirus story that it has to run several more stories correcting the initial report.

Let’s work our way through this case slowly.

A few weeks ago, I became aware of stories in the Sacramento Bee that blamed one megachurch for the spread of coronavirus among several dozen individuals. It’s the country’s largest Slavic Pentecostal church and, judging from one of the Bee’s pieces, a center of dangerous activity because of past opposition to gay rights. So when the church is linked to 71 coronavirus infections and one death and counting, it’s game on.

We’ll start with the Sacramento Bee’s initial April 2 piece on the virus’s spread. It had four bylines. What you see here is a second version of the story, which has the church’s response. But the original did not.

One church in Sacramento County is now the epicenter of a major outbreak of coronavirus, and frustrated county officials say church leaders are refusing to listen to their demands to stop fellowship meetings.

Seventy-one members of the Bethany Slavic Missionary Church near Rancho Cordova or people associated with congregation members have been afflicted with the virus, county officials say, making this one of the larger outbreak clusters in the country. One parishioner has died, officials said, and the pastor is sick.

Hmm … that second sentence is a cover-all-your-bases kind of statement. The region’s Slav community, which the Bee says numbers 90,000, is a close-knit one. So to say “people associated with congregation members” throws a pretty wide net.

Bethany is a large church at 3,500 members (but with up to 10,000 attending) but there are actually 103 other Slavic churches in the region. Was Bethany the main source of this problem or were there other churches involved? Or were there ethnic Slavs involved who weren’t members of any church at all?


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , ,

No #SURPRISE -- Another Womenpriests story offers public-relations ink instead of news

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

How many times have your GetReligionistas written about one-sided mainstream press coverage of the tiny Womenpriests church, or movement, or association, or denomination, or independent church?

We have already noted that no one seems to know if the proper journalistic style for the movement’s name is Womenpriests, WomenPriests or Women Priests. Wait, are there now two organizations at work here, Roman Catholic Women Priests and the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests, Inc.? What’s up?

We have already published a post (“Surprise! It's time for another one-sided look at the birth of a new church — the Women Priests”) that opens with six essential journalism problems to look for when evaluating mainstream media coverage of this issue. Here are the first two and, yes, (2) is really a two-fer:

(1) As Mollie “GetReligionista emerita” Hemingway used to say, just because someone says that he or she plays shortstop for the New York Yankees does not mean that this person plays shortstop for the world’s most famous baseball team. Only the leaders of the Yankees get to make that call.

(2) The doctrine of “apostolic succession” involves more than one bishop laying hands on someone. Ordination in ancient Christian churches requires “right doctrine” as well as “right orders.” Also, it helps to know the name of the bishop or bishops performing the alleged ordination. Be on the alert for “Old Catholic” bishops, some of whom were ordained via mail order.

Also, we have issued this challenge to readers, which — so far — has drawn zero responses:

Would your GetReligionistas praise a mainstream news story on this movement that offered a fair-minded, accurate, 50-50 debate between articulate, informed voices on both sides? You bet. Once again: If readers find a story of this kind, please send us the URL.

We are still waiting. However, a reader recently sent a URL for yet another story that repeats almost all of the errors we have seen so many times. It is clear that, while the Womenpriests church is small, it has a fabulous press-relations team.

This latest Gannett press release on this subject was published by the Daytona Beach News-Journal, under a very typical headline stating, “Defiance in DeLand: Woman ordained Roman Catholic priest.” The reader that sent this in noted:


Please respect our Commenting Policy