Clemente Lisi

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Con Don: Why some conservative Catholic news sites were duped by Donald Trump

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Con Don: Why some conservative Catholic news sites were duped by Donald Trump

Now that Donald Trump is no longer president, the discussion about his time in office and legacy is something that has become a media preoccupation despite Joe Biden being inaugurated last month.

That’s because Trump upended much of the way government worked. Add to that a media that can’t quit him (some outlets saw a huge increase in readers and viewers since 2016) and the U.S. Senate impeachment trial, and you can see why Trump remains a focal point.

The U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6 is the coda to the Trump presidency and the reason why he remains a news cycle fixture. You may no longer see the former president on Twitter, but The New York Times and CNN — to name just two mainstream news organizations — continue to give him plenty of coverage.

This brings us to another development in today’s evolving news-media marketplace: Catholic media also blossomed during the Trump years.

What has been the result of some Catholic news websites giving Trump any form of editorial support?

Catholic news sites across the doctrinal spectrum should have done a better job calling out both sides — something the mainstream press no longer does, especially on moral, cultural and religious issues. Most often, they don’t run opposing opinion pieces and it appears that the selection of news stories and their arguments are often guided by politics.

However, if we have learned anything over the past four years it is that marrying one’s faith to a political ideology can be a form of idolatry. How else would you explain the zeal of some Catholics who argued that Trump should remain in office?

Catholics have been seduced by the concept that the government can remedy the nation’s problems. They weren’t duped by Trump in as much as they tried to find a solution for what ails society, from their point of view, by supporting an imperfect man. Catholics, like many people of other Christian denominations, wanted to believe Trump. They had too much invested in him and his policy decisions.

Where right-wing Catholics news sites, in particular, go from here remains to be seen.


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Watch what Biden does, not what he says: Executive orders will widen rift within U.S. bishops

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Watch what Biden does, not what he says: Executive orders will widen rift within U.S. bishops

Can you feel the unity yet? That’s the joke among political conservatives as the Biden administration closed out its first week.

Within hours of taking the oath of office on his family’s massive Bible, President Joe Biden signed a raft of executive orders — something that went on in the ensuing days — to undo strategic executive moves during Donald Trump’s presidency. During that process, Biden fan afoul of traditional Catholic teachings and, once again, placed the spotlight on his Catholic faith.

Political and religious conservatives (not always the same thing) can agree that Biden’s actions over the past week didn’t foster unity. If anything, this blitz of activity highlighted the differences between two ever-divergent Catholic camps in this country, something that revealed itself on Day 1 among the U.S. bishops and across the Atlantic Ocean in Rome as a result of dueling statements and the polemics it unleashed, all of which pointed to old fights and old wounds. Can you say “Theodore McCarrick”?

Biden, the first Roman Catholic president since John F. Kennedy in 1960, is often identified as “devout” (click here for background), when journalists describe his faith. Of course, the doctrinal side of Biden’s piety isn’t something journalists dig into. We don’t know what is in Biden’s heart or even his head.

But here is the key point for journalists and news readers: What we do know — as is the case with every politician — is what he does and says. Options about church teachings on marriage and sexuality are one thing. Biden’s decision to perform an actual gay union rite represented open conflict with the teachings of his church.

Journalists can (and should) report and show where there is overlap regarding church teachings and where there is clear contradiction. The Religious Left will soon learn that it shouldn’t hitch their wagon to any political ideology. The Religious Right learned that the hard way with Trump — something that could take years to unspool when it comes to credibility.

With Biden being a Democrat, however, I don’t expect the mainstream press to do any of this. Instead, we see puff pieces from The New York Times calling Biden “perhaps the most religiously observant commander in chief in half a century.” Guess they forgot that George W. Bush was a born-again Christian who regularly attended services. What about Jimmy Carter’s decades teaching Sunday school?

Here’s the key excerpt from that very feature that ran this past Saturday:


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Catholic press braces for Biden presidency: How it will further polarization on doctrine

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Catholic press braces for Biden presidency: How it will further polarization on doctrine

Inauguration Day this year comes two weeks after pro-Trump rioters descended on the U.S. Capitol before President-elect Joe Biden’s victory was certified by lawmakers. It was the latest — and most stark — demonstration of how our nation’s media ecosystem is in a state of decay and under attack.

Two weeks removed from that awful day, it’s worth taking stock in where we are, how we got here and, more importantly, what can we expected over the next four years under Biden.

This road, more than a decade in the making, was exasperated by Donald Trump’s presidential run and election in 2016. At the same time, citizens on the left and right have grown increasingly weary of institutions (the press being one of them) and that’s made violence an acceptable means for retribution.

As a result, the political, cultural and religious polarization that has taken place over the past four years, ignited further last year amid a pandemic and the presidential election, can’t be undone. The violence on Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C. is the latest tangible example of where we are as a country. The National Catholic Register made this observation in the wake of the riot:

The United States is troubled today by something deeper: At its core this is a spiritual and cultural crisis, even more than a political one.

The Founding Fathers worried about the same factionalism we saw on full and ugly display at the Capitol. But in the past, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed in Democracy in America, shared religious values have provided a glue that allowed for peaceful coexistence in our strikingly individualistic nation, while reminding us that politics was not ultimate.

Today, that is no longer the case. The system of Judeo-Christian values that grounded our political and civic life for more than two centuries has eroded and not been replaced. The ensuing vacuum means our national tendency toward factionalism has no “ballast” to steady the ship of state at turbulent moments, such as this disputed presidential transition.

The events of the last six months and how they have been covered by news organizations — spanning the COVID-19 lockdowns and #BlackLivesMatter protests to the presidential race and the attack on the Capitol — mark an end to an era in press history. It would appear that the American Model of the Press is dead and that reality has become mangled as Americans get their news through a prism of advocacy, partisan media sources.

This journalism earthquake has shaken Catholic media, as well. Hold on, because that’s where we are headed.


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Big symbols, big story: Pope Francis changes church law to put women 'on the altar' in robes

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Big symbols, big story: Pope Francis changes church law to put women 'on the altar' in robes

It’s not every day that the pope changes canon law. Pope Francis did just that in allowing women a larger role during Mass.

The pope said, using a powerful phrase in Catholic thought, that this headline-grabbing change was based on “a doctrinal development” seen in the recent life of the church.

The move — in the wake of a decades-old priest shortage — will grant “non-ordained ministers” the chance to serve as lectors, read scripture, act as eucharistic ministers and, in a crucial symbolic change, wear robes while serving in the sacred space around the altar. The changes, however, will continue to forbid women from being made deacons or ordained priests.

The pope changed canon law to read: “Lay people who have the age and skills determined by decree of the Episcopal Conference, they can be permanently assumed, through the established liturgical rite, to the ministries of lectors and of acolytes; however this contribution does not give them the right to support or to remuneration by the church.”

For the sake of comparison, the law had previously read: “Lay men who possess the age and qualifications established by decree of the conference of bishops can be admitted on a stable basis through the prescribed liturgical rite to the ministries of lector and acolyte.”

In other words, this codifies into the canon the role of women as part of Roman liturgical rite. The announcement, however, caused lots of confusion, especially among many Catholics who have already witnessed women in some of these roles for decades.

The Associated Press headline on the story read, “Pope says women can read at Mass, but still can’t be priests.” That vague language didn’t clarify matters.

In a letter that accompanied the changes, the pontiff said he wanted to bring “stability” and “public recognition” to women already serving during the Mass. Beyond the headline, the AP, in its reporting of the announcement, said that the pope had “amended” church law “to formalize and institutionalize what is common practice in many parts of the world: Women can be installed as lectors, to read Scripture, and serve on the altar as eucharistic ministers. Previously, such roles were officially reserved to men even though exceptions were made.”

The original AP story caused even more confusion when it initially reported that women could read the Gospel during Mass.


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New year and many old issues: Catholic storylines journalists need to keep an eye on in 2021

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I am not a very good prognosticator. Yet this is the time of year that forces many journalists to do just that.

What will 2021 bring? That’s the big question following a 2020 that will forever remain a year where the world was held hostage by a pandemic. It was also a year where we had a combative presidential election and a reawakened social justice movement that brought our divided politics out into our streets. Could any of us have accurately predicted what 2020 would have been like? I don’t think so.

That hasn’t stopped many from trying to predict what next year will be like. The vaccine could bring with it prosperity and freedom again, but a new strain of the virus has forced much of Europe into lockdown once again. A lot of what 2021 will look like — in terms of religion and faith — will depend on the virus and how politicians choose to handle it.

It’s true that the pandemic exposed all kinds of issues in our society. The journalism that is tasked with objectively reporting these issues so that citizens can make informed decisions failed us miserably, a trend that was years in the making, but peaked in 2020 with the presidential election. My post from this past June highlighted this extremely difficult realization for me after more than 20 years in the business. Here’s the main thrust of that post:

News coverage — be it about politics, culture or religion — is largely made up of crimes (in the legal sense) or lapses in judgement (in a moral one). But the news media has changed in the Internet age, primarily because of social media. Facebook, Twitter and TikTok, to name just three, allows users — everyday people — to pump out content. That content can take many forms — from benign observations to what’s called hot takes — for all to read and see.

Truth, fact checking and context are not important. What matters are likes and followers. What we have now is something some have called “The Great Awokening” and it appears to have forever transformed our political discourse and the journalism that tries to report on it.

Mainstream news organizations, in their quest for clicks amid hope of figuring out a new business model, now mirror the content we all see on social media platforms. Newsrooms loaded with a younger generation who grew up in this environment have imposed their own woke politics as their morality thermometer.

The news media both underplayed COVID-19 and then hyped it, only to pause their concern in the wake of the George Floyd protests. For a list of 2020 media misses, check out this roundup.

That’s in the past now, but we will indeed be talking about 2020 for years and decades to come. Instead of trying to predict the future, the aim of this post is to advise mainstream journalists on what the major Catholic news storylines will be over the next 12 months — in the United States and the world.


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Ties that bind Joe Biden and Cardinal Gregory: How will Catholic issues shape the news?

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Politics and religion can make for strange bedfellows. We know that from the past four years and the cozy alliance President Donald Trump forged with conservative Christians.

Evangelicals and traditional Catholics in large numbers voted for Trump over the last two elections, many with enthusiasm and others with great reluctance. The fallout from that voter trend will be felt for years to come.

President-elect Joe Biden is the nation’s second Catholic president, the first since John F. Kennedy in 1960. Biden didn’t run away from his faith in 2020. Instead, he embraced it.

Biden’s brand of Catholicism resonated with the mainstream press and many voters. The election now over, how Biden navigates the complicated world of the church’s hierarchy will be a big storyline.

There will be a general sense of calm in news coverage once Biden starts his term. That means the typical honeymoon period offered every president (with the exclusion of Donald Trump) will stretch far beyond the first 100 days.

How religion is covered in this climate — and Catholicism specifically — by mainstream newsrooms will affect many news stories. Look for stories that celebrate any and all Catholic images and teachings cited by Biden in support of left-of-center political efforts. There will be a revival on the religious left.

Coverage during recent weeks may serve as a prelude to what’s to come.

Many journalists feel that the press helped elect Trump, offering waves of coverage of his candidacy during the GOP primaries before the 2016 election. This year, the Hunter Biden scandal offered the press a chance to beat up on Joe Biden and we could have seen a repeat of 2016. Instead, the press ignored the scandal — with help from Big Tech — and blamed it on Russian disinformation.

With the election now over, we have learned that there was an investigation underway and that this topic would have been fair game for coverage.

You don’t need to be a Trump fan to see that many professionals in America’s press have gone astray. Many journalists are now rationalizing an advocacy brand of journalism, instead of doing what they traditionally have been paid to do — report the facts and give readers and viewers unbiased reporting.

How will these trends affect coverage of Biden’s faith and Catholicism in this country?


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Parts of pope's new book may be woke, but news coverage hasn't told the whole story

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While most of you were either shopping for your Thanksgiving meal or preparing it, Pope Francis was busy promoting his new book.

To be fair, the pontiff wasn’t doing exactly that in the same way as other authors, who typically make TV appearances and do book signings at your local bookstore.

Instead, the pope was getting the word out in other ways. The book, titled Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future, was excerpted in the Italian daily La Repubblica, a left-wing newspaper not shy about highlighting the pope’s more woke leanings over the past few years.

The excerpt earned widespread media coverage and praise. The Associated Press, in its Nov. 23 news account after attaining an advance copy, ran with the headline: “Pope book backs George Floyd protests, blasts virus skeptic.”

The key to this story is that this book comes at a time when the Catholic church is deeply divided along doctrinal and political lines. How was this issue handled? Here’s how the story opens:

Pope Francis is supporting demands for racial justice in the wake of the U.S. police killing of George Floyd and is blasting COVID-19 skeptics and media organizations that spread their conspiracies in a new book penned during the Vatican’s coronavirus lockdown.

In “Let Us Dream,” Francis also criticizes populist politicians who whip up rallies in ways reminiscent of the 1930s, and the hypocrisy of “rigid” conservative Catholics who support them. But he also criticizes the forceful downing of historic statues during protests for racial equality this year as a misguided attempt to “purify the past.”

The 150-page book, due out Dec. 1, was ghost-written by Francis’ English-language biographer, Austen Ivereigh, and at times the prose and emphasis seems almost more Ivereigh’s than Francis.’ That’s somewhat intentional — Ivereigh said Monday he hopes a more colloquial English-speaking pope will resonate with English-speaking readers and believers.

At its core, “Let Us Dream” aims to outline Francis’ vision of a more economically and environmentally just post-coronavirus world where the poor, the elderly and weak aren’t left on the margins and the wealthy aren’t consumed only with profits.

It should be noted that the news story deals mostly with Floyd and the pandemic because the press release issued by Simon & Schuster to go with the book that was made available to reporters and reviewers highlighted those sections.

In other words, the press office there knew how to preach to the choir.


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Who's to blame for 'Uncle Ted' McCarrick? That depends on the news sources you follow

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A week after the Vatican released its much-anticipated investigation of former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, there remain many unanswered questions. Whether journalists will delve deeply into these unanswered questions remains to be seen.

The point of any report, after all, is to uncover the culprits and hopefully detail how sins and crimes of this nature can be prevented in the future. For the Vatican, the report’s release appears to mean “case closed” on the decades-long history of sexual misconduct of McCarrick.

But is it?

Not at all. If anything, the open questions are great leads for journalists who may be interested in pursuing this story further. Depending on which publications one gets their news from these days, the two biggest takeaways were divergent.

If you read secular mainstream media, like The New York Times, Associated Press and USA Today, and Catholic media on the doctrinal left, then the fault was primarily with former Pope John Paul II, now a saint, accused of ignoring abuse allegations in the 1980s and promoting McCarrick to archbishop (and eventually cardinal) of Washington, D.C. That would pave the way for the man known as “Uncle Ted” to ascend up the Vatican hierarchy and become one of the most powerful cardinals on both sides of the Atlantic. Also, these reports tended to say that McCarrick was a very effective liar who, acting alone, fooled everyone.

However, if you read Catholic publications on the doctrinal right, the takeaway was that the report was a whitewash, aimed at protecting Vatican higher-ups and primarily aimed at exonerating Pope Francis from any wrongdoing. Also, it’s crucial that McCarrick was a leader who had colleagues and disciples at all levels of the church (see tmatt’s GetReligion post and podcast on ‘team Ted’).

Conservative Catholics have a point when they say there’s more missing in the report then what it actually tries to detail. It’s obvious that the report’s omissions and unanswered questions need further examination. Here are a few that stick out:


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Looking back at 2020 voting: Here's five religion-news trends to think about -- so far

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Looking in the rearview mirror, it appears that Election Day 2020 led to a series of verdicts, but with many questions unanswered. While a few insist that the presidency remains in the balance, there were a series of changes and trends that emerged as a result of 2020 voting.

Control of the U.S. Senate, to the surprise of many, still appears to be up for grabs. while Republicans managed to gain ground in the House of Representatives, to the shock of the Democratic Party majority.

President Donald Trump did a lot better than the pre-election polls, but, in many states, did not capture as many votes as down-ballot Republicans. The president, and a small number of his supporters, continue to argue that judges may rule that ballot fraud will overturn or weaken Democrat Joe Biden’s narrow victory at the polls.

As a result of this confusion, details regarding some voting trends — particularly from faith voters — were slow to trickle in given that so many mail-in ballots were used as a result of the pandemic. Here is a summary of some of what we have learned, so far, about the impact of religious issues and voters in the 2020 election:

Catholic vote makes a difference, but for whom?

The Catholic vote mattered once again in this election cycle. Biden, who is poised to become first Catholic president since 1960, spent the past few months courting faith voters. Trump, in turn, also pursued the Catholic vote in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The Catholic vote usually decides the Presidential election. This year the exit polls for Catholics all have @JoeBiden under water. This is curious given @realDonaldTrump's vote count in the rust belt.
New York Times: Trump 68%
AP: Trump 46%
NBC: Trump 66% pic.twitter.com/whJyYlldZU

— Raymond Arroyo (@RaymondArroyo) November 4, 2020

The Catholic vote, according to The Associated Press, seems to be evenly split — 49% going for Trump and 49% for Biden. NBC News, however, offered contradictory numbers — 37% of Catholics voting for Biden and a whopping 62% for Trump.

An EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research poll from last month found Catholics favoring Biden by a 12-point margin (53% to 41%) over Trump. As expected, the president did better with Catholics who regularly attend Mass.


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