Istanbul is the kind of place in which the past often seems to be just as real, or even more real, than the present. Sometimes this shows up in the headlines. For example, back in 2004 I visited the center of Eastern Orthodox life there and learned the history of the stark, black, closed gate out front. At that time, I wrote this for Scripps Howard: ISTANBUL — There are two front gates into the walled compound that protects the... Read more
Let’s begin this post with this link to the Vatican’s Code of Canon Law: Can. 1024 A baptized male alone receives sacred ordination validly. Now, keep that in mind as you read this Miami Herald story about Madre Laura, who was beatified by Pope Francis on Sunday: In her lifetime, Laura Montoya’s stubborn determination to help Colombia’s indigenous people brought the reproach of society, the political elite and the church, which viewed her work with suspicion and accused her of... Read more
There’s an old journalism joke that goes, “Q: How do journalists count? A: One, two, trend.” You can tell the joke is old since it implies that it takes at least three examples for a journalist to declare a “trend” and to write an article about it. In the Twitter age, journalists who wait ’til they find three examples will get scooped, whatever that word means these days, which is why we now have trend stories based on a single-data... Read more
Oh to have been a fly on the fall during any editing discussions at The New York Times national desk during the time between the newspaper of record’s early report on the verdict in the Dr. Kermit Gosnell case and the final version that is currently online. Yes, there were a few changes. Now I — naive old me — failed to save a copy of the early story. Frankly, I thought the Times team would leave that online as... Read more
When Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin made a comment about women being raped last year, the New York Times responded with, according to a search engine count, about 250 stories in under three months. A sample of the 19 (!) headlines from just the first two days*: “Republicans Press Todd Akin to Quit Race,” “Romney Condemns Akin Remarks on Rape,” “Romney and Ryan Team Up on Trail Amid Criticism on Abortion,” “Akin’s No-Show on ‘Piers Morgan’ Is Boon for Program,”... Read more
The New York Times Sunday Magazine ran a Mother’s Day interview with, who else, the head of Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood does a few things that people either love or hate, but none so much as aborting more than 300,000 unborn children each year. The media are firmly on one side of this issue and have done quite a bit to help out Planned Parenthood, a truth laid painfully bare during the Komen Foundation for the Cure situation last year,... Read more
Once again, let’s turn to the dictionary and that tricky word “fetus,” which has through the decades been at the heart of so many bitter newsroom arguments about abortion, morality, religion, science and law. fe·tus … pl. fe·tus·es … 2. In humans, the unborn young from the end of the eighth week after conception to the moment of birth, as distinguished from the earlier embryo. Obviously, your GetReligionistas have been discussing this term lately because of the ongoing, and ongoing,... Read more
On this week’s Crossroads podcast with host Todd Wilken, we talked media coverage of the Pentagon and proselytization, religious freedom and the Benghazi whistleblowers and the trial of Kermit Gosnell. So yeah, we packed a lot in there. Partly we discussed the Pentagon because of recent GetReligion posts such as “I share, you evangelize, they proselytize” and “Media treatment of Mikey Weinstein under scrutiny.” I also wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal editorial page’s Houses of Worship column... Read more
Long ago, I asked the Rev. Billy Graham a question that I really thought he, of all people, would be able to answer. The question: What does the word “evangelical” mean? As I have reported several times, the world’s most famous evangelist tossed the question right back at me: “Actually, that’s a question I’d like to ask somebody, too,” he said, during a 1987 interview in his mountainside home office in Montreat, N.C. This oft-abused term has “become blurred. …... Read more
Joe Carter, our newest GetReligionista, referenced Southern Baptist name-change discussions in a post earlier this week. It’s a topic that GetReligion has tackled a time or two before — or more. I bring up the subject again because I came across a fascinating Miami Herald news-feature this week with this headline: For some Baptists, the name of the church is hindrance to saving souls The top of the story: After 87 years, the University Baptist Church of Coral Gables recently shed its name... Read more
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