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Wednesday, April 02, 2025

COVID-19

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Archbishop Broglio elected to lead USCCB: Press focuses on (#surprise) political issues

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Archbishop Broglio elected to lead USCCB: Press focuses on (#surprise) political issues

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops assembled in Baltimore two weeks ago to elect a new president. Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Military Services, tasked with overseeing Catholic ministries to members of the U.S. armed forces, was elected to lead the USCCB.

The 70-year-old archbishop won election to a three-year term on Nov. 15 after emerging victorious from a field of 10 candidates. What Broglio’s election means for the church, our national politics and for everyday Catholics depends on whom you ask.

Certainly, news coverage of Broglio’s election seemed to focus on the priorities of the media organization’s own political priorities rather than impartial, fact-based reporting that included the church’s own positions on an array of subjects Broglio will have to deal with in his term.

As we say here at GetReligion: Politics is real. Religion? Not so much.

The New York Times framed their coverage under the headline, “U.S. Catholic Bishops Elect Leaders for Anti-Abortion Fight.” This is how their story opened:

BALTIMORE — A week after bruising losses for anti-abortion forces in the midterm elections, America’s Roman Catholic bishops rededicated themselves to ending abortion and elected a slate of new leaders to support that goal during their annual meeting. …

The job ahead is “perhaps even more massive than we thought,” said Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, who has chaired the bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities. “We have to engage in this with mind and heart and soul.”

The bishops chose Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, who leads the Archdiocese for the Military Services, as their new president. Archbishop Lori, the runner-up for the presidency, will serve as vice president. Both men have taken strong positions against abortion and are expected to continue the conservative leanings of the hierarchy on an array of social issues.

Archbishop Broglio supported religious exemptions for military service members who did not want to receive the Covid-19 vaccine “if it would violate the sanctity of his or her conscience.” The Vatican had approved of the vaccines, but some Catholics and others opposed to abortion asked for religious exemptions because of the use of stem cells derived from aborted fetuses to develop some vaccines.

He has previously suggested that homosexuality was to blame for the church’s sexual abuse crisis, though studies have found no connection between homosexuality and child abuse.

There’s a lot to unpack there, but the news story managed to get the words abortion, vaccines and homosexuality in the first five paragraphs. Broglio is made out to be some deranged right-wing politician.


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Faith, family, dating and the looming marriage crisis in America (Part I)

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Faith, family, dating and the looming marriage crisis in America (Part I)

For decades, viewers have enjoyed the Japanese reality-TV series "Old Enough!" in which preschool children venture into the streets alone to run errands for their parents.

What if American women asked their live-in boyfriends to stop playing videogames, leave their couches and run errands? In the Saturday Night Life sketch "Old Enough! Longterm Boyfriends!" guest host Selena Gomez asked her helpless boyfriend of three years, played by cast member Mikey Day, to buy her eyeliner and two shallots.

This man-baby ends up in tears with a big bag of onions and "a blush palette for African-American women." The frustrated girlfriend says she may need a mid-morning glass of wine.

There was wisdom in that comedy, for pastors willing to see it, said sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.

"There's a whole class of young men who are not flourishing personally and professionally. … The systems have broken down that help raise up attractive, successful men. Churches used to be one of those support systems," he said, reached by telephone.

"The future of the church runs through solid marriages and happy families. The churches that find ways to help men and women prepare for marriage and then encourage them to start families are the churches that will have a future."

The crisis is larger than lonely, under-employed and Internet-addicted men. Rising numbers of young women are anxious, depressed and even choosing self-harm and suicide.

The coronavirus pandemic made things worse, but researchers were already seeing danger signs, noted San Diego State psychology professor Jean Twenge, in a recent Institute for Family Studies essay.


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What if mass media can't get rid of misinformation (or agree on what the term means)?

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What if mass media can't get rid of misinformation (or agree on what the term means)?

Panelists on the final episode of the media-analysis show “Reliable Sources,” axed after three decades by CNN’s incoming management, gave voice to widespread angst about America’s news and information environment.

Rampant misinformation is among the top concerns these days. Social media have blocked COVID discussions regarded as misleading. The Biden Administration launched an Orwellian-sounding Disinformation Governance Board under the Department of Homeland Security, but quickly shelved the effort.

By the way, “misinformation” means incorrect knowledge of any sort, whereas “disinformation” is false knowledge that’s spread deliberately.

One commentator recommends that we all chill.

Only sheer “arrogance” could create “confidence that we can accurately and productively root out misinformation,” contends Isaac Saul, who heads up www.ReadTangle.com, an online newsletter that offers non-partisan summaries of the best arguments from various sides of political issues. (Check it out.) He titled a July article “Misinformation Is Here To Stay (And That’s OK).”

The Guy does not necessarily embrace all of Saul but considers his contentions important for media toilers, critics and consumers to ponder. Thus this Memo condenses the essence as follows.

For starters, Saul cleverly notes that many things each of us believes right will prove “utterly wrong” and history proves it. As recently as a century ago, doctors believed in bloodletting cures using leeches or scalpels. U.S. women had just obtained the vote over against the common belief they were too emotional. The Milky Way was the outer limit of the universe.

Only two decades ago, experts were telling us mass opioid prescriptions were safe and that switching from paper to plastic bags would save trees and thus help the environment. More recently, Twitter and Facebook barred accurate New York Post reportage on Hunter Biden’s loaded (in several senses of that word) laptop, and established sources branded as a conspiracy theory COVID’s origin in a China lab leak, now regarded as possible or even likely. Add your own examples.


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Latter-day Saints' incremental changes on doctrine add up to a solid religion story

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Latter-day Saints' incremental changes on doctrine add up to a solid religion story

It’s commendable — and all too infrequent — when pundits admit mistakes.

So let’s send a hosanna or two toward Religion News Service columnist Jana Riess, who specializes in her own faith, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (long nicknamed “Mormons”). Her column reviewing the four years under renowned heart surgeon Russell M. Nelson as LDS president admitted that “if I was guilty of expecting little from a nonagenarian company man, I’ve had cause to repent.” (Everybody else was saying the same.) She’s now “very glad to have been wrong.”

Riess’s latest look — “Oh, now I get it: Purging the word ‘Mormon’ is a bid for the mainstream” — does complain about one move (see below). But she hails 10 developments under Nelson, who turns 96 today. Taken together they form a solid story theme others could pursue. Given the faith’s 21st Century growth alongside setbacks elsewhere in American religion, national and regional media could combine the changes with how the LDS empire has fared during and after the COVID-19 crisis.

A summary of the top 10 items in this change-resistant faith, interpreted in terms of Riess’s policy preferences:

* Though she says “mountains of work” remain, 2019 reversal of a 2015 policy ended automatic excommunication of same-sex couples and allows baptisms and blessings for their children.

* Also in 2019, there was “a little progress” on women. The status of biblical Eve was elevated in the central secret “endowment” ritual, in which wives no longer vow to “hearken” to their husbands. Also, girls and women are now allowed as official witnesses to ordinances.

* Though white Americans continue to dominate global leadership, for the first time in LDS history Nelson’s two newly named apostles were from neither North America nor Europe. Choices for lower ranks are also more diverse.

* Young adult missionaries can contact families weekly rather than twice a year, and their access to mental health services has improved.

* With the demise of Boy Scout ties, the church’s overhauled youth program has equal spending on girls.


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And this just in: The Episcopal Church gets more sobering news from the book of numbers

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And this just in: The Episcopal Church gets more sobering news from the book of numbers

My very first experience with The Episcopal Church (TEC) was on a youth group mission trip to Huntsville, Ala. We were with a group called World Changers, which was an evangelical organization that helped organize free labor from young people for individuals who did not have the ability to pay for home repairs. Some groups were tasked with painting, others were focused on cleaning up yard debris, while my group put a new roof on a house in the Alabama heat.

For reasons I can’t fully recall, our youth group was going to be in Alabama on a Sunday morning and the organizers at World Changers had decided that the teenagers from First Baptist of Salem, Ill., would visit the local Episcopal congregation.

I have to admit — I had absolutely no idea what was going on. I was raised in a very low-church fashion in a Southern Baptist Church. No vestments, no stoles, no creeds, and no communion each Sunday. I remember sitting in the pews and thinking how different it was, and coming to the realization that I didn’t know about any faith tradition outside my own.

I have a lot of affinity for Episcopalians. In fact, my American Baptist Church has latched on to many aspects of the liturgy followed in TEC. We say the creed each Sunday, we read the lectionary, we recite the Lord’s Prayer and we sing the Doxology and the Gloria Patria. I like the rituals that can be found in TEC.

What I also enjoy is that the Episcopalians are really good at data collection.

There’s no denomination that compares to how meticulous they are in collecting annual statistics and making them publicly available. That makes it very easy for me to write a post about what’s going on with Episcopalians. I wrote one such post last year entitled, “The Death of the Episcopal Church is Near.” It has easily become the most popular article on this website over the past 12 months.

I now have data from 2020 and my conclusion hasn’t changed. The Episcopal Church is in serious trouble.

Some of it may be pandemic related, but some of it is clearly not. The end is coming fairly rapidly for the TEC as it exists today. Let me explain.


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Plug-In: NASA's amazing space images, fighting in Ukraine and the top religion stories

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Plug-In: NASA's amazing space images, fighting in Ukraine and the top religion stories

“Monsters are everywhere in the Bible — and some are even human.”

These are some of the religion headlines that caught my attention this past week.

To be honest, though, I haven’t paid as close attention to the news as I normally do.

As I previewed in the last Weekend Plug-in three weeks ago, I took off a week for vacation (I had a wonderful time seeing country shows with my sister and parents in Branson, Mo.). Then I took off a week for a reporting trip to the Chicago area.

But in the Windy City, I came down with what at first I thought were allergies. Eventually, I tested positive for COVID-19. The experience threw me for a loop. I finally tested negative Friday night. I’m feeling much better.

However, I have no doubt I’ve missed a whole lot of the best reads in the world of faith. Feel free to catch me up!

One thing I didn’t miss: those amazing first images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Think there might be a religion angle there? Enter the Washington Times’ Mark A. Kellner with this fascinating take:

The images raise issues for followers of the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and affirm the thoughts of Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, who in the 1700s imagined the possibility of galaxies beyond our own, says Harvard government professor Michael Rosen.

Religion News Service’s Claire Giangravé quotes Vatican astrophysicist Brother Guy Consolmagno:

“The science behind this telescope is our attempt to use our God-given intelligence to understand the logic of the universe,” Consolmagno wrote, adding that “the universe wouldn’t work if it weren’t logical.”


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Podcast: AP fails to connect religion dots in latest surge in homeschooling statistics

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Podcast: AP fails to connect religion dots in latest surge in homeschooling statistics

If you know anything about the history of homeschooling, you know that battles about parental rights, morality, religious motivations and faith-centered school content have been a big part of this drama since Day 1.

Connect a few dots in almost any trend linked to homeschooling and, sooner and later, you will hit religion.

It doesn’t matter if you are talking about mainstream groups such as the National Home School Association or aggressive activist groups such as the Home School Legal Defence Association. Needless to say, when you see a headline like this one — “The Frightening Power of the Home-Schooling Lobby” — or this one from Europe — “Home education: Court rules against German Christian family “ — you will almost always run into lots of content about religious fundamentalism (of various kinds), big families and other signs of countercultural behavior.

As I noted 20+ years ago in an “On Religion” column about a homeschooling convention inside the D.C. Beltway:

These are not business-as-usual families, cookie-cut into the sizes and shapes on display in shopping malls, mail-order catalogues and, especially, prime-time television. They have unique priorities when they budget their time and money. They have radically different family values that often defy simple political labels.

In a strange way, home-schoolers are creating a new counter-culture outside the American mainstream. It's the Anti-Woodstock Generation.

All of these issues came up for discussion during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), which focused on a recent Associated Press feature with this headline: “Homeschooling surge continues despite schools reopening.” Here is the overture for that story:

The coronavirus pandemic ushered in what may be the most rapid rise in homeschooling the U.S. has ever seen. Two years later, even after schools reopened and vaccines became widely available, many parents have chosen to continue directing their children’s educations themselves.

Homeschooling numbers this year dipped from last year’s all-time high, but are still significantly above pre-pandemic levels, according to data obtained and analyzed by The Associated Press.

Families that may have turned to homeschooling as an alternative to hastily assembled remote learning plans have stuck with it — reasons include health concerns, disagreement with school policies and a desire to keep what has worked for their children.

Now, there’s no doubt that what parents saw on Zoom screens during the COVID-tide played a big role in these numbers. But what did they see and hear?


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Elite American super-cities are bleeding people: Any religion ghosts in this big story?

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Elite American super-cities are bleeding people: Any religion ghosts in this big story?

It’s hard to imagine any corner of American life that has not been touched by the coronavirus pandemic.

Obviously, there have been plenty of religion stories — along with the obvious angles linked to politics, business and technology.

Then you have stories that combine all of these elements. That is, they combine all of these themes if reporters are willing to look at the numbers and trends through multiple lens. However, as any GetReligion reader knows, not all lens are created equal.

One of the most important stories has been the impact of COVID-19 realities on some of the most important zip codes — “important” from an elite-news perspective — on the blue coasts. That brings us to that massive headline the other day in The New York Times, a paper that has, for the most part, treated evidence of New York City woes as part of a vast a right-wing conspiracy theory. Here’s that double-decker headline:

Cities Lost Population in 2021, Leading to the Slowest Year of Growth in U.S. History

Although some of the fastest growing regions in the country continued to grow, the gains were nearly erased by stark losses in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

This is, of course, an almost totally religion-free story. I was pleased to notice that the Times team took demographic issues — including birth-rate slumps — rather seriously, even if the editors didn’t (as usual) connect the dots and see the religious, cultural and moral elements of that important angle (please see this earlier GetReligion piece — “New York Times asks this faith-free question: Why are young Americans having fewer babies?” — for background).

Am I arguing that the flight from several important American super-cities is essentially a religion story? Of course not. Am I saying that issues linked to faith, family and culture are playing a role in this very, very important story? Yes, I am.


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Plug-In: Canadian trucker protests echo U.S. Christian nationalism? Press says 'yes'

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Plug-In: Canadian trucker protests echo U.S. Christian nationalism? Press says 'yes'

“Honk if you love Jesus.”

That headline on a recent story by the Ottawa Citizen’s Blair Crawford sets the scene as the Canadian newspaper explains “Why so many Evangelical Christians have joined the ‘Freedom Convoy.’”

Unfamiliar with the Freedom Convoy? The Wall Street Journal explains the protest in Canada’s capital city this way:

Since late January, downtown Ottawa has served as a parking lot for hundreds of heavy-duty trucks, pickup trucks and other vehicles, operated by individuals who say they are fed up with the social restrictions and vaccine mandates meant to contain the spread of Covid-19.

Back to the faith angle: The Ottawa newspaper notes:

At the ongoing demonstration … Jesus references and Bible quotes share space alongside “F*ck Trudeau” signs. The evangelical Christian message of love and peace clashes with reports of Ottawa residents being harassed for wearing masks, houses displaying the rainbow pride flag vandalized and the sight of Confederate flags and swastikas among the demonstrators. At one booth on Wellington Street you could get buttons with the yellow Star of David, likening the plight of Jewish people in Nazi Germany to the unvaccinated.

CBC News’ Jorge Barrera reports that “For many inside the freedom convoy, faith fuels the resistance.”

According to Barrera’s story:

Christian faith — with an overtly evangelical feel — flows likes an undercurrent through the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa.


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