At the heart of the whole U.S. nuns vs. the Vatican media storm is the April 18th “doctrinal assessment” in which the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith expressed its concerns about the theological orientation expressed by the leadership of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The report mentions a host of concerns about a decade or two of LCWR educational events, speeches, national conferences, etc.
Girls State conflicts with Catholic Mass
The last few months have seen a few stories about children managing conflicts with their religious beliefs. There was the story about the Orthodox Jewish day school in Houston that won its regional championship to advance to the boys basketball state semifinals but couldn’t play because the game was scheduled during their Sabbath. There was the story about a school run by the Society of Saint Pius X that forfeited a baseball game rather than compete against a girl, in violation of their beliefs about treating women with respect.
Shocker! Solid effort on a Catholic sex story
It would be hard to find a subject that would be rank much higher than natural family planning on the religion-news beat’s “high degree of difficulty” list. As if that were not enough, I would assume that editors at The Denver Post assigned the following story because of the current tsunami of coverage about You. Know. What.
Pod people: Framing the Georgetown wars
OK, readers, it’s time for a quiz about Catholic higher education. I don’t think that any readers will remember this column I once wrote for the Scripps Howard News Service (that would be a bit scary if anyone did), but I will provide enough of the content to help readers answer this question: Can you guess within five years when the following was written?
Why was Archbishop Lori's committee born?
Any discussion of when the U.S. Catholic bishops began to get more interested in religious liberty issues needs — at the very least — a flashback to March 10, 2006. That’s when Catholic Charities of Boston did the unthinkable.
Massive religious liberty lawsuit, minor broadcast coverage
Do you remember the conflagration that erupted in the mainstream media, fueled in part by members of the mainstream media, when the Susan G. Komen Foundation decided to stop voluntarily giving a small portion of its budget to the even larger Planned Parenthood? Do you remember some of those nightly newscasts?
Lady (Gaga) sings the blues
Those HHS rules head to court (once again)
It’s safe to say that several major themes continue to manifest themselves in most — but not all — of the mainstream news reports about the religious liberty cases linked to those Health and Human Services mandates on religious organizations.
Did the pope soften his stance on nuns?
Here’s an interesting story from Reuters. Written by Philip Pullella, it’s headlined “After stinging report, Pope softens tone for U.S. nuns.” And the lede reinforces that claim: