Clergy

, , , , , , ,

When reporting about black churches and abortion, why not seek sources on both sides?

, , , , , , ,
When reporting about black churches and abortion, why not seek sources on both sides?

You’d think an asteroid was hurtling toward Earth judging from the outraged coverage on abortion the past three weeks after Politico announced on May 3 that the Supreme Court may be poised to reverse Roe v. Wade.

If the coverage was measured, even-handed and inclusive, I could deal with it. In that case, we would be talking about a standard journalistic response to a major story.

But no, what we are seeing — in commentaries and even in news reports — is a mash of “The Handmaid’s Tale, “ the imminent end of civilization as we know it and White supremacy because — as we all know — male White nationalists are behind all this.

So, when I saw this Washington Post piece on how black Protestants view abortion (curiously, Catholics were totally left out of the piece), I figured I’d get a fresh look at the issue and some crucial information. Black women are 13% of the female population but 30% of those who abort their young. Yes, this is an important issue in Black churches and communities.

One would think. And the headline said black churches were “conflicted” over the possibility of abortion access being curtailed, so I read further, hoping the article would air the views of Black church leaders and believers on both sides of the issue.

I can’t say they did.

When a draft Supreme Court opinion leaked indicating that Roe v. Wade could be overturned, the Rev. Cheryl Sanders felt conflicted.

The senior pastor of D.C.’s Third Street Church of God personally doesn’t support abortion but is weary of the politics around being labeled “pro-life” and is grappling with how to address the issue before her predominantly Black congregation. “If you understand that in the politicized term, it’s fraught with problematic racial views and exceptions and blind spots,” she says. And Sanders doesn’t want to align herself with far-right conservative activists she disagrees with on many social issues.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , ,

The pope, Cardinal Becciu and bad real estate deals: Concerning the Vatican 'Trial of the Century'

, , , , , , , , , , , ,
The pope, Cardinal Becciu and bad real estate deals: Concerning the Vatican 'Trial of the Century'

The news media loves the term “Trial of the Century.”

This phrase gained widespread acceptance and use during the 1935 trial that stemmed from the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh’s son three year earlier. That was in an era when newspapers and sensationalism went hand in hand.

The moniker came back in a more modern context when O.J. Simpson went on trial for double homicide in 1995 — a salute to the power of celebrity in American life, as well as debates about race. This era included both newspapers and TV (the trial was televised live), along with a nascent Internet that would eventually come to dominate the news landscape a few decades later.

Something akin to a Catholic “Trial of the Century” has gotten underway in Rome and there’s plenty of palace intrigue to go around. The trial involving corruption, bad real estate deals and financial wrongdoing has placed Pope Francis in the center of a controversy that for the first time doesn’t involve doctrine or theology.

Familiar journalism questions leap to mind: What did the pope know and when did he know it? What if a witness implicates Francis? Hold that thought.

Pope Francis may not be on trial, but he might as well be, as news coverage of this trial attempts to cut through all the noise and get readers what’s most important. Catholic media has done a very good job covering the trial, although I expect coverage to expand in the mainstream press should Francis become a central figure during testimony.

It’s moments such as this trial, delayed over the past year by preliminary hearings and COVID-19, that highlight the Vatican as both a religious institution as well as a political one, with all the headaches that come with managing a city state with immense wealth and properties. News coverage of this trial and its lead up has been interesting to dissect — depending on whether you read mainstream media or the Catholic press — and exactly what this latest scandal means for the church.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Father Joseph Ratzinger's sobering 1969 vision of the future and the new German reality

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Father Joseph Ratzinger's sobering 1969 vision of the future and the new German reality

The 1960s were turbulent times and, in Europe, Catholics faced storms of radical change that left many weary or even cynical.

In 1969, one of Germany's rising theologians -- a liberal priest at Vatican II who then became a conservative -- was asked what he saw in the future.

"What St. Augustine said is still true -- man is an abyss; what will rise out of these depths, no one can see in advance," said Father Joseph Ratzinger, on German radio. "Whoever believes that the church is not only determined by the abyss that is man, but reaches down into the greater, infinite abyss that is God, will be the first to hesitate with his predictions."

Ratzinger's words grew in importance in 1977 when he became Archbishop of Munich and quickly became a cardinal. Then Pope John Paul II made him prefect of the Vatican's powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where his orthodoxy led liberals to call him "God's Rottweiler." In 2005, he became Pope Benedict XVI.

Catholics continue to ponder his 1969 words: "From the crisis of today the church of tomorrow will emerge -- a church that has lost much. … As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members."

The future pope predicted a "crystallization" process creating a "more spiritual church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the left as with the right. … It will make her poor and cause her to become the church of the meek."

The retired pope celebrated his 95th birthday on April 16th -- Holy Saturday. During an earlier meeting with Jesuits, Pope Francis called his predecessor "a prophet" and cited Benedict's predictions of a "poorer" and "more spiritual" church..


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , ,

Some 'Father Stu' coverage misses real-life redemptive message while shooting at actors

, , , , , ,
Some 'Father Stu' coverage misses real-life redemptive message while shooting at actors

Easter weekend has become secular enough over the past few decades where many Americans use the holiday weekend to go to the movies.

It’s a trend that started with the summer blockbuster during the Fourth of July holiday and subsequently by Hollywood with premieres on Christmas Day. While COVID-19 put some of that on hold as audiences streamed movies at home, it seems to be making a comeback with the easing of the pandemic.

The gently gay-friendly Fantastic Beasts: The Secret of Dumbledore won the box office this past weekend, while the religiously-inspired film Father Stu finished a respectable fifth. It wasn’t a bad finish for a film that doesn’t feature a Marvel superhero and may find an audience in Western-rite Christians who were otherwise at church and with family this past Sunday.

Of course, this is a film that features a superhero of a different kind.

Father Stu is the true story of Stuart Long, an amateur boxer who eventually moves to Los Angeles in order to pursue an acting career and along that journey he becomes a Catholic priest. That’s the simplest way to put it without giving away too much of the plot for those who are planning to see it in the coming days.

The two-hour film, featuring Mark Wahlberg as the main character, gets a Rotten Tomatoes score of 45% based on 75 reviews by critics, but a 95% from verified users from the general audience. It shouldn’t surprise me that there is a divergence between media-market critics and the audience when it comes to movies that glorify faith. I found the story compelling, despite the vulgar language, but it is worth seeing.

I get that reviewers are entitled to their opinions. After all, that’s the job of a critic. But the coverage around the film, however, has been framed in a certain way, offering up lopsided and negative takes among many mainstream news sites.

This isn’t a traditional news-coverage question, but it’s appropriate to ask: What’s going on here?


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Liberal religion's sharp decline closes Reform Jewish seminary. How about some elite news ink?

, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Liberal religion's sharp decline closes Reform Jewish seminary. How about some elite news ink?

Organized American Judaism — not unlike other American faith traditions — is in the midst of a shakeup. The latest evidence of this was the recent announcement that Reform Judaism’s first rabbinic seminary, in Cincinnati, will soon cease ordinations at the end of the 2026 academic year.

Nothing about this strikes me as shocking or even unusual. I view religious bodies as bureaucratic extensions of living traditions in which evolutionary change is both normal and inevitable. They’re shapeshifters and those institutions that do not accommodate changes in worship style are bound to calcify over time.

This is not to deny that change can be wrenching. We tend to become deeply attached to the familiar. As a species, we anchor our livelihoods, identities and emotional equilibrium in what we like to think of as comforting routine. We want to know what’s expected of us so we may reap the rewards we think our efforts should bring.

The devil we know is preferable to the devil we do not know.

So as one might expect, the recent news from Hebrew Union College’s board of governors that its Ohio campus, opened in 1875, will cease ordaining new rabbis did not go down easy for those whose religious and professional lives are most directly impacted by the decision.

But what of ordinary North American Reform Jews (Canada is jurisdictionally connected to Reform’s U.S. institutions)? My sense is that most individual Reform congregants, if they’re even aware of the closing, are far less troubled.

Why? Because declining rabbinic student applications coupled with shrinking congregational memberships have been cited as the twin reasons for the HUC decision. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz explained this as follows:

The plan’s backers said it would help the school reorient itself amid its ongoing financial and enrollment crisis. Over the past 15 years, enrollment at HUC’s three American campuses fell by 37 percent, with the largest drop, 60 percent, coming in Cincinnati.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Thinking about the Catholic vocations 'crisis': The Pillar asks if this is truly a global problem

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Thinking about the Catholic vocations 'crisis': The Pillar asks if this is truly a global problem

When journalists are covering a truly global religion — take the Catholic Church, for example — it really helps to pay attention to the fine details in statistics.

What is true in America may not be true in Africa. What’s true in the shrinking churches of Western Europe may not be true, literally, anywhere else.

I brought this up in a recent think piece — “Thinking about world Christianity, as Crux digs deep into many overlooked Catholic details” — pointing readers to an interesting Crux essay by John L. Allen, Jr. (of course). Here’s a key bite of commentary from Allen:

… Catholicism added 16 million new members in 2020, the latest year for which statistics are available. Granted, that meant the church did no more than keep pace with overall global population growth, but it’s still significant at a time when most western perceptions are that the church is shrinking due to the fallout from the sexual abuse crisis, various scandals at senior levels, bitter political infighting, increasing irrelevance to younger generations, and any number of other alleged failures.

For sure, if you live in western Europe or in some parts of the United States, where parishes are closing or consolidating and Mass attendance seems in free fall, those perceptions are understandable. Yet the reality is that on a global level, Catholicism enjoyed the greatest expansion in its history over the past century, more than tripling from 267 million in 1900 to 1.045 billion in 2000 and 1.36 billion today.

Basically, Catholicism is growing wherever it’s churches, to be blunt, have plenty of children, converts and clergy.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , ,

If the big goal is racial reconciliation, pastors may want to start by breaking bread

, , , , , , ,
If the big goal is racial reconciliation, pastors may want to start by breaking bread

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., faced a barrage of questions about race and politics during his landmark 1960 appearance on NBC News' "Meet the Press," but one of the most memorable exchanges concerned a blunt question about church life.

"How many white people are members of your church in Atlanta?", asked a reporter from Nashville.

"I think it is one of the tragedies of our nation, one of the shameful tragedies, that 11 o'clock on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours, if not the most segregated hour, in Christian America," King replied. Any church that has "a segregated body is standing against the spirit and the teachings of Jesus Christ, and it fails to be a true witness," he added.

Millions of Americans are still wrestling with this Sunday morning divide.

But another practical question emerged during a recent Southern Baptist Convention program entitled "Pursuing Unity: A Discussion of Racial Reconciliation Efforts and the SBC." Can Black and White church folks find gaps in their jammed schedules and start breaking bread together?

"It doesn't matter how many panel discussions you watch. It doesn't matter how many books you read, how many conferences you go to. None of that will do better than dinner table ministry," said the Rev. Jon Kelly of Chicago West Bible Church.

If people want progress, he said, they need to consider their circle of friends and ask "why everyone looks like me, votes like me, thinks like me. … When we talk about racial reconciliation, we want the fruit of reconciliation without the relationships. Until our dinner tables become diversified, … until we eat bread together and fellowship together, we won't make any progress."

Fellowship meals will not make headlines or ignite rhetorical fireworks in social media, and that's a good thing, said the Rev. Ed Litton, who recently said he wouldn't seek a second term as SBC president. He plans to focus on racial-reconciliation projects linked to his own church near Mobile, Ala.

Years ago, he said, Black and White pastors began sharing meals while discussing the "deep wounds" in that racially divided community. The key was focusing on faith and the ties that bind, until basic bonds of trust were in place.

"We hashed out why we were there," said Litton. "We weren't there to bring about some kind of social change.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Vatican 'Synod on Synodality': Why the press has largely ignored this big Catholic story

, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Vatican 'Synod on Synodality': Why the press has largely ignored this big Catholic story

We interrupt your reading about the war in Ukraine with a very important post about the global Catholic Synod on Synodality.

Synod on synodality? Say that three times fast. For some Catholics it’s kind of a Zen thing.

The Synod of Synodality is a two-year process that Pope Francis began last October. Officially known as “Synod 2021-2023: For a Synodal Church,” it is a process that allows bishops to consult with Catholics — from parishioners all the way up to priests — in a spirit of collaboration and openness. This includes official dialogue with some activists who actively dissent from church teachings.

Why should anyone care? Is this a news story that editors will care about?

A phrase like Synod on Synodality certainly won’t ever make it into a punchy headline, not even at The New York Post.

The secular press isn’t all that interested in doctrinal issues that don’t appeal to a larger audience or lack a political connection. It’s the reason why the pope going after the Latin Mass got little mainstream news attention while bishops batting President Joe Biden about receiving Holy Communion got tons of coverage. Then again, the synod will almost certainly contain strong LGBTQ news hooks.

It was in March 2020, on the eve of the pandemic, that Pope Francis announced the synod. It was quickly forgotten as the world battled the outbreak of COVID-19. The Vatican even set up a Twitter account for the synod.

Last October, when the pope launched the start of this process, the Catholic press did a very good job explaining what the Synod of Synodality is. For example, Catholic News Agency explained this global synod and its purpose this way:

The pope acknowledged that learning to listen was “a slow and perhaps tiring exercise” for bishops, priests, religious, and laity.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Pronoun wars? The 'usual suspects' quoted by the press skewed Baptism-gate coverage

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Pronoun wars? The 'usual suspects' quoted by the press skewed Baptism-gate coverage

What is the role of journalism? Above all, it is to inform and educate. We know that reliable information is needed for any society to properly work. At the very least, readers deserve accurate information.

What happens when this isn’t the case? That’s the dilemma that befell many news organizations in recent days when a big Catholic news story came across their newsroom desks.

Yes, I’m referring to the botched baptism story out of Arizona last week that made so many headlines. And that’s hard to do considering the ongoing pandemic, the Beijing Olympics and Russia-Ukraine crisis.

Yes, baptism-gate has been all the rage. News coverage of it, however, not so good. More on that later.

To summarize: a priest named Andres Arango, following a church investigation, determined that he’d incorrectly performed thousands of baptisms over more than 20 years. It meant that those who had been baptized in Phoenix, and at his previous parishes in Brazil and San Diego, needed to be baptized again.

What did he do wrong? Arango, who has since resigned after making the mistake, used the wrong pronoun. Instead of saying, “I baptize you in the name of” he used “we.” After diocesan officials found out, they said people who Arango baptized aren’t officially Catholic. That means they weren’t eligible for other sacraments like Holy Communion.

This is where the news coverage got interesting. Once again, on an issue of great importance to Catholic readers and church leaders, secular news outlets assumed the views of one side were normative — even accurate — at the expense of church doctrine. Here at GetReligion, we have a name for that approach (click here for information).

Everyone from The New York Times and USA Today to NPR and local news outlets covered the story. What we learned from the coverage was telling. It was also largely one-sided and inaccurate.


Please respect our Commenting Policy