Friday, April 25, 2025

America magazine

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Of Catholics, RNS and Zika virus: Questions of original reporting

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Like mosquitos that carry the disease, a story by the Religion News Service buzzes with Catholic concerns over how to address the Zika outbreak currently coursing through Latin America. The article strains mightily to provide a many-sided view of the matter, but not always successfully, and not always originally.

The headliner is a warning this week by Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras not to use abortion in the fight against the virus. As RNS says, Zika is a prime suspect in microcephaly, in which children are born with small heads and brains. If a pregnant woman is bitten by a mosquito that's carrying the virus, children may be born with the defect.

Apparently, Maradiaga read someone recommending so-called "therapeutic abortion," or terminating a pregnancy for risk of abnormalities like microcephaly. That freaked him, according to RNS:

"We should never talk about ‘therapeutic’ abortion," the cardinal said in his homily, according to Honduran media reports.
"Therapeutic abortion doesn’t exist," he said. "Therapeutic means curing, and abortion cures nothing. It takes innocent lives."

It hasn't come to that yet, but RNS notes that the World Health Organization declared an international public health emergency. And some Latin American officials have recommended women there to delay pregnancy for up to two years.

RNS is right to highlight his words; as it says, he is a top adviser to Pope Francis as well as chief shepherd of Honduras. It could have added that Maradiaga was also considered a papabile, or papal candidate, in 2005 and 2013. That's especially rarefied atmosphere.

But the cardinal'ss comments were just the first few paragraphs of this article – what we in journalism call a shirttail lede – for a more indepth treatment:


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Pope Francis press watch: @JamesMartinSJ kicks off the week with #PapalGoofs

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If you are interested in (a) the Jesuits, (b) old-school Catholic liberalism, (c) humor, (d) religion news or (e) all of the above, then you really need to be following Father James Martin on Twitter – @JamesMartinSJ. You are really going to want to jump on board this week to get his take on the @Pontifex visit to America's elite media corridor between Washington, D.C., and New York City.

Father Martin is well known for his popular books (such as "Between Heaven and Mirth" and "Jesus: A Pilgrimage"), for his analysis work at America magazine and as the official chaplain of the old "Colbert Report" on Comedy Central. He is also, as you would expect, a skilled observer of religion-beat work in the American press.

This weekend, he got an early jump on the papal-coverage tsunami by starting a lively hashtag noting some early mistakes made by print and broadcast journalists in their coverage of the Pope Francis stop in Cuba – #PapalGoofs. He was very gentle in this series of corrections, providing no URLs pointing directly to examples of these media mistakes. Surely some of these helpful tips were offered as preemptive strikes?

Obviously, #PapalGoofs refers to goofs that journalists may or may not make while covering the pope, as opposed to goofs that observers believe have been made by the pope. Francis critics will need to start their own hashtag.

We will jump into those tweets in a moment – Bobby Ross, Jr., style – but first I want to note that many, or even most, of the mistakes illustrated in the first (let's hope he continues) #PapalGoofs stream are addressed in the online stylebook of the Religion Newswriters Association. You may want to bookmark that right here at ReligionStylebook.com.

Now, here we go. And the last shall be first:


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The usual: Covering Pope Francis the pastor, as if he is Pope Francis the politician

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The usual: Covering Pope Francis the pastor, as if he is Pope Francis the politician

Does anyone remember the big religion-beat story of the week BEFORE Rowan County clerk Kim Davis went to jail in Kentucky?

I am referring, of course, to the alleged move by Pope Francis to liberalize or modernize or do something radical to his church's teachings on abortion.

Right. That story, the one discussed by our own Bobby Ross Jr., in this post and then Julia Duin in this update, the post featuring that must-see MSNBC headline. We then offered this bonus essay by a GetReligion reader, veteran Catholic scribe Thomas A. Szyszkiewicz. The key: Pope Francis was extending – for one year – the ability of priests around the world to hear the confessions of women who have had abortions, or women and men directly involved in performing abortions, and to absolve these sins without their local bishops being involved in the process.

As is often the case, the American press rushed to portray this as another:

(a) Brave move by media star Pope Francis (actually, the two previous popes had taken the same action at one time or another).

(b) Confrontation between a compassionate pope with culture-wars bishops in the United States (actually, many or even most American bishops had already extended this right to their priests).

(c) Subject sure to cause tensions with ugly Republicans during the pope's upcoming visit to the Acela Zone between Washington, D.C., and New York City.

All of this was discussed, this week, in my "Crossroads" podcast chat with host Todd Wilken. Once again, the key to understanding the pope's move was to view it in pastoral terms, rather than political terms. Click here to tune in that conversation.

Now, here is another way to understand what the pope is doing.


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