Frank Pavone

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Election 2020: It ain't over 'til it's over, but familiar religion-news hooks are already obvious

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The political recriminations will be flowing in coming weeks, months and years.

Why was the Joe Biden campaign effort so astonishingly (yes) "sleepy"? How could Donald Trump do so well when so many people kept telling pollsters they find him unnerving if not repellent, and bemoan his handling of the COVID-19 crisis? And speaking of polls, why did the nation’s elite media — once again — let them slant coverage, and can their distortions ever be remedied?

With control of the White House and U.S. Senate still undecided as this is written, The Religion Guy underscores a quote: "There's something going on out there that most of the media have been missing." That's from Jim VandeHei, the savvy co-founder of both Politico.com and then Axios.com, speaking on devoutly Democratic MSNBC Wednesday morning. He added, "Obviously Donald Trump and the Republicans are the big beneficiaries of that as we sit here today, even if Trump loses the presidency."

The Guy chimes in with the related observation that Democrats and sectors of the media continue to miss or misplay the religion factor in America’s cultural divide. This will require careful reconsideration following the recounts, legal games, Electoral College vote December 14 and state certifications of Senate winners.

Newswriters' analysis of religion and what happened should note data the experts at Pew Research Center posted October 26 and on October 13. Note well that Pew echoed many others in giving Biden a healthy 52- 42 margin over Trump among registered voters.

Pew found predictable pre-election enthusiasm for Democrat Biden among Black Protestants (by 90 percent), Jews (70 percent, though less among regular worshippers while the Orthodox minority leaned GOP), and Hispanic Catholics (67 percent, but hold that thought).

Then there's the big new constituency of "nones" with no religious identification (71 percent). That’s another theme GetReligion has been stressing for a decade. Democratic dependence on non-religious citizens presumably affects the party's lack of affinity for religious interests. The 2020 returns may tell reporters whether that is a mistake.

Trump's coalition per Pew consisted of white "evangelical" Protestants (78 percent support), non-evangelical white (i.e. "mainline") Protestants (53 percent) and white Catholics (52 percent). The Guy figured it would be hard for Trump to eke out a win unless he could do somewhat better with that last group. Repeat after me: Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.


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FX documentary on Norma McCorvey omits key Catholic sources who knew her best

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Years ago, a pro-life activist told me that her movement had several dirty little secrets — as in people who had been on the abortion-rights side of the equation, then flipped to the other side but were impossible to deal with or had weird lifestyles.

One such personality was Norma McCorvey, the “Jane Roe” of the famous 1973 U.S. Supreme Court Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

Shortly before McCorvey died in 2017, she consented to being part of a documentary that just aired on FX Networks (I saw it on Hulu) last week. McCorvey’s “deathbed” assertions first hit the Los Angeles Times:

When Norma McCorvey, the anonymous plaintiff in the landmark Roe vs. Wade case, came out against abortion in 1995, it stunned the world and represented a huge symbolic victory for abortion opponents: “Jane Roe” had gone to the other side. For the remainder of her life, McCorvey worked to overturn the law that bore her name.

But it was all a lie, McCorvey says in a documentary filmed in the months before her death in 2017, claiming she only did it because she was paid by antiabortion groups including Operation Rescue.

“I was the big fish. I think it was a mutual thing. I took their money and they’d put me out in front of the cameras and tell me what to say. That’s what I’d say,” she says in “AKA Jane Roe,” which premieres Friday on FX. “It was all an act. I did it well too. I am a good actress.”

Many of us religion reporters who were working in the 1990s also interviewed McCorvey. There is no way she was putting on an act when I talked with her and I know other journalists who’d say the same thing. The most gaping hole in this story is linked to McCorvey’s conversion to Catholicism and the wealth of evidence that she sincerely practiced that faith.

After watching the movie on Hulu, it’s hard to tell what’s true and what’s false about this woman. She’s switched personas more than once in this battle.


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Frank Pavone: Do media really get this radical Catholic priest?

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For Father Frank Pavone: If you can’t stop ‘em, shock them.

It’s a few days before the election and you want to grab the nation’s attention about the importance of abortion in its presidential candidate choices. How do you rivet the attention of a people dulled by the craziest election in U.S. history?

Put a dead male fetus on a church altar, then post it on your Facebook page, for starters. When the Rev. Frank Pavone did so on Sunday, it didn’t take long for the protests to pour in. The Washington Post, in a story by former getreligionista Sarah Pulliam Bailey, had the earliest and lengthiest story on Pavone’s ploy, so I’ll start there: 

Ahead of Tuesday’s presidential election, the Rev. Frank Pavone took an aborted fetus, laid it upon an altar Sunday and posted a live video on Facebook. Pavone, a Catholic priest who heads New York-based Priests for Life, said the fetus was entrusted to him by a pathologist for burial.
During an already heated and divisive campaign season, Pavone’s video has raised questions for some about what is appropriate antiabortion and political activism in the church. As of Monday afternoon, the video, which is 44 minutes long, had 236,000 views. In it, he holds up a poster of graphics of abortion procedures.
In Pavone’s Facebook appeal, he wrote, “we have to decide if we will allow this child killing to continue in America or not. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic platform says yes, let the child-killing continue (and you pay for it); Donald Trump and the Republican platform says no, the child should be protected.”

So I glanced over at Pavone’s Facebook page and read some of the 6,400 (as of Tuesday night) comments along with 407,000 views. I was amazed to see it was still on Facebook, which is usually quick to cut off any content that some reader thinks is offensive. Pavone was working full-time, it seemed, answering all the (mostly negative) comments. He asks why people are so angry about his displaying the dead fetus and not angry at the woman who aborted it.


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NPR misses the symbolism -- and reality -- of the complex story of Jane Roe

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NPR had a story on the Texas legislature passing what journalists usually call “sweeping abortion restrictions.” Let’s look at a big chunk of the story right at the top:


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