Five Catholic storylines journalists will need to follow closely as we enter 2023

There are only a few days left to go in 2022. It was a busy news year — loaded with stories with strong religion angles.

Many of those stories had Catholic angles that were important to highlight and report on. A year ago, I took a look at the top Catholic angles journalists needed to focus on heading into 2022. I was prescient in my outlook, highlighting the Supreme Court decision regarding abortion among the top things to focus on.

This is what I wrote a year ago looking ahead to 2022:

Issues around politics and religion will likely dominate once again in 2022. The abortion issue and a pending Supreme Court decision regarding access to it will be a big story in the coming year. The Catholic church, a major part of the abortion debate in this country for decades, will play a major role in news stories that will be written over the coming months.

As we prepare to ring in 2023, I want to highlight five big storylines and trends to look for over the next 12 months:

(5) Catholic politicians vs. bishops

The culture war that has embroiled many societies, especially in the United States and now Western Europe, will continue to pit Catholic bishops and politicians. It will be especially pronounced when it involves Catholic lawmakers.

We’ve already seen this with President Joe Biden and outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Both are practicing Catholics who have butted heads with many bishops who keep noting public remarks and actions by these politicians that directly clash with centuries of Catholic doctrines on a great number of moral issues.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recently elected a new president. As conference president, Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese of the Military Services will have to focus on many hot-button issues. Above all, fights over issues surrounding abortion and contraception will continue, including questions about whether politicians who openly clash with church teachings should receive Holy Communion.

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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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Richard Ostling

November 23, 2022

World Religions, Social Media, Richard Ostling, Race, Podcasts, People, Baptists, Black church, Catholicism, Clergy, Godbeat, Jews and Judaism, Mainline, Pentecostal-Charismatics

Celebrities rule: How should reporters assess the name fame game in religion?

Richard Ostling

November 23, 2022

World Religions, Social Media, Richard Ostling, Race, Podcasts, People, Baptists, Black church, Catholicism, Clergy, Godbeat, Jews and Judaism, Mainline, Pentecostal-Charismatics

Celebrities rule: How should reporters assess the name fame game in religion?

As of the 2022 midterms, the United States had 49 million registered Democrats and 39 million registered Republicans, according to estimates from WorldPopulationReview.com.

Recent National Basketball Association and National Football League annual attendance combined came to 39 million. And last week, a religious leader named Timothy P. Broglio took charge of a U.S. organization with 67 million members.

Timothy who? That would be the archbishop who is the newly elected president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, who will lead the church in the U.S. through the 2024 election season and on the 2025. If you think his task is placid, note this liberal jeremiad — care of National Catholic Reporter — about his election.

Weeks before, Kristen Waggoner became a prime culture wars figure.

Kristen who? This evangelical attorney is the new president of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal non-profit that represents religious conservatives in matters like LGBTQ disputes, as in this critique of the Democrats’ marriage act. Her ADF is branded a “hate group” by the equally controversial Southern Poverty Law Center.

Point being that important leaders within segments of American religion are generally far less prominent than athletes, entertainers, politicians or tech billionaires. Publicity usually falls to clergy who run purchased-time broadcasts, utter political sound bites or are trapped in scandals.

Think Pat Robertson.

Things were different not so long ago when Billy Graham, and Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders, were titanic cultural and media personalities. In an earlier time (so to speak), Time magazine would devote a cover story to Christian thinkers C.S. Lewis (1947) or Reinhold Niebuhr (1948, written by Whittaker Chambers). Presbyterian bureaucrat Eugene Carson Blake (“Can Protestants Unite?”, 1961) or U.S. Catholic Cardinals Spellman (1946) or Cushing (1964).

Since the media and the Internet are meshuga over lists (is this David Letterman’s doing?), how about a well-reported article, not about our American era’s Top 10 religious celebrities, but which ones exercise the most influence, seen or unseen?

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