'The Nuns Who Left Brooklyn' -- How many religious details did this Times story need?

The headline of this New York Times story was totally “religion story” — “The Nuns Who Left Brooklyn.”

Thus, I heard from people who wanted to know what your GetReligionistas thought of this religion story.

The content of this news feature was, quite frankly, totally “metro desk” (people who have worked in newsrooms will understand that term). This is, let me stress, not a complaint. The Times story is packed with relevant, even colorful local news details about a sad situation that developed in Brooklyn.

Also, religion-beat pros will not that it is hard to do a story about the details in the lives of cloistered Catholic women religious, since they are not going to sit down for interviews and talk about the details of their lives and beliefs. The story has some crucial details provided by others that tell readers some of what they need to know.

Would I have appreciated a few more details about this order and where it fits into the current drama of Catholic monastic life in America? Sure. Was that an essential part of this particular story? I’ll admit that the answer to that is: “Not really.” Hold that thought. Meanwhile, here is the overture:

The 10 Carmelite nuns of Cypress Hills, cloistered in Brooklyn for almost 20 years, decided to leave New York City after much contemplation.
As much as they tried, the sisters of the Monastery of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and St. Joseph, devotees of silence and prayer who rarely left the confines of the cloister, could no longer ignore what was going on outside. The loud celebrations in an adjacent park became a bit too much. And when a beloved lay volunteer was murdered, the sisters were shaken deeply.
The last straw came in 2020, that first pandemic summer, with the explosion of late-night partying on their street involving cars with powerful speakers, said Mother Ana Maria, who spoke on behalf of the monastery, which used to be on Highland Boulevard.
“Our walls shook and our windows shattered,” she said. The sisters wondered whether the blaring music well past midnight was aimed directly at them.

Shattered windows? That’s some loud partying. That leads to a poignant detail, care of the mother superior who spoke for the nuns.

Mother Ana Maria, who, along with her sisters, begins each day at 5 a.m. The nuns pushed their beds away from the walls of their cells — the small rooms where they slept — but still felt unsafe, she said.

Don’t read this yet. Get yourself a chair. Put down that cup of whatever you're drinking.

The Associated Press reports that -- Dun-dun-DUNN! -- Russia doesn't like gays. And especially pro-gay-rights churches.

I know, right? That might have knocked your socks off.

AP learned this terrible truth as a missionary of the Metropolitan Community Church was arrested, then ordered out of Russia. Try to get through this without fainting:

MOSCOW — Jim Mulcahy was sitting with some Russian friends, munching cookies and talking about Roman mosaics, when the Russian police came and took him away, claiming he was planning to perform a same-sex marriage. Hours later, the American pastor was ordered to leave Russia.

Mulcahy’s arrest this month in the city of Samara braids together several of Russia’s most acrimonious issues: gay rights, alleged Western meddling in Russian affairs, and missionary work by religions that don’t have state approval. It attracted particular attention because the arrest was filmed by state-controlled channel NTV, whose reports often take an especially truculent, pro-Kremlin stance.

As the Eastern Europe coordinator for the pro-gay Metropolitan Community Churches, Mulcahy said he was visiting Samara, Russia, at the invitation of a gay rights group called Avers. He says it was a mere Q&A session at their offices, but the Russian station NTV said he was "performing unspecified ceremonies for homosexuals," AP says.

The station also said he had "converted to Orthodox Christianity," which he denies. That should have been easy to verify or falsify, just by checking with the Russian Orthodox Church, no?

But no, AP is more interested in milking this story for drama, whether the drama is there or not: