Abortion

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Why would CBS News say that Archbishop Wilton Gregory was the first 'Black' cardinal?

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It was the kind of newsroom error that lights up Twitter, while also inspiring more than a few folks in cyberspace to say to themselves, “I need to let GetReligion know about this!”

I am referring to the headline at CBSNews.com that currently proclaims: “First Black American Cardinal said he hopes to begin on ‘positive’ note with Biden after contentious relationship with Trump.”

When that story went online, it said that Washington, D.C., Archbishop Wilton Gregory was the first “Black Cardinal” — period.

See the difference?

Other news organizations made the same error. At Axios, for example, the headline eventually morphed to become: “Wilton Gregory becomes first Black cardinal in U.S.” Note that the URL for that story still contains this: “www.axios.com/washington-archbishop-first-black-cardinal-catholic …”

However, was CBS that left this headline in place for more than a day, until the headline and story were finally corrected.

What was the problem?

For starters, there are currently 14 cardinals from Sub-Saharan Africa alone.

The big question, of course, is why writers and digital producers at a major news organization would, well, forget one of the most important news stories in global Christianity over the past decade or two.

We are talking about the rising tide of believers and leaders from the Global South, and the continent of Africa in particular, and impact of this trend on Catholicism, Anglicanism, Methodism, etc. (Click here for “The Next Christianity,” the 2002 cover story at The Atlantic by historian Philip Jenkins that put this trend on the front burner for journalists who “get” religion.)

Why did this happen at an organization as famous as CBS News?


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Parts of pope's new book may be woke, but news coverage hasn't told the whole story

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While most of you were either shopping for your Thanksgiving meal or preparing it, Pope Francis was busy promoting his new book.

To be fair, the pontiff wasn’t doing exactly that in the same way as other authors, who typically make TV appearances and do book signings at your local bookstore.

Instead, the pope was getting the word out in other ways. The book, titled Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future, was excerpted in the Italian daily La Repubblica, a left-wing newspaper not shy about highlighting the pope’s more woke leanings over the past few years.

The excerpt earned widespread media coverage and praise. The Associated Press, in its Nov. 23 news account after attaining an advance copy, ran with the headline: “Pope book backs George Floyd protests, blasts virus skeptic.”

The key to this story is that this book comes at a time when the Catholic church is deeply divided along doctrinal and political lines. How was this issue handled? Here’s how the story opens:

Pope Francis is supporting demands for racial justice in the wake of the U.S. police killing of George Floyd and is blasting COVID-19 skeptics and media organizations that spread their conspiracies in a new book penned during the Vatican’s coronavirus lockdown.

In “Let Us Dream,” Francis also criticizes populist politicians who whip up rallies in ways reminiscent of the 1930s, and the hypocrisy of “rigid” conservative Catholics who support them. But he also criticizes the forceful downing of historic statues during protests for racial equality this year as a misguided attempt to “purify the past.”

The 150-page book, due out Dec. 1, was ghost-written by Francis’ English-language biographer, Austen Ivereigh, and at times the prose and emphasis seems almost more Ivereigh’s than Francis.’ That’s somewhat intentional — Ivereigh said Monday he hopes a more colloquial English-speaking pope will resonate with English-speaking readers and believers.

At its core, “Let Us Dream” aims to outline Francis’ vision of a more economically and environmentally just post-coronavirus world where the poor, the elderly and weak aren’t left on the margins and the wealthy aren’t consumed only with profits.

It should be noted that the news story deals mostly with Floyd and the pandemic because the press release issued by Simon & Schuster to go with the book that was made available to reporters and reviewers highlighted those sections.

In other words, the press office there knew how to preach to the choir.


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Hey, New York Times editors: Did painful Thanksgiving dinners really begin in 2016?

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Apparently, no one knows where the saying came from, but by 1840 or so variations were appearing in etiquette guides: “Never talk about religion or politics,” especially at the dinner table.

This wisdom made the leap to popular culture in 1961, when the philosopher Linus commented in a Peanuts comic strip: ““There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people — religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin.” The Great Pumpkin is, of course, a faith issue for Linus.

Now, with that timeline in mind, please consider this follow-up question: Before 2016, does anyone remember reading waves of mainstream news stories near Thanksgiving built on horror stories about bitter political arguments around the extended-family holiday table? I mean, surely loved ones in the past argued about Richard Nixon, the nature of the Trinity, Bill Clinton’s private life, the quality of the modern hymn “On Eagles Wings” or other hot-button topics in religion and politics (or both)?

What happened in 2016 that suddenly made this a must-cover issue in elite newsrooms? Maybe this topic suddenly became urgent, for some reason, among journalists who had escaped heartland zip codes and found their true selves by moving to New York City and Washington, D.C.?

The New York Times published an archetypal feature of this kind the other day that ran with this dramatic double-decker headline:

Families Have Been Torn Apart by Politics. What Happens to Them Now?

Unlike 2016, when conflicts emerged over political choices, this time many are centered on the legitimacy of the result itself.

The overture follows the formula that readers have seen dozens of times in the past four years.

Tho Nguyen’s parents, who immigrated from Vietnam, were always Republican. They are Catholic and oppose abortion. Four years ago they voted for Donald Trump.

But nothing prepared Ms. Nguyen, 25, a medical student in Kansas, for how much politics would divide her family over the next four years, as her parents became increasingly passionate about the president.


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Biden and the US bishops: Compromise crafted by 'Uncle Ted' McCarrick still in place

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Biden and the US bishops: Compromise crafted by 'Uncle Ted' McCarrick still in place

While doing groundwork for the pivotal South Carolina primary, Democrat Joe Biden went to a local church to do what he does on Sundays -- go to Mass.

What happened next made headlines, raising an issue that looms over the president-elect's personal and political lives. The priest at St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Florence declined to give Biden communion.

"Holy Communion signifies we are one with God, each other and the Church. Our actions should reflect that," said Father Rev. Robert E. Morey, in a press statement. "Any public figure who advocates for abortion places himself or herself outside of Church teaching. As a priest, it is my responsibility to minister to those souls entrusted to my care."

The priest, a former attorney with the Environmental Protection Agency, ended by saying: "I will keep Mr. Biden in my prayers."

Biden told MSNBC: "That's just my personal life and I am not going to get into that at all."

Nevertheless, Biden continued to make his faith -- he is a "devout" Catholic in news reports -- a key element of the campaign, as he has throughout his career. He also pledged to defend Roe v. Wade, to the point of codifying the decision into national law.

Catholic conservatives and liberals remain divided on how the church should respond, a tension demonstrated in a carefully worded statement by Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"The president-elect has given us reason to believe that his faith commitments will move him to support some good policies. This includes policies of immigration reform, refugees and the poor, and against racism, the death penalty and climate change," said Gomez, after the recent online USCCB meeting.

However, it is obvious that Biden's actions have clashed with "fundamental values that we hold dear as Catholics," the archbishop added. This includes supporting the federal funding of abortions, the return of the Health and Human Services contraceptive mandate and passage of the Equality Act, a sweeping LGBTQ rights bill that could lead to "unequal treatment of Catholic schools," said Gomez.

"We have long opposed these policies strongly. … When politicians who profess the Catholic faith support them, there are additional problems. Among other things, it creates confusion among the faithful about what the Church actually teaches on these questions."


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The Atlantic offers faith-free take on this question: Should Down Syndrome kids be allowed to live?

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When is a religion story not a religion story?

When it covers a major moral question but does not make a connection with obvious religious themes and factual information. Here at GetReligion, we say that these stories are haunted by religion “ghosts. Basically, that’s an elephant in the living room that screams God involvement but the journalist has not been able to connect the dots, or appears to unwilling to do so.

The Atlantic just came out with a very thoughtful story on how Down Syndrome births are being eradicated in Denmark and why that should concern us all. And this feature story is overflowing with ghosts.

Every few weeks or so, Grete Fält-Hansen gets a call from a stranger asking a question for the first time: What is it like to raise a child with Down syndrome?

Sometimes the caller is a pregnant woman, deciding whether to have an abortion. Sometimes a husband and wife are on the line, the two of them in agonizing disagreement. Once, Fält-Hansen remembers, it was a couple who had waited for their prenatal screening to come back normal before announcing the pregnancy to friends and family. “We wanted to wait,” they’d told their loved ones, “because if it had Down syndrome, we would have had an abortion.”

Now, Denmark is known for its liberal abortion policies. In 2017, the Irish Times reported on how the Danish ambassador to Ireland had to state that no, it was not his government’s policy to eradicate all Down Syndrome births by 2030. Keep that in mind.

Back to The Atlantic story:

They called Fält-Hansen after their daughter was born — with slanted eyes, a flattened nose, and, most unmistakable, the extra copy of chromosome 21 that defines Down syndrome. They were afraid their friends and family would now think they didn’t love their daughter — so heavy are the moral judgments that accompany wanting or not wanting to bring a child with a disability into the world.

All of these people get in touch with Fält-Hansen, a 54-year-old schoolteacher, because she heads Landsforeningen Downs Syndrom, or the National Down Syndrome Association, in Denmark, and because she herself has an 18-year-old son, Karl Emil, with Down syndrome.


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One more time: Why can't Democrats count on Hispanics, etc., to vote the way they should?

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It’s one of the questions that I have heard the most from readers during the 17 years that GetReligion has been open for business: Why do you write so many posts — over and over — about the same errors and blind spots in mainstream news coverage of religion?”

Come to think of it, I have heard that question more than a few times from GetReligion writers.

Well, there are several reasons for this. We tend to write posts over and over when:

(1) The subject of these stories is really important in national or international news.

(2) The error, or the religion-news “ghost” we see, is really obvious and important.

(3) These errors are being made by journalists who are not religion-beat pros (think political-desk folks covering stories linked to religion). This points to the need for newsroom managers to hire more religion-news pros or to allow a religion-beat specialist to assist in reporting on topics of this kind.

So here we go again. The double-decker headline in The New York Times proclaimed:

Liberals Envisioned a Multiracial Coalition. Voters of Color Had Other Ideas.

Democrats may need to rethink their strategy as the class complexities and competing desires of Latino and Asian-American demographic groups become clear.

If you have followed GetReligion for the past four years, you know that we have noted — many times — the rising importance of Hispanic evangelicals, including what appeared to be a strategic role in the 2016 election in Florida. There’s more to this story than Cubans in Miami. Reporters need to visit megachurches in and around Orlando.

Also, if you have ever lived in Texas, you know that the political lives of third- and fourth-generation Hispanics is rather different than those of more recent arrivals. And, again, look for church ties.

Anyway, this latest Times story does deserve some praise for an accurate, and rare, use of “liberal” in a headline. Now the editors need to ponder this truth: Political labels are not enough. Here is an early summary of the facts in this totally faith-free feature, which focus on the failure of a pro-affirmative action push in California:


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Justice Alito warns: To spot religious-liberty trends in USA, listen to voices on campuses

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Justice Alito warns: To spot religious-liberty trends in USA, listen to voices on campuses

Almost a half century ago, comedian George Carlin recorded his controversial "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" monologue.

That was then.

"Today, it would be easy to create a new list entitled, 'Things you can't say if you are a student or a professor at a college of university or an employee of many big corporations.' And there wouldn't be just seven items on that list -- 70 times seven would be closer to the mark," said U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, via Zoom, addressing the recent Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention.

Discussing religious beliefs, he argued, has become especially dangerous.

"You can't say that marriage is the union between one man and one woman," he noted. "Until very recently, that's what the vast majority of Americans thought. Now it's considered bigotry."

Consider, for example, the case of Jack Denton, a Florida State University political science major whose long-range plans include law school.

In June, he participated in a Catholic Student Union online chat in which, after the death of George Floyd, someone promoted a fundraising project supporting BlackLivesMatter.com, the American Civil Liberties Union and similar groups. Denton criticized ACLU support for wider access to abortion and the BLM group's "What We Believe" website page that, at that time, pledged support for LGBTQ rights and efforts to disrupt "nuclear family" traditions.

"As a Catholic speaking to other Catholics," he said, "I felt compelled to point out the discrepancy between what these groups stand for and what the Catholic Church teaches. So, I did."

Denton didn't expect this private discussion to affect his work as president of the FSU Student Senate. However, an outraged student took screenshots of his texts and sent them to the Student Senate. That led to petitions claiming that he was unfit to serve, a painful six-hour special meeting and his forced exit.


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Words matter: What kind of Catholic is Joe Biden? What kind of American is Rep. Cawthorn?

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Words matter: What kind of Catholic is Joe Biden? What kind of American is Rep. Cawthorn?

For serious journalists, words matter.

This is especially true when covering a subject as complex and nuanced as religion. So let’s ponder a religion-beat issue that, in political terms, is quite simple. However, in terms of history and doctrine, it’s rather complex.

Fill in the blank: “Joe Biden is a ______ Catholic.”

Now, if you follow the mainstream press, you know that for many the answer is “devout.” As in this CNN headline: “Trump claims Biden, a devout Catholic, wants to 'hurt God'.” And here is a typical news-story passage, care of CBSNews.com:

On Election Day, Mr. Biden, a devout Catholic, started out by attending Mass and visiting the graves of his son, Beau, and his first wife Neilia and infant daughter Naomi, who were both killed in a car crash in 1972.

On Sunday, Mr. Biden did the same, attending Mass with his daughter Ashley and grandson Hunter at St. Joseph on the Brandywine Catholic Church in Wilmington, Delaware, and then visiting his family members' graves.

Religion-beat veterans will notice that an important detail is missing from that passage — whether or not Biden received Holy Communion. The assumption, of course, is that he did (and that’s a safe assumption in East Coast establishment Catholicism).

It would appear that the key is that Biden says Catholicism has been a crucial force in his life and that Catholic social doctrine affects his political work. He carries a rosary. He goes the Mass — frequently. Other Catholics will note — a statement of fact — that some parts of Catholic social doctrine affect his political work and others clearly do not.

All of this came up for discussion as we recorded this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), which focused on a common theme from this blog’s 17-year history. Here it is: While many conservatives claim that the mainstream press is “anti-Christian,” or “anti-religion,” that simply isn’t true.

Take the New York Times, for example.


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2020 was an election year in which many Christians felt torn and politically homeless

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2020 was an election year in which many Christians felt torn and politically homeless

Conservative patriarch Edmund Burke died in 1797 in Beaconsfield, England.

This didn't prevent columnist Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal, a Catholic conservative, from making Burke her write-in choice in the 2020 White House race. She wasn't the only voter who felt politically homeless, due to religious and moral convictions that clashed with the political and personal choices of President Donald Trump and, the odds appear good, president-elect Joe Biden.

Once again, there was no way to ignore issues linked to faith, morality and, yes, character. This was especially true with Catholic voters who frequent church pews.

Considering Trump, Noonan stressed the coronavirus crisis, where the president finally "met a problem he couldn't talk his way out of. I believe that's what happened: He played down the pandemic, lied, made uninformed claims at briefings that serious people were struggling to keep useful. He produced chaos. The country can't afford any of that in a crisis that is sudden and severe."

What about the Democrat, a lifelong Catholic? Noonan predicted Biden would be a "hapless and reluctant conductor" on a "runaway train," especially on moral and cultural issues.

"The progressive left," she argued, "endorses and pushes for the identity politics that is killing us, an abortion regime way beyond anything that could be called reasonable or civilized and on which it will make no compromise; it opposes charter schools and other forms of public school liberation; it sees the police as the enemy, it demonstrates no distinct fidelity to freedom of speech and, most recently, its declared hopes range from court packing to doing away with the Electoral College and adding states to the union.”

The bottom line: The political realities of 2020 left many Catholics and other active religious believers torn between political options that no longer seemed acceptable.


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