Catholicism

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Gibson unleashed: Religion News Service reporter openly evangelizes for Kellerism

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First Things columnist William Doino Jr., a friend of this blog, finds echoes of the past in Religion News Service National Reporter David Gibson's coverage of the Vatican's Extraordinary Synod on the Family:

During Vatican II, the New Yorker’s “Xavier Rynne” (aka Fr. Francis Murphy), famously depicted the Council as an epic battle between backward, conservative reactionaries, and broad-minded, liberal reformers. This popular but highly misleading style of reporting continues to this day.

At the indispensable Get Religion website, Dawn Eden catches and corrects a recent report by David Gibson, of the Religion News Service, published just before the Synod opened, that falls into this trap.

“In Gibson’s report,” writes Eden, “we have the conservative meanies against the proponent of ‘reforms’ who want to ‘fully integrate divorced and remarried Catholics into Church life.’”

But, as Eden notes, this is quite misleading, for the Catholic Catechism (no. 1651) emphasizes, rather, “that the divorced, and remarried, even with the sacramental restrictions, ‘can and must’ participate in Church life.”

Further Gibson’s report “does not acknowledge ways in which [Cardinal Raymond] Burke and others are seeking to show compassion while upholding Church teaching,” continues Eden. Instead, it depicts Burke as merciless, and repeats “unsourced datum that Burke is reportedly set to be sidelined by Francis,” which Eden regards as “a cheap shot, pure and simple.”

Doino goes on to make distinctions regarding true and false ideas of reform, asserting that

misleading labels aside, moral laxity is not reform, dissent is not enlightenment, and rebellion is not renewal.

How did Gibson respond to being characterized as a modern-day Rynne? 


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USA Today: 'Conservative' friar dies -- oh, and did we mention he was 'conservative'?

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USA Today has picked up an obituary of Father Benedict Groeschel that ran in the Westchester County (N.Y.) Journal News, thereby giving readers a classic example of the Department of Redundancy Department, Godbeat style. 

I'm not talking about the lede, which is fine, albeit with the detail overload that has become typical in dailies:

LARCHMONT, N.Y. -- The Rev. Benedict Groeschel, a writer and preacher who became one of the country's best-known Catholic priests, long operating out of a tiny bedroom in Larchmont, died Friday at the age of 81 after a long illness.

The redundancy arrives in the second and third paragraph -- emphasis mine:

Groeschel spent decades leading retreats, writing books and offering his conservative perspectives on EWTN, the Catholic television network. He founded a religious order, the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, ran a retreat house for priests in Larchmont and taught pastoral psychology at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers.
He was a hero to conservative Catholics – a wise-cracking friar in a gray robe who shuffled among the elite of the Catholic Church, always speaking of the need to serve the poor.

Got that? So, Groeschel offered "conservative perspectives" on television, and in case you didn't know, he was a hero to "conservative Catholics."

Why does he qualify as "conservative"? Concern for the poor? Alas, no, I fear the implication is that Groeschel was a hero to conservative Catholics because he "shuffled among the elite of the Catholic Church" to express his concern for the poor. Because, you know, conservative Catholics are all about the elites ... or something.


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Washington Post does a thumbs-up (maybe) report on the Vatican family summit

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As Pope Francis holds his two-week Vatican summit on family issues, Michelle Boorstein of the Washington Post zeroes in on one of its topics -- marriage, divorce and annulment -- in a story that is non-sensational but personal and intelligent.

Her 1,400-plus-word story focuses on Catholics who continue to attend Mass and consider themselves close to the church, although they haven't gotten their divorces and/or remarriages legitimized in church eyes.

Boorstein's piece starts out on a familiar tack -- a sympathy anecdote a woman who "kept close to her Catholicism," even though she has married twice outside the church, following in her divorced parents' footsteps. She and others in the article talk out their feelings of ostracism.  And they vent frustration at what they see as rigid, outmoded rules of marriage.

Many stories would make that into a One-Note Samba, then close with a judgment on how hidebound the church remains. Boorstein's piece doesn't. With typical thoroughness, she helps grasp complexities as well as basics.

For one, she shows churchmen themselves as humans who, like the laity, wrestle with dilemmas of keeping faithful to the church while trying to adapt to changing times. Here's a quote from a veteran churchman -- a comment that is at once informed, intelligent and heartfelt:

“This synod will be very important. All of the issues regarding the family, the ones that trouble people the most [about the church] will be on the table. All the neuralgic issues — the ones that cause you pain,” said Monsignor Fred Easton, who led the Indianapolis Archdiocese’s tribunal for 31 years. “And it’s not just rehashing for rehashing’s sake. It’s: When we put them all together, do we need to make any sort of course correction?”

Another plus: Monsignor Easton is from the Midwest, not reporters' favorite source pools on the east and west coasts.


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Almost heaven: NBC News does a near-perfect report on religious sister's beatification

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It's not every day that the Catholic Church advances a Jersey girl towards canonization, and likewise it's not every day that NBC News gets religion. But miracles do happen, and NBCNews.com's Tracey Connor -- whose byline earlier ran atop a predictable take on the roundly misinterpreted "who am I to judge" -- offers a story on Sister Miriam Teresa Demjanovich's beatification that is almost perfection.

The story hooks the reader from the get-go with a tale of a misplaced missive:

A mystical New Jersey nun who took vows on her deathbed will become the first person beatified on American soil — a historic moment that might not have happened but for a misplaced letter that languished between two file folders for a quarter-century.
It was a note from a grateful mom who was convinced that prayers to Sister Miriam Teresa had cured her young son of encroaching blindness years before, a medical mystery that would eventually become the first of two miracles needed for sainthood.
"That letter sat there in the filing cabinet for 27 years," said Dr. Mary Mazzarella, a retired pediatrician who was recruited by the local church to investigate the mother's claim before presenting the findings to the Vatican. "Just finding it was some kind of miracle."

I like how Connor packs a lot of factual material into a short space, including two good quotes, and makes it flow. (Granted, the run-on sentence lead is a bit of a cheat, but I wonder how many people other than grammarians notice things like that nowadays.)

Then comes some background on the sainthood process:


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Your weekend think piece: The roots of those omnipresent Catholic political 'frames'

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There was an interesting exchange in our comments pages this week linked to a subject that is frequently discussed here at GetReligion, which is the nasty tendency among journalists to use political labels to frame believers who are involved in debates over doctrine. The hook for this discussion was Dawn's post that ran with the headline, "What is this? Seeing red over RNS piece on 'conservative' cardinals."

I feel rather torn on this issue, because everyone knows that there are doctrinal conservatives (some call this the camp of the orthodox) and there are doctrinal liberals (some prefer the camp of the progressives). What really frosts my oleanders is when journalists use the term "reformer" in discussions of doctrine (as opposed to, let's say, matters of bureaucracy, worship and tradition.

Perhaps readers may recall those dictionary definitions of "reform," as a verb:


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Yo, Washington Post editors: Spot the religion ghost in that Syrian refugee crisis

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Of the many agonizing news stories linked to the rise of the Islamic State, I have -- as an Eastern Orthodox Christian -- been paying quite a bit of attention to those focusing on the Jihadist persecution of a number of different groups of "infidels" and "crusaders." Click here, if you wish, for my Universal syndicate column on that topic.

This renewed persecution, especially the crushing of religious minorities in the Nineveh Plain region, has led to yet another wave of refugees fleeing ahead of the judges, swords and tanks of the Islamic State. In the case of the faithful in Christian flocks, it is logical to ask if these believers will ever be able to return to their destroyed homes, businesses and irreplaceable ancient sanctuaries.

In other words, will these refugees eventually need to seek asylum in new lands, perhaps noting that their lives are at risk because of their minority-faith status?

As you would imagine, I read with great interest the recent Washington Post report that ran under the headline, "U.S. to greatly expand resettlement for Syrian refugees." 


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What is this? Seeing red over RNS piece on 'conservative' cardinals

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Is it news reporting, or is it David Gibson?

David Gibson's latest article on the Vatican's upcoming synod of bishops, while presented as straight news, crosses the line into opinion in a way we at GetReligion have come to expect from the Religion News Service reporter, who consistently writes as a columnist.

Let's start with the biased labeling. It's "conservatives" vs. "reformers," folks (emphasis mine):

Public disagreements over whether the Roman Catholic Church can change its teachings on Communion for remarried Catholics are growing sharper on the eve of a major Vatican summit, with conservatives led by U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke making another push against loosening the rules.
In a conference call with reporters on Tuesday (Sept. 30), Burke, who currently heads the Vatican’s high court, singled out the leading proponent of reforms, German Cardinal Walter Kasper, and his claims that critics of his proposals are really attacking Pope Francis. 
Kasper has said that the pope supports his efforts to find ways to fully reintegrate divorced and remarried Catholics into church life. The proposals have become a prime focus of the upcoming Vatican meeting, called a synod, which will convene on Sunday for two weeks to consider changes in family life in the modern world.

As my GetReligion editor tmatt has noted, "'reformers' ... is a problematic term for use in doctrinal disputes because it automatically assumes that something needs to be reformed. This term pretty much settles the issue, telling readers precisely who the good people are in this story, which means that folks on the other side are the kinds of blokes who are opposed to 'reform.'" 


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Dear International Business Times: What in the world is the 'Second Trinity'?

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So here is our thought for today: It's hard for journalists to write accurate news reports about confusing religious topics without a basic knowledge of the doctrinal subject material that is being discussed and often twisted.

That said, it is with some hesitation that I ask GetReligion readers to ponder the top of the recent "Faith and Belief" feature from the International Business TImes that ran under the headline, "Pope Francis Supposedly Claimed Virgin Mary At Second Trinity, At Godhead Level -- Report."

Say what? What in the world is the "Second Trinity"? Hold that thought, because it gets worse.

However, before we plunge in, let me note that -- as someone who has walked the long path from Southern Baptist life to Eastern Orthodox Christianity -- I have had more than my share of conversations with Protestants about what the ancient churches did or did not believe about the Theodokos and her role in the Incarnation. I have also had many conversations with Roman Catholics about the differences that have developed, through the centuries, between Rome and the Eastern Orthodox churches on this topic.

Folks, this is complicated territory. It is almost impossible to write a single paragraph of factual material on this subject without expert help. So with that said, check out the top of this story.


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Another Kellerism case? Or a priest refusing to violate the seal of confession?

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Every now and then, a longtime reader sends your GetReligionistas a note that, in addition to the URL to a mainstream news story, includes their own commentary that almost writes a post for us.

That was the case with a note about a recent report from The Billings Gazette about yet another clash between a Catholic priest who is attempting to defend the doctrines of the church and one or more progressive Catholics who see themselves as loyal, practicing Catholics, even though they openly reject one or more specific teachings of the faith.

At first glance, this story looks like a classic "Kellerism" case of advocacy journalism, with a team of journalists doing everything they can to stack a story with materials that back the brave, faithful Catholics who want to see doctrines changed or ignored, while turning the orthodox side of things into a small circle of grim canon lawyers and literalists. 

Thus, the opening of the story:

LEWISTOWN -- The first thing you need to know about Tom Wojtowick and Paul Huff is both are lifelong Catholics.


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