Christianity

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Escaping that 'comfort zone': Press keeps missing obvious religion news at '22 World Cup

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Escaping that 'comfort zone': Press keeps missing obvious religion news at '22 World Cup

The World Cup in Qatar continues to roll along into the semifinals. So far, the premier soccer tournament — and arguably the planet’s biggest sporting event — has showcased skill, drama and even some upsets. 

What the tournament has also generated are plenty of different kinds of storylines for news reporters and sports writers to focus on. As is the case with sporting events in general there are lots of storylines connected to religion that have gone unnoticed. 

It should come as no surprise that sports writers, and very often their editors back in the newsroom, don’t “get” religion. Go-to websites such as Fox Sports and ESPN, for instance, have failed to cover obvious stories in the past. They’ve also failed to do it in regards to the 2022 World Cup. For starters, think location, location and location. Why? Click here.

There are a few faith storylines — on and off the field — that did get coverage. Some of that coverage was great; some not so great.  

An example of a very good piece came via The New York Times. The newspaper found a way to discuss Qatar’s use of migrant workers to build stadiums and other infrastructure projects related to the World Cup in a new way.

The feature, which ran on a Sunday during Advent, looked at Qatar’s only Catholic church, located on the outskirts of the capital city Doha — in an area in which the government sanctions eight houses of worship, from Anglican to Eastern Orthodox. This feature, written by John Branch, is one of the rare times when a sports writer left his or her “comfort zone” and ventured outside the bubble of stadiums and press conferences to cover a story. 

Here’s the key section, showing why this story matters: 

Qatar is a nation deeply rooted in Islam. Calls to prayer can be heard five times a day throughout Doha. World Cup stadiums have prayer rooms for fans, and some staff at the games will stop what they’re doing to kneel in prayer.


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Conservative Catholics could be energized if Trump picks Amy Coney Barrett for SCOTUS

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It was back in January — eons ago in the context of 2020 news — that Donald Trump became the first U.S. president to appear at the annual March for Life. At last month’s Republican National Convention, a conservative nun named Sister Deirdre “Dede” Byrne called Trump “the most pro-life president that this nation has ever had.”

This brings us to now and the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The expectation is that Trump will put forth a nominee — a shortlist that sees Judge Amy Coney Barrett as the frontrunner — that has a record of being opposed to America’s post-Roe v. Wade abortion laws. That will inflame activists on the cultural left and exacerbate tensions in this country following the pandemic and protests surrounding racial injustice.

The focus on abortion will, once again, challenge journalists to produce balanced, accurate, on-the-record material describing the religious beliefs of the potential nominees.

How will this affect the final weeks of the 2020 campaign? Attacks from some Democrats on Barrett during the confirmation process, should she be the nominee, could very well help Trump with some Catholic voters. In turn, attacks on Barrett would hurt Biden, a Catholic trying to get Catholic swing voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio to vote for him. If anything, anti-Catholic attacks against Barrett could both galvanize GOP voters and tip some undecided Catholic voters across the Rust Belt toward Trump.

The 48-year-old Barrett, a native of New Orleans, and her husband Jesse Barrett, a former prosecutor, have seven children, including two adopted from Haiti and one with Down syndrome. Barrett learned of her son’s diagnosis during a prenatal test, but decided to have the baby. Aside from being a federal judge, Barrett teaches law at Notre Dame. She is a former law clerk to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, with The New York Times reporting that her fellow clerks saying she was his favorite. She graduated from Notre Dame Law School and joined the faculty in 2002.

If nominated and confirmed, Barrett would be the youngest member of the Supreme Court in history and, thus, could help shape many future decisions.


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Catholic media highlights trend in young people gravitating towards faith during pandemic

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The ever-evolving coronavirus pandemic has upended our world in ways no one could have ever expected. Journalists still don’t know where this story is going.

But one thing is clear. While death tolls climb and fall depending on which countries are effectively flattening the curve, the vast majority of those of us who are healthy and staying at home still have to deal with loneliness.

How does faith play a part in mitigating isolation? A survey released four weeks ago by Springtide Research Institute, which studies trends of those ages 13 to 25. What did they find? The survey revealed the following regarding young people, faith and the novel coronavirus. The following summary is long, but essential, especially for religion-beat professionals:

… For many young adults, shelter in place and social distancing provokes fear and uncertainty, leading to increased levels of isolation, loneliness, and anxiety. The survey found that the single most important way to mitigate loneliness is for trusted adults to reach out and connect with young adults.

* The survey consisted of a national panel of 508 respondents ages 18–25, with a margin of error of +/- 4% at a 95% confidence level, administered between March 24 and March 31, 2020.

* One in three respondents are sheltering in place alone.

* 63% of all respondents say that they do not feel as alone or isolated when people reach out to them.

* Among young adults who are sheltering in place with others, half still say that they feel alone, and nearly eight out of ten report feeling less lonely when a trusted adult from outside their household checks in on them.

* About 58% say they feel scared and uncertain, and 66% of those who feel this way say they don’t have anyone to talk to about their emotions. Thus, they feel isolated because no one is reaching out to them.

* Respondents are not experiencing a decrease in their faith; in fact, 35% increased their faith and 47% stayed the same.

* Nearly 46% have started new religious practices, and 43% have participated in at least one religious service online.


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The quest for religion and science coverage of COVID-19 -- in the same news report

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We are living in surreal times.

The world as we knew it just over a week ago has been brought to a halt by the COVID-19 pandemic. After the virus devastated China’s Wuhan province, it spread to Europe and now the rest of the world. Our daily lives have been disrupted in a way never seen in our lifetimes.

I have for weeks been concerned about the virus. Most of my family lives in Italy, a nation hard hit by it. My many uncles and aunts — all 65 and older and therefore more at-risk of dying — have not left their homes after the government imposed a national lockdown. What has happened in Italy and now the rest of Europe could certainly happen in the United States.

There has been some very good journalism being done. My go-to sources for news have been The Associated Press and The New York Times. For broader context and commentary have been valuable resources such as The Atlantic and The Economist. We must give these journalists praise and thanks for the long hours they have been putting in to inform us all. In a time where misinformation can lead to death, the press should be largely lauded for their efforts. I can tell you, as someone who covered a massive event like the Sept. 11 attacks and its aftermath, that newsrooms are in overdrive at this moment and will be for months.

While the aforementioned four media outlets — and the countless others — have done an exceptional job covering the pandemic, so have Catholic news organizations. For those across the Catholic doctrinal spectrum, the religious press has also done a wonderful job covering COVID-19 from a faith perspective. EWTN, with its TV and radio broadcasts as well as digital media, has done a wonderful job.

In particular, Catholic News Agency has updated readers with a constant stream of stories over the past few weeks.

The mainstream press, other than focusing on churches going remote during this time of social distancing (and the usual questions about Holy Communion from a “common cup”), hasn’t bothered much with the religion angle.


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It's time for journalists to ask: What has happened to the Vatican press office?

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Let’s start with a loaded question. But it’s a questions that journalists really need to ask, because of trends during recent events in Catholic life.

So here goes: Is the Vatican’s press office helping to push a progressive agenda that could forever change the Catholic church?

Here’s the background: The Pan-Amazonian Synod that ended over a week ago wasn’t without controversy, to say the least. The recommendations put forth regarding bestowing Holy Orders to women in the form of making them deacons is something Pope Francis has to make a decision on by the end of the year. Toss in the theological debate over the Pachamama statues present at the Vatican and at a nearby Rome church and there was no shortage of fodder for reporters and columnists.

That takes us to the Vatican’s press office, the people on the front lines of getting out the pope’s message to the world’s media.

Like the White House in the age of Trump, so too does the Holy See’s messaging need some further examination. Former White House Press Secretaries Sean Spicer, followed by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, were all placed under the news media’s microscope for their statements and actions — and rightly so. The PR men and women behind Francis also deserve similar examination by the press.

Long gone are the days of Joaquin Navarro Valls. A “suave, silver-haired Spaniard,” as the Los Angeles Times described him in their 2017 obituary, Valls was both a close confidant of Pope John Paul II and served for more than two decades as chief Vatican spokesman. He defined what it was to be the pope’s press man. And he defended church teachings while doing it.

Navarro-Valls, a lay member of the conservative Catholic movement Opus Dei, had worked as a foreign correspondent for the Spanish newspaper ABC when the Polish pope offered him the job as director of the Vatican press office. He was the first journalist to hold the post. He was the right man at the right time for a globe-trotting pope at a time when mass media was growing.

Fast-forward to the present. The backlash to Francis by traditionalists is based on convictions that he has politicized the church, wanting to transform it into a social service agency.


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Church vandalism cases in France starting to get the journalism attention they deserve

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Spending two weeks in France earlier this summer was a wonderful experience. While I was there to cover the Women’s World Cup, I did get an opportunity to travel extensively throughout Paris and the northern part of the country.

During my travels, I walked into a lot of churches. France is one of the few countries I have ever visited where churches were always open. There was something comforting seeing churches with their doors swung wide, inviting anyone to walk right in.

The other thing I noticed was how empty these houses of worship were. It’s not surprising given that church attendance in France is among the lowest in the world.

I’m used to New York City, where churches are often locked when Mass isn’t going on. The reasons are plentiful. Theft, vandalism and other factors often goes into why this has become a practice. You’d think they would have heeded the warning in France, where the vandalism of Catholic churches has become an all-too-common occurrence the past two years.

This trend has largely been ignored in the mainstream press (we discussed this extensively at GetReligion at the time of the Notre Dame blaze and again in the aftermath). It should be noted, once again, that the fire at Notre Dame was an accident and not part of the spate of attacks.  

This takes us to a great piece of journalism by Real Clear Investigations, the same people who run Real Clear Politics (full disclosure: I have written for Real Clear Sports in the past). A recent piece posted to the site takes a deep dive into the trend, quantifying it with anecdotes, lots of data and interviews with people in the know. The reporting sheds a spotlight on the string of attacks and what it has done to France. It may be one of the best reported pieces on what’s been going on there by any news organization to date.

What Richard Bernstein has been able to do here is the kind of reporting that we no longer see. A former foreign correspondent at The New York Times, Bernstein worked as the paper’s Paris bureau chief from 1984 to 1987. His knowledge of the country, the history and factors that may have influenced the events of the past year shows through his reporting. These two paragraphs early on, for example, illustrate the magnitude of the problem — with help from data collected by various French authorities:


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Reporters will need help from canon lawyers to correctly explain California's confession bill

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In this politically polarized world, there are issues that can drive a large wedge between people — including several that, one way or another, are tied to religion.

Immigration and abortion are two of the biggest in the Donald Trump era, issues that dominated the Supreme Court’s recently-completed term and the Democratic presidential primaries that are just underway. Then again, immigration and abortion are the issues that dominate news on the web and cable TV.

Religious freedom, an old-school liberal issue now largely taken up by conservatives, is often lost in mainstream news coverage. Lost in this coverage is an issue of such importance to Roman Catholics, that it may very well be the biggest fallout to come from years of clerical sex abuse when it comes to how it affects the law.

The California State Senate, controlled by Democrats, recently passed a bill (the first of its kind in the United States) that would compel a priest — violating centuries of Catholic law and tradition — to disclose to civil authorities any information learned in the confessional if it involves the sexual abuse of a minor committed by another priest or lay worker. The bill was supposed to head to the State Assembly later this summer, where Democrats hold a majority.

On Tuesday, on the eve of a scheduled hearing, State Sen. Jerry Hill withdrew the bill after realizing he didn’t have the votes to get it passed out of committee. Opponents may have rejoiced, but this issue is far from over. It certainly will gather steam again in future legislative sessions. That means reporters need to be better equipped to cover such an issue in a balanced and fair way.

If this bill doesn’t seem like a big deal, consider what it would have mandated: the government would have been allowed to control a religious sacrament by legally punishing a priest for not breaking the seal of confession. Passage of such a law would be a major violation of religious freedom for both the priest and the person in the confessional. It would also have a chilling effect for those seeking to go to confession, but fearing possible legal troubles.

Mainstream news coverage of this bill has been largely muted over the past few months. This bill hasn’t, for example, been made a bigger issue by national media outlets such as The New York Times. Compare that to the coverage on immigration and abortion.


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If churches keep getting vandalized in France, should American news outlets cover the story?

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Is it a news story if a church is set on fire or vandalized in some other way? What about if it’s part of a string of incidents? What if it happens five times? How about 10 times?

What if there are flames pouring out of one of the world’s most iconic cathedrals and it’s Monday of Holy Week?

We will come back to the flames over Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in a moment.

The answers to the earlier questions are yes, yes, yes, yes and, of course, yes! As someone who worked as a news reporter (and later a editor) at two major metropolitan dailies (at the New York Post and New York Daily News) and a major news network website (ABC News), I can tell you that any suspicion of arson at a house of worship, for example, is a major story.

It must somehow no longer be the case in the new and frenetic world of the internet-driven, 24-hour news cycle. That’s because a major international story — one involving at least 10 acts of vandalism at Catholic churches in France — went largely unreported (underreported, really) for weeks. The vandalism included everything from Satanic symbols scrawled on walls to shattered statues.

That’s right, a rash of fires and other acts of desecration inside Catholic churches — during Lent, even — in a country with a recent history of terrorism somehow didn’t warrant any kind of attention from American news organizations. Even major news organizations, such as The Washington Post, were late to covering it and only did after running a Religion News Service story.

This brings us to Monday’s fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, where a massive blaze engulfed the 12th century gothic house of worship. It’s too early to tell if this incident is part of the earlier wave of vandalism, but it certainly comes at a strange time. For now, officials say the blaze remains under investigation. The cathedral has been undergoing some renovation work and the fire may — repeat MAY — have started in one of those areas.

It would be crazy to assume there is a connection between all of these fires and acts of vandalism. It would be just as crazy for journalists not to investigate the possibility that there are connections.

There will be more to come on the Notre Dame story in the hours and days that follow and comes at the start of Holy Week, the most solemn time on the Christian calendar.

But back to my questions about the earlier string of fires and the lack of coverage.


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