GetReligion
Wednesday, April 02, 2025

Boston Globe

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In the New England forecast: Lots of snow, with a chance of coffers drying up at houses of worship

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New England's tough winter is starting to make headlines — on the religion beat.

The Associated Press reported over the weekend:

BOSTON (AP) – Religious leaders in snowbound New England are beginning to ask themselves how on Earth their houses of worship will make ends meet after all these acts of God.
Churches, synagogues and mosques report attendance is down at services, as poorly timed winter storms have hit on or close to days of worship. And getting the faithful to come out is challenging, with limited parking and treacherously icy sidewalks plaguing the region.
For many places of worship, that has meant donations are drying up just as costs for snow removal, heating and maintenances are soaring.
"You have this perfect storm of people not being able to go to worship and so not bringing in offerings, combined with much higher than usual costs," says Cindy Kohlmann, who works with Presbyterian churches in Greater Boston and northern New England.

The AP lede's emphasis on "churches, synagogues and mosques" drew this response from Ira Rifkin, one of my fellow GetReligionistas:

Hmmm ... just the big three, once again. I believe the Boston area has more Buddhist centers than any other city in the nation (needs fact checking). But even if not, it's just the big three. America's more diverse than that.

Interesting point, and honestly, not one that would have struck me on my own. Alas, Massachusetts does have more Buddhists than Muslims, according to a 2010 demographic report by the Association of Religion Data Archives.

Still, give AP credit for a timely, enterprising religion angle on the weather.


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Francis gives 'Charlie Hebdo' quotes, and mainstream media don't freak!

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Gol' durn. Do the mainstream media finally "get" papal coverage?

You no doubt recall the circus after Pope Francis answered a question about gays – “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” – a circus that is still ongoing in some outlets. But most journos seem to realize their favorite Catholic has not, in fact, rewritten centuries of teaching on sexuality.

Well, we had another near-viral experience this week, when Francis was flying from Sri Lanka to the Philippines. A French reporter asked about religion and free speech, apparently without mentioning the jihadi massacre of the staff of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris. According to the much-quoted account in the Associated Press, Francis used the example of papal trip organizer Alberto Gasbarri:

"If my good friend Dr. Gasbarri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch," Francis said half-jokingly, throwing a mock punch his way. "It's normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others."

This time, though, most mainstream media didn't seem to freak. AP noted that Francis has also denounced religious violence as an "aberration" and has called on Muslim leaders to speak out against religious extremism.

The Washington Post folds the AP piece into its own report on Francis' remarks. The newspaper then updated its piece with a Vatican statement:


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Transgender teen's suicide: New tragedy, old advocacy script for media

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"My death needs to mean something," the teen who self-identified as Leelah Alcorn wrote in a suicide note before stepping in front of a tractor-trailer in Ohio. Whatever else the death of the troubled transgender youth means, one is clear: how easily mainstream media fall into groupthink.

Most outlets reporting this story use "Leelah," his preferred name, and call him a her. Some even seem reluctant to say "Joshua," the name on his birth certificate. Most quote friends but don’t try to reach his parents or clergy. Then they quote a transgender advocate or two who predictably call for some sort of change.

It's a familiar script from years of gay and lesbian advocacy, thinly disguised as reporting.

The Boston Globe's story is a prime example:

Early Sunday, 17-year-old Leelah Alcorn died after being hit by a tractor-trailer while walking along a stretch of Interstate 71 near her Ohio hometown.
The death was eventually ruled a suicide after a pair of social media posts, which the Kings Mill woman posted on the blogging site Tumblr, garnered notice and served as a flashpoint for transgender progress in 2014.

Only about a third of the way down does the story acknowledge that Alcorn’s mother, Carla, "posted a short note to Facebook identifying Alcorn as 'Joshua' (her name at birth) and with male pronouns." That's the only place the Globe uses his actual teen name, or a male pronoun.


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Obama's new Bible bobble gets media notice -- and a few defenders

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Remember the mashup by the Biblicist-in-Chief to support his new immigration policy? On Nov. 20, President Obama said the Bible tells us that "we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger –- we were strangers once, too."

Well, he's at it again – while arguing immigration reform again – and the varying reactions of news outlets are instructive.

"I think the Good Book says, you know, don't throw stones in glass houses, or make sure we're looking at the log in our eye before we're pointing out the mote in other folks' eyes," Obama said Tuesday at an "Immigration Town Hall" in Nashville. "And I think that's as true in politics as it is in life."

He was partly right. Jesus did say something like it in Matthew 7:3-4, although Obama apparently mixed translations. Here it is in the commonly quoted King James Version:

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

The New Revised Standard Version, used by mainline Protestants, substitutes "speck" for "mote" and "log" for "beam." So Obama wasn't wrong, just patching together different versions.


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AP finds distortions in Boston Globe story on Vatican sex-abuse prosecutor

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After I expressed concern that a Boston Globe story on the Vatican prosecutor's alleged failure to report abuse left unanswered questions, Religion News Service's David Gibson tweeted to GetReligion:

@GetReligion @tweetmattingly Worth checking this out, @nwinfield did some asking around http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/Top-US-Jesuit-defends-Vatican-sex-prosecutor-5917303.php …

The Associated Press's Nicole Winfield sought to fill in the blanks from the Globe story and uncovered a significant distortion:

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The head of the Jesuits in the United States defended the Vatican's new sex crimes prosecutor Tuesday, saying he had virtually no role in the order's handling of a notorious pedophile now serving a 25-year prison sentence.
The Rev. Timothy Kesicki, president of the U.S. Jesuit Conference, spoke to The Associated Press after The Boston Globe reported that the prosecutor, the Rev. Robert Geisinger, failed to report the abuser to police when he was the second highest-ranking official in the Jesuits' Chicago province in the 1990s.
Kesicki said Geisinger only worked for the Chicago province for about 14 weeks, from late December 1994 through March 1995, and never again. He was brought in as a temporary executive assistant to the acting provincial while the regular provincial was in Rome for a big Jesuit meeting. Geisinger had no governing authority and was tasked mainly with maintaining correspondence for his boss, said Kesicki.


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Crux be a lady: Globe's Catholic site aims at middle-aged female audience

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"Covering all things Catholic" is the slogan for the Boston Globe's new online venture, Crux. Judging by the look of it – especially at the moment it went live yesterday – "all things Catholic" translates largely to "all things we think a middle-aged Catholic woman would like to read." The site is heavy on opinion. Even the front-page headlines are opinionated in the way that the editors seem to imagine is "edgy" for a 50-something female audience, i.e. "Muller: Nuns are still being bad" -- though the headline on the actual article is more newsy ("Vatican's doctrinal chief renews criticism of US nuns").

The initial Crux page included Lisa Miller's agony-aunt column "OMG" oddly placed at top right, next to John L. Allen Jr.'s feature "Hard questions we're not asking Pope Francis." In the middle of the page was an ad seeking entrants for a liberal women's religious order, featuring a cheery-looking sister in her 60s wearing outdoorsy plainclothes. Buried toward the bottom of the page, almost as an afterthought, was a sports article, as though some editor felt a bone should be thrown to male visitors.

As I write, the page's layout has shifted somewhat: Miller's column is now buried, but the overall feel of the page is still directed to Catholic women of a certain age (i.e. my age). In the top-right spot now is Margery Eagan's "On Spirituality" column, the title of which suggests a desire to reach the Oprah-style "spiritual but not religious" crowd.

Eagan, incidentally, is the same writer who penned the notorious Boston Herald op-ed in response to the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision, "Court's Catholic justices attack women's rights" – which makes this middle-aged Catholic female reader wonder whether Eagan is herself "spiritual but not religious."


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Ice scream: Boston.com unleashes snark vs. Catholics & others opposing 'Bucket Challenge'

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Occasionally it happens that a mainstream news organization publishes a story so blatantly biased that it seems incredible it should appear under the label of "news" rather than "commentary." That, I am afraid, is the case with a Boston.com piece on Catholics and others who refuse to support the ALS Association's "Ice Bucket Challenge" because it funds embryonic stem-cell research.

The headline of the article by Boston.com staff reporter Sara Morrison (who calls herself a "noted Internet snark woman") says it all: "There’s a New Anti-ALS Association Ice Bucket Challenge." Normally, your GetReligionistas don't call out reporters by name, but this case is rather obvious.

Right away, according to Boston.com (an online subsidiary of the Boston Globe), the pro-lifers who oppose the viral fund-raising campaign are painted as an "anti-ALS Association" – as though they were not only against destroying embryos, but were even against the association's mission of curing ALS.

Am I exaggerating? You tell me whether the story's first few paragraphs paint pro-lifers as cold and heartless:


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Touching story from Globe tells of once-doomed Haleigh's new life

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From a reader comes word of a Boston Globe feature from earlier this month that we missed: "A New Life for Haleigh: For Child at the Center of an End-of-Life Battle, Family Created a Loving World." "A good story about Christians who walk the walk" is how the tipster describes the piece. I couldn't agree more.

The nearly 3,000-word article by award-winning Globe staff writer Patricia Wen begins with a scene that, in a sense, gives the entire story in microcosm:

WESTFIELD — The minister winds up his welcome to some 400 people, and soon lyrics flash karaoke-like on a large screen. A spirited Christian pop song, “Blessed be Your Name,” fills the Westfield Evangelical Free Church.
In the back row, a young woman, sitting in a wheelchair next to her adoptive parents, lights up.
Though she can’t read all the words, she sways to the music and claps her hands, the nails painted pink with white polka dots. She loves cheerful tunes and a crowd, and on this Sunday, she has both.
Keith and Becky Arnett could have predicted that Haleigh, 20, would brighten at this part of the service.


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Pope Francis in South Korea: Broad variety of coverage

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How do you get the New York Times interested in Protestants?

Easy. Quote the Protestants freaking out over a visit by the Pope Francis. In classic form, the newspaper uses a single source to explore (exploit?) differences among Christians as Francis prays for peace and unity there.

It's one of more than 3,900 articles on the first pope to visit Korea since John Paul II in 1989.

It's also an extreme example of the antagonistic coverage the church gets from American reporters, according to an article by Father Thomas Reese in the National Catholic Reporter. Reese complains that while obsessing over abortion, gay marriage and birth control, reporters have been ignoring other actions of the American bishops – such as their stances on the environment, disarmament, immigration reform and peace in the Middle East.

That sounds really, really serious, when this Reese piece is actually quite hilarious, which is why religion-beat pros have been chattering about it for days. This is your chance to hear (read, actually) a priest respond "Go in peace" after a journalist curses.

But back to the pope and South Korea. We'll get to the Times' behavior later. Fortunately, other stories show some lucid, literate coverage.


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