Health

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Autism and Communion: Textbook social-media clash between parents, press and church

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Every now and then I get an email from a GetReligion reader who has, for all practical purposes, researched and written a perfect news-critique post for this blog.

It’s especially interesting when the email comes from someone who — in a perfect world — would make an ideal source for mainstream coverage of the very issue that he or she is concerned about.

So that’s what happened the other day when I received a note from Father Matthew Schneider, who writes at a blog called Through Catholic Lenses. He is also known, on Twitter, as @AutisticPriest — a fact that is relevant, in this case.

That is, the fact that Father Schneider is autistic is relevant because he has a natural concern for people facing autism and related challenges, which has led him to dig into church law and teachings on that topic.

This matters when facing a USA Today headline such as this one: “Boy with autism denied First Communion at Catholic church: 'That is discrimination,' mom says.”

What we have here is a perfect, 5-star example of a clash between parents — backed with press reports — and church officials who seem to think they have lots of time (In the social-media age? #DUH!) to figure out faithful responses to complex liturgical issues. It also helps, of course, when reporters fail to use search engines and plug into logical sources about Catholic teachings and even Canon Law.

Anyway, here is the overture to this story, which is long, but essential:

MANALAPAN, N.J. — Nicole and Jimmy LaCugna both grew up with a strong Catholic faith. Each attended religious education as children, married in a Catholic church and sent their first son, Nicholas, through a faith-based pre-K program.

So when their second son, 8-year-old Anthony, reached second grade last fall, he was on track to receive his first Holy Communion in April.

But just days ago, the couple learned Anthony would not be allowed to receive the sacrament at St. Aloysius in Jackson, New Jersey, the church the family has attended for years.


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UPDATE: CNN sort of repents on 'fetus' language in story about Senate born-alive bill

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Year after year, debates about abortion continue to raise questions about ethics, politics, morality and science — as well as arguments about language and style in journalism.

The latest, of course, focuses on the legal status of a baby that is born accidentally — perhaps during a botched abortion — as opposed to being delivered intentionally. If you think that is a relatively black-and-white issue, then talk to Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam. Meanwhile, what role should the beliefs of doctors and parents, secular or religious, play in this discussion?

Some readers may flinch because I used the term “baby” in that previous paragraph. However, in this case we are discussing the status of a human being who has already been born. Meanwhile, the Merriam-Webster online dictionary continues to define “fetus” as:

[Click to the next page for update on this post.]


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Life on religion-news beat: Update on the health of Rachel Zoll of Associated Press

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We are almost a month into life here at the somewhat downsized GetReligion.org, with me working roughly half of the time — like in the blog’s first decade.

We are publishing less material and, frankly, there are times when it is agonizing to have to let some subjects and news articles pass without commentary (either positive or negative). We really do appreciate all of the story tips from readers. Keep them coming, even if we are not able to post about them.

We are still trying to figure out how to handle some items of business, especially without the regular work of Bobby Ross, Jr., and his Friday Five collective. His new “Weekend Plug-In” feature for Religion UnPlugged helps. But there are still times when we all think, “Oh, I’ll send that to Bobby for the Friday Five,” and then we have to say, “Oh, right.”

Not all of this material is light-hearted. Take, for example, this serious life-on-the-beat update from patriarch Richard Ostling — focusing on the health of his colleague Rachel Zoll, with whom he shared religion-beat duties for years at the Associated Press.

So here is the note from Ostling:

Along the beat: Our highly respected colleague, former AP Religion Writer Rachel Zoll,  is still being treated for brain cancer. 

People who follow the religion beat closely will remember that she was suddenly stricken on Martin Luther King Day two years ago. However, this encouraging New Year's update was posted by her sister Cheryl:


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Facing ties that bind between 'pro-life' issues, like human trafficking and immigration

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Facing ties that bind between 'pro-life' issues, like human trafficking and immigration

It's hard to talk about the horrors of human trafficking -- including young women and children forced into the sex trade -- without mentioning the I-10 corridor across northern Florida and over to California.

Florida and California are in the top three on the list of U.S. states involved in human-trafficking cases, according to Florida State University's Center for the Advancement of Human Rights. Any realistic discussion of this crisis has to include women, children, poverty, prostitution and crisis pregnancies.

"There are so many overlapping issues in all of this. But you know you're dealing with abused women and, often, their pregnancies," said Ashlyn Portero, co-executive director of City Church in Tallahassee, Fla., which has two campuses close to I-10.

"Churches that want to help can start right there. …When you see those connections, you know you're talking about issues that fall under the pro-life umbrella."

Thus, human trafficking is an issue that "pro-life" religious leaders in Tallahassee, as well as many other urban areas, need to face if they want to minister to women in crisis pregnancies and their children, she added. The problem is that tackling this issue also involves talking -- or even preaching -- about subjects that many people will call "political" in a state like Florida. Take immigration, for example.

Timing is crucial. Right now, thousands of Americans are preparing for the annual March For Life, which is linked to the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1973 legalizing abortion. This year's march in Washington, D.C., will be on Jan. 24.

"When people come back from something like the March For Life, lots of them will be asking, 'What can we do now?' They want to do something practical," said Portero, in a telephone interview. "But these issues all seem so big and complex. It's hard to know where to start, in terms of ministries that will help real people."

One thing is certain: Nothing happens in a typical church without clear communication through preaching. That's where things can get tricky.


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Prediction for 2020: Lots of adults will keep worrying about teen-agers and morality

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American media are forever fascinated — or frightened — regarding what teens and young adults are up to, especially in matters linked to morality and religion.

The Guy’s October 24 Memo highlighted an important new survey showing, for instance, that only half of “mainline” Protestant young adults still uphold the very basic belief that God is “a personal being involved in the lives of people today,” which is affirmed by virtually all evangelicals. 

Now comes a comprehensive survey of 5,600 U.S. teens who were tracked from 1999 into young adulthood. 

The topline: Those who were raised to attend worship (of whatever faith) on a weekly basis, and to pray or meditate daily, show notably favorable life outcomes compared with others. 

This is highly newsworthy. But, as often the case with academic research, it will be brand new info for most or all journalists, though reported a year ago in the American Journal of Epidemiology.  The authors are Professor Tyler VanderWeele (tvanderw@hsph.harvard.edu or 617 – 955-6292) and doctoral student Ying Chen of Harvard University’s  School of Public Health. The project was supported by the federal National Institutes of Health and the Templeton Foundation. 

The investigators found that in comparison with non-attenders, later outcomes for young adults who worshipped weekly as teens showed greater satisfaction in life, volunteering, sense of personal mission and forgiveness, a lower probability of drug abuse, early sexual  initiation and sexual infections, fewer lifetime sexual partners, possibly less depression and higher rates of voter registration, etc. 

The cautiously worded conclusion: Results “suggest that religious involvement in adolescence may be one such protective factor for a range of health and well-being outcomes. … Encouraging service attendance and private practices may be meaningful avenues of development and support, possibly leading to better health and well-being.” 


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Emergency contraception clashes with generic 'beliefs'? Readers needed more facts

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Back in my hard-news reporting days, I did more than my share of stories that I knew were going to make people angry. I knew that some of them would call the newsroom to complain to editors.

Welcome to the religion beat. On some stories there’s no way to make everybody happy. In fact, I learned that it was possible to do coverage that made people on both sides mad. This was especially true when covering topics linked to abortion, where there are often extreme activists on both sides — people who want their views in the newspaper and not the views of their opponents.

When covering this kind of story, I often knew that I would make both sides mad and that was a good thing, if it meant that I provided information that was crucial to the beliefs and arguments of “pro-livers” and “pro-choice” people.

That leads me to a recent story that was called to my attention by a longtime liberal reader of this blog. The headline: “MN woman sues two pharmacies for refusing to fill emergency contraception prescription.”

The woman at the heart of the story, 39-year-old Andrea Anderson, is a mother with five children who went to her doctor with an urgent request. Here’s the heart of the story:

Anderson's doctor wrote a prescription for emergency contraception. She called ahead to Thrifty White Pharmacy, the only drug store in town, to make sure the morning-after pill would be available.

"You have five days to take it, so the clock was ticking," Anderson said.

But in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Aitkin County, with the help of Gender Justice, a legal nonprofit, Anderson alleged the pharmacist George Badeaux refused to fill it based on his "beliefs" and "warned" against trying another nearby pharmacy. 

Yes, we have the word “beliefs” in scare quotes. But this time around, that’s not the big problem here.

As the GetReligion reader noted: “Gonna guess religion had something to do with those ‘beliefs.’ Just a hunch.”


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If the byline says Sarah Pulliam Bailey, go ahead and count on an interesting, enlightening religion story

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Since I started writing for GetReligion nearly 10 years ago, I’ve cranked out probably 1,500 posts for this journalism-focused website.

Now, I have about 10 or 11 posts left before I transition to a new role with Religion Unplugged starting Jan. 1. If GR’s downsizing is news to you, be sure to check out tmatt’s post from Wednesday on his appointment as a senior fellow at Ole Miss’ Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics and the plans for GR moving forward.

The impending changes have made me a bit nostalgic. When I started at GR, my fellow contributors included Mollie Hemingway, now a conservative media star frequently retweeted by the president of the United States, and Sarah Pulliam Bailey, now an award-winning religion writer for the Washington Post. (Both are incredible human beings, by the way, just like all the contributors I’ve had an opportunity to know at GR.)

At GR, my role has been to analyze mainstream news coverage of religion and offer constructive tips for improvement. That has been tricky to do where Bailey is concerned because (1) she is a friend and former colleague and (2) she is a pro’s pro who doesn’t leave much room for criticism.

I’ve always wished we had a better way here at GR to just say: Hey, here is this really cool piece of religion journalism, and you ought to take the time to read it.

Actually, that’s what I’m about to say about Bailey’s piece this week on a Washington, D.C.-area pastor who confessed he’s tired and plans to take a sabbatical.

Yes, I could have said that way up top, but it wouldn’t have filled an entire post. And for a little bit longer, I have a quota to reach. (Thank you, by the way, to tmatt for putting up with me and my weird sense of humor all these years!)

Bailey’s story opens with this compelling scene:


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New Yorker piece on crisis pregnancy centers incites rather than informs

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For some time now, I’ve been asking if it’s possible for The New Yorker to deliver a fair assessment of any conservative Christian group or person, which is why I was interested in a recent piece on crisis pregnancy clinics.

CPCs, as they are also called, aren’t always Christian although they tend to be.

They are 100 percent founded and run by the devout, who consider it a ministry to run them. These places make no money, really, and are sued, attacked, lied about or mischaracterized (as what happened in this outrageously biased NPR story) all the time.

The New Yorker’s religion reporter, Eliza Griswold, was sent on several visits to center in Terre Haute, Indiana. CPCs get their motives questioned in ways that Planned Parenthood clinics never are, so I was interested in how Griswold would approach the topic.  

On the door of a white R.V. that serves as the Wabash Valley Crisis Pregnancy Center’s mobile unit are the stencilled words “No Cash, No Narcotics.” The center, in Terre Haute, Indiana, is one of more than twenty-five hundred such C.P.C.s in the U.S.—Christian organizations that provide services including free pregnancy testing, low-cost S.T.D. testing, parenting classes, and ultrasounds. Sharon Carey, the executive director of the Wabash Valley center, acquired the van in January, 2018, for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, after finding a company that retrofits secondhand vehicles with medical equipment. That May, Carey began to dispatch the van to rural towns whose residents often cannot afford the gas needed to drive to the C.P.C. or to a hospital.

The subhed for this story: “As rural health care flounders, crisis pregnancy centers are gaining ground,” so it’s clear where this article is headed.


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New 'playing God' technique to produce 'designer babies' may launch in a few months

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New 'playing God' technique to produce 'designer babies' may launch in a few months

One good reason to buy a costly ($189 a year) subscription to The Economist, Britain’s international weekly, is regular coverage of science developments like American newsweeklies used to provide.

Journalists should be alert to a significant scientific scoop in the Nov. 9 edition. Sometime in 2020, the Genomic Prediction Company of North Brunswick, New Jersey — GenomicPrediction.com — plans to fertilize donor eggs with mixed sperm from two gay fathers in California. This couple will then pick embryos to be implanted in a surrogate mother on the basis of purported lower health risks identified through SNP tests (single-nucleotide polymorphism or “snip”).

If successful, such experiments could launch a relatively smooth new path for “playing God” to create human “designer babies.” Not long ago this sort of thing was the stuff of sci-fi novels by H.G. Wells or Aldous Huxley. Now the human species itself enters the public furor over animal and vegetable GMOs and “Frankenfood.”

Writers pursuing this should start with The Economist’s three-pager (behind pay wall), which details the biological complexities of SNP that The Guy must bypass here. There’s also this accompanying editorial. Genomic Prediction’s Web site has further explanation, and you’ll want to keep in contact with the company for the news pegs (973–529-4223 or contact@genomicprediction.com).

Of course, environment and behavior also affect health outcomes. Proposed disease prevention would provide what seems to be a benign start for the Snip Era, but we can likely expect eventual efforts to pick embryos for implantation on the basis of, say, height or intelligence, as humanity veers toward the breeding of a super-race. Applications will inevitably be tilted toward affluent parents, posing a moral quandary.

Also, The Economist reports, eventual efforts to maximize scores that enhance brainpower and such could “increase the risk of genetic disorders” through spillover into a DNA malady known as pleiotropy. SNP has already been tried for animal husbandry with other species of mammals. Since 2008, it has proven to boost milk yields in dairy cows. But, The Economist says, these experimental cows “have become less fertile and have weaker immune systems. … Genetic tinkering may sometimes improve things. But by no means always.” Humanity beware!


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