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Mainstream coverage of Pelosi-Communion story mangled doctrine, ignored canon law

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Mainstream coverage of Pelosi-Communion story mangled doctrine, ignored canon law

Too often in the mainstream press there is a tendency for newsrooms to parrot the taking points of progressive activists. It’s due to a number of factors.

One is the type of schools most present-day journalists attend. The other is that they mostly grew up, live and work in blue zip codes along the New York-DC Acela corridor. Those values often come into direct conflict with reality, and that’s when journalism often fails to report facts and context that matter to news coverage. And always remember this GetReligion theme — politics is “real.” Religion? Not so much.

This brings us to the national news story regarding House Speaker Nancy Pelosi being banned by San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone from taking Holy Communion because of her continued support — in words and deeds — for abortion rights.

The ensuing coverage, depending on what sources you read, spanned from very good (especially in Catholic news sources such as America magazine and The Pillar) to baffling and very poor.

These last two traits were mostly found in mainstream secular outlets where the focus was predominantly on politics rather than religion. It also highlighted the blind spots of today’s journalists, where a lack of religion knowledge — or even understanding that religious voices need to be included in their coverage — was on full display in the Pelosi-Holy Communion story.

As a result, some of the news coverage surrounding Pelosi and the archbishop denying her the Eucharist openly attempted to rewrite Catholic doctrine on this issue. Since most news coverage has a good guy-bad guy quality to it, omitting what the church teaches on this particular issue helped cast the California Democrat as the aggrieved party and Cordileone as a MAGA-loving prelate (who does not deserve the red hat of a cardinal).

It really didn’t matter whether it was a news story, editorial or opinion piece — centuries of Catholic doctrine on who should receive the Eucharist and the authority of a bishop was swept to the side.

The San Francisco Examiner, in a May 23 editorial, called for Pope Francis to replace Cordelione.


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Ukraine's oldest Orthodox Church seeks independence, while the Lavra monastery is at risk

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Ukraine's oldest Orthodox Church seeks independence, while the Lavra monastery is at risk

This was a very important weekend in the history of Eastern Orthodox Christianity in Ukraine and Russia — for those (including journalists) who believe that religious traditions and symbols matter as much as statements by government officials and headlines in Western media.

At the center of the drama, of course, was the city of Kiev, as it is known in to Russians and many Ukrainians, and Kyiv, as it is known to many Ukrainians, as well as officials in the United States and the European Union.

Here’s the quotation I keep thinking about, drawn from a historian (and Orthodox priest) I interviewed for a 2018 column that ran with this headline: “A thousand years of Orthodox history loom over today’s Moscow-Istanbul clash.” That quote: "Kiev is the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Russian Orthodox Church is Kiev." From this point of view, the churches of Ukraine and Russia are brothers, connected by centuries of shared history — good and bad — and Orthodox tradition.

The crucial issue, in many ways, is one the press seems to think is secondary — the future of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, the font of Orthodox spirituality in the Slavic world.

Let’s start with two short wire-service reports and, along the way, I will point readers to some crucial documents that add more depth and clues as to what is happening. First, from the Associated Press:

KYIV, Ukraine — The leaders of the Orthodox churches in Ukraine that were affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church have adopted measures declaring the church’s full independence and criticizing the Russian church’s leader for his support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Orthodoxy, the largest religious denomination in Ukraine, is divided between churches that had been loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate and those under a separate ecclesiastical body.

The council of the Moscow-connected body, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, on Friday said it “condemns the war as a violation of God’s commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill!’ ... and expresses disagreement with the position of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia regarding the war in Ukraine.”

It also adopted charter changes “indicating the full self-sufficiency and independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.”

Note, in the lede, the assumption that simply saying that this has happened means that it has happened, as in the “leaders of the Orthodox churches in Ukraine that were affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church.”

Now, the official declarations (click here for details) made by the leaders of the oldest Orthodox body in Ukraine — usually called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) — are very serious and they were accompanied by changes in WORSHIP that, for the Orthodox, are even more important than words on paper.


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Prayers and laments in Uvalde: 'May God heal their little hearts, their little souls'

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Prayers and laments in Uvalde: 'May God heal their little hearts, their little souls'

Another week.

Another mass shooting — this time at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

I lack the words to convey the enormity of this tragedy. Instead, as we mourn the 19 innocent children and two teachers slain Tuesday, let’s reflect on these expressions of faith and lament:

“We don’t know what to pray. … We just know we’re hurting, and our God hurts with us.” — Zach Young, worship pastor for Crossroads Community Church in San Antonio (via San Antonio Express-News story by Jacob Beltran)

“We’re just trying to encourage each other and trying to get through this.” — John Juhasz, outreach minister for Getty Street Church of Christ in Uvalde (via story by Washington Post team)

“The only way we can fix this country is to get down on our knees and humble ourselves before God. I am here to support this community and to ask God to heal our land.” — Jennifer Fry, mother of two young children, interviewed at a prayer vigil in Uvalde (via story by Wall Street Journal team)

“We may not understand what happened … but we seek the Lord, as best we can.” — Carlos Contreras, minister at Primera Iglesia Bautista (First Baptist Church) in Uvalde (via Texas Tribune story by Erin Douglas and Jason Beeferman)

“Prayer should be where we start, not where we finish. If we were praying genuine prayers about gun violence, we would see a lot more genuine action.” — Taylor Schumann, author of ”When Thoughts and Prayers Aren’t Enough: A Shooting Survivor’s Journey Into the Realities of Gun Violence” (via Religion News Service story by Emily McFarlan Miller)

“The Catholic Church consistently calls for the protection of all life; and these mass shootings are a most pressing life issue on which all in society must act — elected leaders and citizens alike.” — Catholic Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller of San Antonio (via America story by Michael O’Loughlin).


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U.S. bishops, recent popes, Ted McCarrick and the soul of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

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U.S. bishops, recent popes, Ted McCarrick and the soul of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

After fierce closed-door debates about President Joe Biden and Holy Communion, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops managed to release a muted document last fall that did little to please activists on either side of the church's wars about abortion and politicians in pews.

But one passage in "The Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church" turned into a ticking clock in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, setting the stage for the current clash between Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone and a member of his flock -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

"It is the special responsibility of the diocesan bishop to work to remedy situations that involve public actions at variance with the visible communion of the Church and the moral law," noted the bishops. "Indeed, he must guard the integrity of the sacrament, the visible communion of the Church, and the salvation of souls."

Cordileone's diocese includes the 12th Congressional District of California. After six private attempts to reach Pelosi, he released a May 20 statement telling her that "you are not to present yourself for Holy Communion and, should you do so, you are not to be admitted to Holy Communion, until such time as you publicly repudiate your advocacy for the legitimacy of abortion and confess and receive absolution of this grave sin in the sacrament of Penance."

The archbishop built his case with quotes from Pope Francis, Pope St. John Paul II and the now-retired Pope Benedict XVI, as well as Canon law stating that Catholics who "obstinately persist in manifest grave sin" are "not to be admitted to Holy Communion."

The speaker's words and actions, he added, suggest she isn't worrying about papal authority. Pelosi, the mother of five children, recently told the Seattle Times that the "personal nature of this is so appalling, and I say that as a devout Catholic. They say to me, 'Nancy Pelosi thinks she knows more about having babies than the pope.' Yes, I do. Are you stupid?"


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U.S., world religious press suffers big hit with plans to shutter Catholic News Service

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U.S., world religious press suffers big hit with plans to shutter Catholic News Service

The Catholic press — in print, online and television — is one of the most active and vibrant sources of news about trends and current events in U.S. Catholic life and the Catholic world as a whole.

It is often well-funded and essential to understanding Catholicism, but the changing journalism landscape — spurred on by the Internet — has made it tough for religious media to thrive, even if they have large and loyal audiences.

But, as we are seeing in the news market as a whole, readers are becoming more and more loyal to news sources with strong editorial points of view linked to the wide rifts in American Catholicism. This makes it hard for journalists to speak to readers on both sides.

This trend manifested itself recently with the pending closures of two highly venerated and popular Catholic news organizations: Catholic News Service and Catholic New York.

Catholic New York was one of those publications that used CNS stories. That’s one thing that connected the two. The other was that both news organizations were run by the church hierarchy.

CNS, founded in 1920, is a wire service with reporters and editors that write up stories for subscriber newspapers across the country. The other, Catholic New York, was the official newspaper of the archdiocese and one of the largest of its kind in the country in terms of geographical reach and circulation.

CNS announced two weeks ago that it was shutting down a main part of its operation in “a dramatic reorganization of its communications department” — including the closure of the Washington, D.C., and New York offices.

In meetings with newsroom staff, James Rogers, the chief communications officer of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the Washington office would be closed at year’s end. The Rome bureau will remain open and continue to report on the Vatican.


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Podcast: Those hellish SBC sexual-abuse stories? They may be coming to a zip code near you

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Podcast: Those hellish SBC sexual-abuse stories? They may be coming to a zip code near you

There’s an old saying in the real estate business about properties that get hot and then sell quickly: “Location, location, location.”

That’s precisely where we are right now with the sexual-abuse scandal that looms over the core institutions of the giant, complex, sprawling Southern Baptist Convention.

Where is the story heating up right now? Where is the story going in the future? The answer to both of those questions is: “Location, location, location.” This is true with current events (and events yet to come) and it’s also true with the must-read coverage of this big story. We focused on both sides of that equation during this week’s GetReligion podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

First, let’s talk about the journalism behind this story, which has been building for several years now (see this Bobby Ross, Jr., “Plug-In” update for a starter). Everything begins in Texas and Tennessee and reporters there who are doing the heavy lifting — in Nashville and Houston, to be specific. You can see this, ironically, in this Washington Post story: “How two Texas newspapers broke open the Southern Baptist sex scandal.” Here is the overture:

Houston Chronicle city hall reporter Robert Downen was on the night shift one evening in 2018, just a few months into the job, when something caught his attention.

Scrolling through an online federal court docket, he spotted a lawsuit that accused Paul Pressler, a prominent former judge and leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, of sexual assault. While the case had been previously reported, newly filed documents painted an even more damning picture, including the revelation that Pressler had previously agreed to pay his accuser $450,000. Downen, then 25, probed more deeply and discovered other survivors of church abuse, who made it clear to him, he recalled, that “if you think this problem is confined to one leader, we have quite a bit to show you.”

Downen’s ever-growing spreadsheet of cases soon inspired a larger reporting effort to quantify the scope of sex abuse within the massive Protestant denomination. Journalists at the Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News teamed up to create a database of cases involving nearly 300 church leaders and more than 700 victims for their landmark 2019 “Abuse of Faith” series.

A wave of outrage in response to the series rocked the Southern Baptist Convention, prompting its Executive Committee to hire an outside firm to investigate.

Sexual-abuse accusations against Pressler had been rumbling for decades behind closed doors and in locked-tight legal proceedings. I first heard about them in the early 1980s, through a well-placed contact at CBS News, when I first hit the religion beat at The Charlotte News. There was smoke, but no one could get to the fire. The fact that this SBC giant’s accusers were young males only added to the tension.

If you know SBC life — I grew up as a Texas Baptist preacher’s kid and my whole family has Baylor University ties — then you may know this old saying: Texas is the wallet on which the SBC sits.


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Top U.S. evangelical seminaries, and seminaries in general, face critical financial issues

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Top U.S. evangelical seminaries, and seminaries in general, face critical financial issues

On Memorial Day weekend in 1944 an adventurous group of evangelical Protestants filled the rented Orchestra Hall to launch "Chicagoland Youth for Christ."

The preacher for that day was an unknown greenhorn from a modest suburban church, the Rev. Billy Graham by name. Soon Youth For Christ was staging rallies every week at the Michigan Avenue musical shrine, with Graham as its first full-time evangelist. On Memorial Day weekend 1945, an even more audacious breakthrough event drew 60,000 or more to Soldier Field.

What was the origin of America's oft-rambunctious, complex and remarkably successful evangelical Protestant movement as we have come to know it?

Some will cite the 1942 formation of the National Association of Evangelicals by conservatives — including many in mainline Protestant churches — fleeing the old "fundamentalist" brand. But The Guy contends it was those Chicago spectacles leading into a nationwide "parachurch" organization with Graham as its charismatic leader.

The media and their audiences tend to see evangelicalism in terms of star preachers, megachurches, media, music, missions and more recently immersion in Republican political wars. Oh, yes, and scandals.

But the movement cannot possibly be understood apart from its beliefs as propounded by thinkers at graduate-level divinity schools and the students they trained. Their impact has been profound, and global in scope.

Three multi-denominational seminaries led the way, and their current woes — part of negative trends in theological education as a whole — are worth substantive journalistic analysis.

* Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California was the pioneer, founded in 1947, with Graham as a long-time backer and board member.


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Plug-In bonus: Southern Baptist sexual-abuse probe uncovers apocalyptic sins and crimes

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Plug-In bonus: Southern Baptist sexual-abuse probe uncovers apocalyptic sins and crimes

“It is an apocalypse,” declares Russell Moore, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

It is “far worse” than anything the Rev. Ed Litton, the 13.7 million-member denomination’s president, had anticipated, report the New York Times’ Ruth Graham and Elizabeth Dias.

It is a “bombshell” (per the Houston Chronicle’s Robert Downen and John Tedesco). It is “historic” (The Tennessean’s Liam Adams). It is a “blockbuster report” (Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana).

If you cheered for the movie Spotlight when it won an academy award, you will want to read this.

"Bombshell 400-page report finds Southern Baptist leaders routinely silenced sexual abuse survivors." https://t.co/GbTbd6M91f via @Froomkin

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) May 23, 2022

Sunday brought the long-awaited release of an independent investigation into sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention, and damning might be too feeble a word to characterize the findings.

The bottom line, according to Guidepost Solutions’ 288-page report:

An unprecedented investigation of the Southern Baptist Convention’s top governing body found that an influential group of Baptist leaders systematically ignored, belittled and intimidated survivors of sexual abuse for the past two decades while protecting the legal interests of churches accused of harboring abusers.

The claims are “expected to send shock waves throughout a conservative Christian community that has had intense internal battles over how to handle sex abuse” (Washington Post’s Sarah Pulliam Bailey).


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

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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.


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