Catholicism

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That Catholic ghost at Notre Dame of Maryland

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Time for a brief trip into tmatt’s massive folder of GetReligion guilt, that niche in which I stash mainstream news stories — good and bad — that catch my attention but then get trampled in the rush to react to bigger stories. This time around, I think that this particular story deserves late attention, not because it is of massive importance, but because it represents another example of the struggle at The Baltimore Sun to recognize that the Roman Catholic Church is a big, complicated institution and that it is often important to talk to a variety of Catholics to find out what is going on.


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Cheering on those nuns on the bus

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I’m so old that I remember when Catholic leaders getting involved in anything even slightly political meant that journalists would write hard-hitting pieces. Sometimes journalists would just follow the “too political” talking points of well-funded PR campaigns run by political opponents of the Catholic leaders.


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A proportional response towards abusers

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There is something missing — not quite right about this Associated Press story from Medford, Oregon. If true as written, the facts set forth in “Church protests insurance rules for sex offenders” presents an extraordinary development of insurance guidelines dictating church doctrine and discipline. The concept of proportionality in punishment and forgiveness of the sinner appear to have been overwhelmed by fear.


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Spinning the Vatican's new spin man

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During one of my newspaper internships, I helped compile a list of data from houses of worship around the city for a church directory. You would not believe the number of bizarrely awful websites we came across, from the flashy purple and gold to the blogspot templates people still use.


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A few quick, necessary facts about Mia Love of Utah

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One of the things that your GetReligionistas keep saying — to the point of aggravating many readers — is that it is often possible for journalists to spot and define a religion ghost quite easily, using relatively few lines of type in this post-USA Today journalistic world in which we live.


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Perils of a Polish Pop Princess

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The deadly consequences of blasphemous speech have been the focus of some great writing on militant Islam and its intolerance of free thought. While I wish to take nothing away from these reports, I would urge GetReligion readers not to forget that censorship under the guise of hate speech laws is  alive and well at home.


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