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Reporters! Seek a variety of 'Internet' priests when covering hot-button Catholic issues

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Reporters! Seek a variety of 'Internet' priests when covering hot-button Catholic issues

The Vatican’s decision to allow priests to bless couples in what they called “irregular relationships” continues to get lots of media attention.

The language in this confusing decree, issued last month, included individuals in same-sex relationships, which unleashed a flurry of news coverage. The issue was kept alive in the news after bishops — primarily from Africa — pushed back. That forced the Vatican to issue a clarification last week aimed at quelling dissent.

Journalists working on this story have largely done a poor job in quoting diverse views about this topic from the very men who are supposed to bestow such blessings — priests. I did that very thing on Jan. 4 at Religion Unplugged, where I serve as executive editor, when the Vatican issued a news release to clarify their original declaration. Here’s what I wrote for those of you who need a refresher:

Three weeks after announcing that Catholic priests could bless individuals in same-sex relationships, the Vatican published a clarification … following backlash — and even widespread confusion in many cases — from prelates across the world.

The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith said in a news release that it wanted to “help clarify” the many reactions to Fiducia Supplicans, a decree issued on Dec. 18. In it, the Vatican urged a “full and calm reading” of the entire document to better understand “its meaning and purpose.”

The original decree had been signed by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernandez, who serves as the prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The Dec. 18 document, the Vatican said, was “clear and definitive” in regards to Catholic doctrine regarding church teaching on marriage and sexuality. Again, the Vatican said any blessings are for individuals — not the union — and must not be “liturgical or ritualized.”

“Evidently, there is no room to distance ourselves doctrinally from this declaration or to consider it heretical, contrary to the tradition of the church or blasphemous,” the latest statement added.

Quite of few bishops, especially in Africa, were doing quite a bit of explicit doctrinal distancing, if not outright slamming. That’s a newsworthy development, for sure.


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U.S. bishops preach pro-life Catholic doctrine to Biden: Isn't that a story during midterms?

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U.S. bishops preach pro-life Catholic doctrine to Biden: Isn't that a story during midterms?

The looming midterm elections have the Republicans giddy over the potential that they may take control of the House and Senate. Democrats, on the other hand, are hoping to stem the loses knowing that they still have President Joe Biden in the White House.

Amid all this midterm mania are the talking points politicians are pushing in order to appeal to their core voters. Republicans are campaigning on inflation and crime and Democrats on diversity and, of course, abortion following the repeal of Roe v. Wade.

Polls show that voters care more about inflation, but Democrats are hoping that talking up abortion will get out their base. Abortion, however, isn’t just a political issue. As Biden, a practicing Catholic, promises to make abortion a federal right by codifying Roe v. Wade into law should Democrats keep a majority, tension among him and several prominent U.S. bishops has heated up once again.

Some of these bishops have been in the news in the past regarding Biden’s support of abortion, threatening to deny him the sacrament of Holy Communion. It was last week that the issue came to the forefront again.

At least, it come to the forefront in Catholic news publications. In the elite press that GetReligion studies? Not so much or not at all.

This is how Catholic News Agency reported it on Oct. 25:

President Joe Biden, a professed Catholic, must end his “single-minded” abortion extremism and see the humanity in unborn children, the U.S. bishops have said. They said abortion’s impact is “tragic” and urged the president to support mothers.

“The president is gravely wrong to continue to seek every possible avenue to facilitate abortion, instead of using his power to increase support and care to mothers in challenging situations,” Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, said Oct. 25.

“This single-minded extremism must end, and we implore President Biden to recognize the humanity in preborn children and the genuine life-giving care needed by women in this country,” he said.

The U.S. bishops’ statement noted that last week Biden declared that his top legislative priority after the November elections is to codify a national right to abortion.

This is a major story that was covered by the Catholic press, but big secular newsrooms ignored it.


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Fallout from Supreme Court abortion decision: When reporters parrot partisan talking points

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Fallout from Supreme Court abortion decision: When reporters parrot partisan talking points

With emotions running high, the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade marked a cataclysmic shift in the ongoing culture wars. What it means for the upcoming midterm elections and beyond has been the topic of much speculation since the ruling was handed down.

The decision was marked by joy on one side and anger on the other, with may reporters wearing their emotions on their faces and under their bylines. However, many people I know reacted with mixed emotions. Even conservatives were uneasy about the decision, mostly because they feared the violence that could be a part of the fallout. Indeed, the National Catholic Reporter’s news account put it best in its headline: “As Court overturns Roe v. Wade, Catholics react with joy, anger, trepidation.”

We do live in a time when political decisions often inspire violence.

Lose an election? Storm the Capitol Building.

Unhappy with police misconduct? Burn down stores.

Both sides are guilty of this, although the mainstream press — which has grown ever-partisan in the Internet age — hasn’t always been good about calling out both sides for such intimidation.

The fallout from the Dobbs decision? It’s only been a few days, but there was violence in some parts of the country from Rhode Island to Iowa to Arizona. The rhetoric was vile on Twitter, quickly aimed at Christians, and that was soon on display in the streets in a variety of forms.

Again, national legacy media have not always been good about giving proper background and context to the events of the recent past, especially in terms of coverage of violence against churches and crisis-pregnancy centers.

The fissures in American public life are real. So are the distorted realities partisan news organizations like to perpetuate these days.

Just two weeks ago, Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain, argued that opinion pages are alienating readers and becoming obsolete. They doubled down by warning their reporters to refrain from using social media platforms to comment on the decision. However, take a look at this morning’s news summary from USA Today. Spot any patterns?


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To tithe or not to tithe: Should 21st Century Christians give church 10% of their income?

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To tithe or not to tithe: Should 21st Century Christians give church 10% of their income?

THE QUESTION:

Should 21st Century Christians still give 10% of their income to the church?

THE RELIGION GUY'S ANSWER:

A bad pun says that the week of a church's annual budget pledge drive the pastor preaches the Sermon on the Amount. Many churches are fretting about amounts these days, hoping attendance and offering-plate receipts will recover from the COVID crisis.

How much should modern-day Christians donate to support their churches? The oft-cited standard is the "tithe," a biblical term for 10% of income. But Keith Giles, a "progressive Christian" blogger at Patheos.com, argued that there are "very good reasons to stop tithing your 10% every week."

Definitions: Should that be 10% of wealth and accumulated assets or only income? Should all 10% go to the church only with any other giving counted beyond the 10%, or does the tithe cover all religious and charitable donations? Also, of course, the very different biblical situation involved gifts of agricultural produce, not money.

Speaking of the ancient context, Giles's main theme is that tithing was part of a bypassed Old Testament system that provided upkeep for the Jerusalem Temple and the priests working there who had no other livelihood. The Romans destroyed the Temple in A.D. 70 so there's no Temple or priesthood that need support.

However, that argument ignores that today's clergy similarly live off believers' financial support in order to carry out religious work. In fact, clergy typically get lower pay than other professionals with comparable years of training.


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Reporters digging (or failing to do so) into the complicated Catholicism of Rudy Giuliani

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President Donald Trump’s impeachment is underway in the U.S. Senate, something that has dominated news coverage in recent days and will continue to do so.

While Trump is at the center of the Senate trial, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is a key figure in all of this as well. Once called “America’s mayor” for the leadership he exhibited after the 9/11 attacks, Giuliani served as Trump’s personal lawyer and, according to evidence compiled by Democrats, is responsible for the alleged shenanigans involving Ukraine and the request for an investigation into Joe Biden and his family.

Giuliani is a complicated figure. A lot has been written about him over the past three decades — some good, but also plenty of bad — regarding the impact he had as mayor all the way to the present day. While his politics and tactics are rightly scrutinized, a lot of information linked to his private life is often glossed over. Among the largest things that has been ignored is Rudy’s faith.

The pros at The New York Times Magazine, in a cover story this past Sunday, featured a cartoon of Giuliani under the headline: “The Fog of Rudy: Did he change — or did America?” The piece tried to dig into Giuliani’s mind — with the help of responses to 65 statements the former mayor provided in writing — and why populism has taken over the current body politic.

In a way, the piece is reminiscent of another Times feature — this one on media mogul Rupert Murdoch last year — where religion (again Catholicism) seemed to be missing (tmatt took on the subject in a blog post).

This Giuliani piece by Jonathan Mahler also lacked religion — although two of Giuliani’s answers did include his Catholic faith. Mahler did include them as footnotes (as he did with all of the former mayor’s quotes), but largely ignored them in his news feature that read more like an opinion essay.

This was a lost opportunity to examine the complicated crossroads between politics and faith that has dominated Giuliani’s public life.


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What journalists need to look for during Benedict-Francis feud over priestly celibacy

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The movie The Two Popes is a largely fictional account of the doctrinal differences between the retired Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.

In real life, those differences were brought to the surface this week when retired Benedict issued a strongly-worded defense for priestly celibacy — countering his successor Pope Francis, who has publicly affirmed this tradition of the Roman rite, but who is also considering allowing older married men to be ordained in the Amazon to deal with a shortage in that part of the world.

The pope emeritus made the surprise comments in a book, excerpts of which were printed in the French newspaper Le Figro, co-authored with Cardinal Robert Sarah (click here for the cardinal’s defense of listing the retired pope as an author of materials in the book).

What journalists covering this ongoing story need to focus on is explaining what it means for a pope to be infallible on matters of doctrine, as talk of schism intensifies. Also, what role does an emeritus pope play? What does clergy celibacy mean doctrinally for Catholicism? All of these factors will have a bearing on what Pope Francis ultimately decides to do regarding doing away with celibacy among men serving congregations in the Amazon region.

Both Benedict and Sarah are doctrinally conservative, while Francis is widely seen — especially in media reports — as a progressive who wants to change many church teachings to deal with changes in the modern world.


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Question for editors: Pondering the difference between the Catholic 'church' and its 'hierarchy'

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Is there a difference between the Catholic ““church and its “hierarchy”?

That’s a question that very few, if any, editors and reporters working in either the mainstream or religious press seem to have asked themselves. It’s just another of the many questions to come out of the clerical sex-abuse scandal and the downfall of now-former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick that highlighted news coverage since this summer.

It’s a question that was surfaced by Father Thomas Reese (for decades a major source in many mainstream news reports) in a recent opinion piece that ran on Religion News Service. Journalists need to think about what he’s saying, so here’s an excerpt:

I remember in the 1980s taking a tour of the House of Commons in London. The tour guide pointed to a plaque on the wall in honor of a minister “who was killed by the Irish Catholics.” Not the IRA, not the Provos, not the terrorists, but the Irish Catholics.

Today we do the same thing when we say, “Muslims are killing Christians.”

Saying that the Catholic church did not protect children is just as wrong. It was the bishops. It was the hierarchy.

We should not blame the the people of God for the sins of the hierarchy. In many other churches, the people have some say in selecting their leadership and therefore have some responsibility for their hierarchy’s actions. Not so in the Catholic Church, where new leaders are chosen by current leaders.

If the hierarchy had been open with the laity about the sex abuse crisis, if the bishops had listened to the people, we would not be in the mess we are today.

There’s a lot to unpack here. Reese has an interesting take, but one that's loaded with journalistic naivete.

When speaking of Catholicism, the term “church” does often refer to the hierarchy in references used by journalists in news accounts. In this regard, the words “church” and “hierarchy” are often interchangeable.

Catholicism is a hierarchical religion and journalists are, in most cases, not referring to the faithful when saying “the church” failed to protect children or young seminarians. It’s akin to using terms like “the people” when talking about a criminal trial and referencing “prosecutors” or “the government.” It reminds me of some of the gripes Mormons have had, and are still having, with the way the press has identified them.

Dictionaries are still of vital use.


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The discussion continues: You are a pastor and a reporter calls. What do you do?

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The discussion continues: You are a pastor and a reporter calls. What do you do?

This week's "Crossroads" podcast -- recorded by telephone, with me here in Prague -- is extra long and should be of special interest to clergy and other religious leaders who have ever found themselves facing a journalist who is holding a pen and a notepad (or calling on the telephone).

Now, I am not saying that journalists will not be interested in this topic.

You see, this podcast is yet another response to that urgent question raised by my colleague Bobby Ross, Jr., about how pastors should or should not respond when contacted by the press. Click here to catch up on that thread.

What do reporters think when clergy refuse to talk? Do journalists understand why so many clergy are afraid of the press?

Yes, this fear does have something to do with clergy fearing that many journalists "just don't get religion." Clergy fear mistakes. They fear reporters yanking their words out of context. Hold that thought.

In this podcast, host Todd Wilken (a radio pro and a Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor, at the same time) and I talked about two very specific scenarios, when it comes to a reporter requesting an interview with a pastor.

Number 1: You are a minister and you return to your office and there is a message waiting for you. A journalist has called requesting an interview. The note does not include information about the subject of the story (something journalist should share right up front, in my opinion).

Do you return the call?

Well, in this case let's say that the minister KNOWS what the story is about and knows that it's about a problem that has emerged in this church, religious school, etc. Let's say a student has been disciplined and a circle of parents is mad. It's safe to assume that the parents called the newspaper or local television station.

In other words, this is a BAD news story, from the point of view of most pastors. Should ministers return these calls?


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