H
HagiaSophia
Guest
Joe Sobran comments on religious reporting:
"…More recently, secularist journalism has been alarmed to discover that the new Pope is a Catholic. It had hoped for someone more, well, reasonable. After Pope John Paul II died, the Post ran just about the only kind of religious “news” it reserves for its front page: reports on the discontents of American Catholics, who, it seems, want their Church to adopt the sort of “reforms” favored by Post editorials (married and female priests, easy divorce, and so forth).
Catholics who oppose the Church, especially “progressive” priests and nuns, are eligible for news coverage, ample and sympathetic. Faithful Catholics might as well not exist. They show up in the press only when their behavior seems bizarre.
Sexual scandals in the Church also rate attention, though priests who abuse teenage boys are called pedophiles rather than homosexuals; and even Protestant evangelists who chase women warrant journalistic notice. Anything that portrays orthodox Christians as hypocrites is grist for journalism’s mill; the hypocrisy of “progressives,” on the other hand, is off limits. I could tell you some stories, but they wouldn’t be “news”: I didn’t read them in the Post.
William Schwenk Gilbert, of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, once wrote to the president of a railway, “Sir, Sunday morning, though occurring at frequent and well established intervals, always seems to take this railway by surprise.” It’s safe to predict that worshipers will continue to make news and even history, but that this will continue to take journalism by surprise. "
sobran.com/columns/2005/050510.shtml
"…More recently, secularist journalism has been alarmed to discover that the new Pope is a Catholic. It had hoped for someone more, well, reasonable. After Pope John Paul II died, the Post ran just about the only kind of religious “news” it reserves for its front page: reports on the discontents of American Catholics, who, it seems, want their Church to adopt the sort of “reforms” favored by Post editorials (married and female priests, easy divorce, and so forth).
Catholics who oppose the Church, especially “progressive” priests and nuns, are eligible for news coverage, ample and sympathetic. Faithful Catholics might as well not exist. They show up in the press only when their behavior seems bizarre.
Sexual scandals in the Church also rate attention, though priests who abuse teenage boys are called pedophiles rather than homosexuals; and even Protestant evangelists who chase women warrant journalistic notice. Anything that portrays orthodox Christians as hypocrites is grist for journalism’s mill; the hypocrisy of “progressives,” on the other hand, is off limits. I could tell you some stories, but they wouldn’t be “news”: I didn’t read them in the Post.
William Schwenk Gilbert, of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, once wrote to the president of a railway, “Sir, Sunday morning, though occurring at frequent and well established intervals, always seems to take this railway by surprise.” It’s safe to predict that worshipers will continue to make news and even history, but that this will continue to take journalism by surprise. "
sobran.com/columns/2005/050510.shtml
The title is enough…I almost lost it…