Does adultery = prostitution for the WPost?

Last updated on: January 24, 2014 at 1:15 pm By geoconger

Nothing optional—from homosexuality to adultery—is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishments) have a repressed desire to participate. As Shakespeare put it in King Lear, the policeman who lashes the whore has a hot need to use her for the very offense for which he plies the lash. Christopher Hitchens. God is not great: How religions poison everything. (2008) p 40. A religion ghost rattled its chains in a national security story published... Read more

Pope Francis to the media: Try being good neighbors

Last updated on: January 23, 2014 at 5:46 pm By tmatt

Think of this as a one-time GetReligion commentary from a guest who is an expert, in many ways, on the behavior of the professionals who work in the world’s news media. This is, of course, the annual papal message for World Communications Day, marking the feast of St Francis de Sales — the patron of writers and journalists. Click here for the full document. Now, parts of this text raise some interesting question. The pope is, clearly, serving as a... Read more

Concerning that Milbank column and the WPost news report

Last updated on: January 25, 2014 at 4:01 pm By tmatt

First of all, to those who have written or tweeted on this: Yes, your GetReligionistas saw the Dana Milbank column in The Washington Post, the one in which he goes all Pat Robertson on the March For Life faithful. You know, like this: James Dobson’s Focus on the Family asked Christians to pray for rain to fall on Barack Obama in 2008 when he accepted the presidential nomination. Various religious conservatives have said that hurricanes, earthquakes and other meteorological phenomena... Read more

Time magazine claims that Bible-ness is next to Godliness

Last updated on: January 23, 2014 at 9:26 am By Mark Kellner

An old Salvation Army musical production — the kind of church entertainment often aimed at youngsters and teen-agers — had a catchy little chorus about that Christian group’s fabled “slum sisters” of years ago, whose work in tenements was legendary: “Cleanliness is next to Godliness “Soap-and-water is divine.” Those words came to mind as I read a rather astonishing Time magazine online piece that seems to put a whole lot of, well, faith in a survey undertaken by the Barna Group... Read more

Is pro-life state of the union homily a story? In Francis era?

Last updated on: January 27, 2014 at 1:51 pm By tmatt

As I type this with my cold fingers (starting at about 12:30 p.m.), the sun is out here in Washington, D.C., but the temperature is still a frosty 14 degrees. Suffice it to say it has been a cold morning after a night of wild weather here in Beltway land. My office in the District’s Northeast quadrant is only about a 10 minute walk from the U.S. Supreme Court. Still, because I’ve been in class all morning, I have no... Read more

Schiavo redux

Last updated on: January 21, 2014 at 11:54 pm By geoconger

A French court has ordered a Reims hospital to provide nutrition and hydration to 38-year old quadriplegic Vincent Lambert, who has been in a state of minimal consciousness (en état de conscience minimale) for five years following a motorcycle accident. Last Thursday a tribunal administratif overruled the wishes of the hospital, Lambert’s wife and some of his siblings who wanted to cut off intravenous feeding. The court sided with his parents and his other siblings, who as observant Catholics, objected... Read more

Religion ghosts in the politics of abortion? Obviously …

Last updated on: January 21, 2014 at 12:09 pm By tmatt

It happens at least once a year. A GetReligionista will write a post about media bias in mainstream coverage of abortion (click here for that classic series on this topic by the late David Shaw, media-beat reporter for The Los Angeles Times) and then someone will post a comment saying that abortion is a political, not a religious, issue and that this site should stick to religion. Often, these correspondents will note that the only people who think abortion is... Read more

Religion ghost haunts Dodgers’ $215 million ace

Last updated on: January 21, 2014 at 10:21 am By Bobby Ross Jr.

In an Associated Press story about his new, $215 million contract, Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw certainly comes across as a good guy: LOS ANGELES (AP) — Even Clayton Kershaw has trouble contemplating the enormity of a $215 million, seven-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers that makes him baseball’s richest pitcher. The team finalized the deal Friday, when Kershaw stayed home in Dallas. The 25-year-old ace said by phone that talking money is “a little bit uncomfortable for me.” Kershaw and his... Read more

NYTimes offers labels-free look at key free-speech fight

Last updated on: January 20, 2014 at 9:11 pm By tmatt

Anyone who has read GetReligion for, oh, more than a week knows that we are not pleased when journalists attempt to jam the complex beliefs of large groups of people into the cramped zones defined by simplistic labels. Obviously, one of the most abused labels in religion news is “fundamentalist.” We like to quote the Associated Press Stylebook at this point, the part where it proclaims: “fundamentalist: The word gained usage in an early 20th century fundamentalist-modernist controversy within Protestantism.... Read more

Oh, those religious fund-raisers

Last updated on: January 20, 2014 at 2:03 pm By Richard Ostling

GRETCHEN ASKS: (Paraphrasing) She attended a fund-raising event for an unnamed organization where a slide show began by saying that “on the eighth day God created” this group and then presented its purposes. She found that “arrogant and self-serving” and it “bothered me beyond belief. Am I being overly sensitive?” THE GUY ANSWERS: In The Guy’s eyes, yes, you are. Still, religious offenses are in the eye of the beholder and fund-raising is well worth some examination. The late Henri... Read more