Pope Francis

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Was this big news or not? U.S. Catholics share a symbolic hug with the Lutheran left

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Long, long, ago -- back in the 1980s -- an evangelical Presbyterian pastor in the Denver area asked me an interesting question. It went something like this: If the old mainline Protestant churches are shrinking and losing power, why do they keep getting so much news coverage in the mainstream press?

I think he was talking about the Episcopal Church, but the conversation ended up being about all of the famed "Seven Sisters" of the oldline Protestant world. And who are the "Seven Sisters"? Historians and sociologists have grouped these flocks under that label -- the United Methodist Church; Evangelical Lutheran Church of America; Episcopal Church; United Church of Christ, Presbyterian Church (USA); American Baptist Church; and the Disciples of Christ.

There are lots of reasons that these churches receive so much attention in the news, starting with the fact that for decades their leaders have spent large amounts of time debating issues that journalists think are important, such as sex, war, economic justice, race, gender and the environment. While doing so, they have consistently steered to the cultural, political and doctrinal left. For journalists, that's the very definition of news.

In my experience, most -- not all -- of the religious believers found in American newsrooms are liberal Protestants or progressive Catholics. Long ago, I put it this way:

Walk into a meeting of the Religion Newswriters Association and say, "The Lord be with you,'' and a large number of the reporters in the room will say, "And also with you.'' A few will say, "And with thy spirit.''

The "Seven Sisters" still make news, but their impact seems to be fading. If you want to see an example of this, consider the short, short, short recent Religion News Service piece with this headline: "US Lutherans approve document recognizing agreement with Catholic Church."

Then there is this rather earth-shaking lede:


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Washington Post cuts 'Sacred Heart': Yes, Katie Ledecky had help reaching her golden goals

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So who is winning the race, this far into Rio 2016, to be the beaming face on the front of the post-Olympics Wheaties box?

Will it be gymnastics icon Simone Biles? How about the amazing, and inspirational, Simone Manuel? Or how about the young swimmer whose record-smashing times have led some to call her the world's most outstanding athlete -- in or out of a pool -- at this moment in time?

That, of course, would be Katie Ledecky. The problem with this 19-year-old superstar is that she is stunningly normal, in terms of her life story. You can see the Washington Post wrestling with that reality in a feature story after her gold-medal blitz that ran with this headline: "Her goals met, Katie Ledecky speeds toward the next chapter of her life."

Once again, note that this is not a simple sports story. The goal here is to talk about Ledecky as a person, to talk about her future and what makes her tick. What are her values? What will shape her goals in life, now that she is packing away her Olympics experiences and heading to her freshman year at Stanford University?

Yes, GetReligion readers, we are looking for some sign of her strong Catholic faith. Let's look at some of the crucial material near the end:

Somewhere in that hug line was U.S. women’s assistant coach Greg Meehan, who has been handed the keys to the Lamborghini. The Stanford women’s swim coach recruited Ledecky with a pitch touting the school’s storied and talent-loaded swim program, its Ivy-level academic offerings and its opportunities for even a legendary athlete to blend into campus life.


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Chidin' Biden: Did bishops err in scolding Joe for gay wedding? Did RNS err in its guesswork?

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Did three American bishops defy a cardinal in criticizing Vice President Joe Biden? The Religion News Service sure makes it sound that way in a weekend story about Biden officiating at a same-sex marriage.

David Gibson of RNS has apparently been watching for Catholic reaction since Biden officiated at the wedding of two White House staffers. When that reaction came, it wasn't where he expected:

The Catholic hierarchy was notably quiet, however, until Friday (Aug. 5) when three leaders of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops posted a statement clearly directed at Biden and criticizing him for presenting "a counter witness, instead of a faithful one founded in the truth."
"When a prominent Catholic politician publicly and voluntarily officiates at a ceremony to solemnize the relationship of two people of the same-sex, confusion arises regarding Catholic teaching on marriage and the corresponding moral obligations of Catholics," wrote Louisville Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who was joined by Buffalo Bishop Richard Malone, and Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski.
Malone is chair of the bishop’s Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth and Wenski is chair of the bishop’s Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.

Heavy hitters all, to be sure. (Full disclosure: I freelance for the Miami edition of The Florida Catholic, published by the state's bishops including Wenski.) But as the article notes, the list does not include Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., and Biden's shepherd. 

The RNS story is alert and respectful (the last is not always a given these days in mainstream media). But it just may take one or two guesses too many, in an article not marked "opinion" or "commentary."


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Papal blast on kids and gender? The New York Times can't wait to dump on it

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In the world of newspapers, there’s what we call first-day stories and second-day stories.

A good first-day story this week is that Pope Francis spoke out -- strongly -- about teaching very young students that they can choose their own genders. Then, a second-day story would follow up with the reaction to his speech.

And Francis did make such a speech last week and the transcript was just made public (official English translation is not out yet). The Washington Post ran a short first-day item -- actually an Associated Press story --- describing the pontiff's speech. Apparently, this only appeared in the Post's online edition and not in the dead-tree version. Did someone there wish to bury it? 

However, The New York Times definitely did not bury this news. It cut to the chase with the reaction to the pope’s statement -- albeit only the reaction of activists one side.

Here’s how a story headlined “Pope Francis’ remarks disappoint gay and transgender groups" began:

Leaders of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups expressed dismay on Wednesday after Pope Francis said that schoolchildren are being taught they can choose their gender as part of what he called an “ideological colonization.”
Francis was meeting privately with bishops in Poland last week when he broached the matter. “Today, in schools they are teaching this to children -- to children! -- that everyone can choose their gender,” he said, according to a transcript released by the Vatican on Tuesday.
Marianne Duddy-Burke, the executive director of DignityUSA, a leading organization of L.G.B.T. Catholics, said the comments represented a “dangerous ignorance” about gender identity, which is no more a choice than height or hair color.


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Historical facts rock solid on female deacons? RNS story makes it seem that they are

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As he promised, Pope Francis has set up a commission to study whether or not the Church of Rome should ordain women as permanent deacons.

A previous Vatican study of the issue but a spotlight on a key question. Yes, there were female deacons, or deaconesses, in the New Testament. However, did they serve as ordained clergy at the altar -- in a clearly liturgical role -- or did their duties center elsewhere, especially in work with the poor and other women?

Let's flashback for a second to an earlier post -- "Deaconesses or female deacons? Journalists do you know the history of these terms?" -- before taking a look at a new Religion News Service report.

Everyone involved in this debate knows that the word used in Romans 16:1 to describe the woman named Phoebe is diakonos. However, some translations render this as "servant," while others use "deacon. The New International Version, beloved by Protestants, says: "I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae."

In an earlier news report, the Crux team noted that the earlier Vatican study of women deacons offered "two points for reflection."

First, the document says that deaconesses in the ancient Christian church “cannot purely and simply be compared to the sacramental diaconate” that exists today, since there is no clarity about the rite of institution that was used or what functions they exercised.
Second, the document asserts that “the unity of the sacrament of orders” is “strongly imprinted by ecclesiastical tradition, the teaching of the Second Vatican Council and the post-councilor magisterium,” despite clear differences between the episcopacy and priesthood on the one hand and the diaconate on the other.

Let me note, speaking as an Eastern Orthodox layman, that this is pretty much what I have heard in similar discussions of this issue in the churches of the East.


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Italy's trend away from church weddings: That might connect to stories close to home

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I don't know about you, but this kind of thing happens to me all the time when I am reading the news.

Let's say that you are cruising along and you hit an interesting story. Then, as you keep reading, the hard-drive in your mind starts spinning and eventually a thought balloon pops up that says something like this: "Wait a minute. Maybe this story is connected to ...."

Trust me. This happens to journalists all the time. This process is part of the mental tool kit that reporters develop when they work on a beat for a decade or two (or in the case of the members of the GetReligionista team, a combined 150-plus years or more on the religion beat).

Here's a recent example, which is a pretty obvious one. We start with a Crux story I saw the other day with the headline, "Study suggests Catholic marriage will be dead in Italy by 2031." Here's the overture:

Pope Francis has made family life and marriage a keen priority, and if he ever needed proof of the urgency of the cause even in his own backyard, a widely respected Italian research group has provided it: According to its recent projection, by the year 2031 absolutely no one in Italy will be married in church.
Censis (“Center for Social Investment Studies”) has a quasi-official status in Italy, with its analysis often relied upon by the government in forming policy decisions. In a recent study on marriage in Italy, based on trends over the last 20 years, it found that the number of Italians entering into formal marriages has been in freefall.
In 1994, according to its data, there were 291,607 marriages in Italy, a country of 60 million people where Catholics still account, formally speaking, for 95 percent of the population. By 2014, the number of marriages had fallen to 189,765, a drop of 35 percent.

We are, of course, talking about sacramental, Catholic marriages -- as opposed to civil rites.


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Catholic Church in Poland: 'Powerful' and 'conservative,' except when it isn’t

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World Youth Day is under way in Poland, with up to 1.5 million expected at the main events. American news readers, of course, have learned to expect something else on such occasions: a long, ponderous look at church and state by the New York Times.

And the Gray Lady comes through, with nearly 1,500 words on the church in Poland -- mainly how cozy it is with Polish conservatism and, of course, how out of step its traditional faith is with that of Pope Francis:

WARSAW -- When Pope Francis arrives in Poland this week to attend World Youth Day, one of the major events on the Catholic calendar, he will face a politically powerful church closely tied to the country’s new right-wing government. The church here carries a deep strain of social conservatism that does not always align with the pope’s more open and welcoming views.

Is there a contest for the number of liberal catch-terms in a single paragraph? Because it looks like the Times is trying to win it. You gotcher "right-wing." You gotcher "politically powerful." You gotcher "conservatism" -- a word used in various forms four times, including the headline: "Pope Francis Will Encounter a Socially Conservative Church in Poland."

One of our Faithful Readers fumed over what she saw as a "prism of anti-Catholic bias." She saw "socially conservative" as the Times' semi-curse term that means "following church teachings." 

Actually, I liked the article better than that. For one, it quotes Polish sources instead of using the "sources say" phrase, which often covers for a reporter's own opinion. The seven named sources include church leaders, a theologian and leaders of Poland's political parties. 

The Times also establishes the prominence of faith in Polish history and society. It says 92 percent of Poles identify as Catholic, and 40 percent attend weekly -- higher than other Catholic countries.


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What. It. All. Means. Symbolic details in a priest's death in parish named for St. Stephen

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In the aftermath of the murder of Father Jacques Hamel, there are two stories unfolding in France and, to a lesser degree, the rest of postmodern and post-Christian Europe. Let me stress that both stories are valid and deserve coverage.

One story is about the crime itself and the investigation into how it happened. At the heart of this story is the official dilemma facing the powers that be in government, which is how to stop as many terrorist acts as possible before they happen. The symbolic detail: One of the attackers -- 19-year-old Adel Kermiche -- was a known ISIS ally who was already wearing a monitoring device around his ankle.

The other story, of course, is a religion story. It is about an attack on a Catholic parish -- St.-Étienne-du-Rouvray -- named in honor of the first New Testament martyr St. Stephen, a connection I have only seen mentioned in the Catholic press. At the heart of this story is the murder of the elderly Father Jacques Hamel, who -- during Mass -- was forced to kneel at the church altar, where the attackers slit his throat. The terrorists critically injured one nun and tried to use other nuns as human shields, before police were able to kill the attackers.

The symbolic details in this story? If you want more on that, may I suggest following two hashtags on Twitter. The first is #IAmJacquesHamel, an obvious homage to the #IAmCharlieHebdo campaign after terrorists attacked the Paris staff of the famous satire magazine. The second hashtag is #santosubito. We will come back to that.

Which of these two stories are you seeing, when you open your local newspaper or click to the 24/7 news channels on your digital screens? I would argue that you should be seeing both. Are you?

It is likely that you are seeing language similar to this, care -- once again -- of The New York Times:

France is officially secular but Catholicism is deeply embedded in the country’s culture. That has made the shock and symbolism of the killing of the Rev. Jacques Hamel all the greater.


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The martyrdom of Father Jacques Hamel: At what point were attackers' motives clear?

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Details continue to emerge about the events surrounding the murder of the Rev. Jacques Hamel, the Catholic priest who was killed by ISIS terrorists at the altar of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray Church, France.

One of the worshipers taken hostage -- yes, a nun -- remains in serious condition.

French officials have also confirmed that one of the two attackers, 19-year-old Adel Kermiche, was a known terrorist threat who had twice attempted to travel to Syria. He was being monitored with an electronic ankle tag, but his bail conditions allowed him to roam without supervision between 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.

Mass was at 9 a.m. The follow-up story at The Daily Mail added:

Kermiche and his accomplice -- also known to French police -- forced 84-year-old Father Jacques Hamel to kneel before filming themselves butchering him and performing a 'sermon in Arabic' at the altar of the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, according to witnesses.
Both were shot dead by police marksmen as they emerged from the building shouting 'Allahu Akbar' following the attack that also left a nun critically injured.
Sister Danielle, a nun who escaped, said: 'They told me "you Christians, you kill us". They forced him to his knees. He wanted to defend himself. And that's when the tragedy happened. They recorded themselves. They did a sort of sermon around the altar, in Arabic. It's a horror.'

Translated into safer New York Times language, in an obituary for the priest, that sounds like this:

Father Hamel was celebrating Mass on Tuesday morning when two men with knives entered the small church and slit his throat, an attack that horrified people across France and the world. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that the two assailants -- who were shot dead by the police -- were “soldiers” retaliating against the United States-led coalition fighting the group in Iraq and Syria.

However, this wasn't what some GetReligion readers, via email, and lots of folks on Twitter wanted to know more about yesterday afternoon and last night.


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