church vandalism

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Why not cover these stories? GetReligion kept asking about attacks on Catholic churches

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Why not cover these stories? GetReligion kept asking about attacks on Catholic churches

There have been many big stories on the Catholic beat since I started contributing to GetReligion in November 2018.

Over the last five years, I have written about Catholicism as it related to doctrinal fights, politics, education and even sports. In between, we had a pandemic. Brother, has it been a busy time.

Over that time, I looked at mainstream news coverage regarding these issues and the growing importance of Catholic news media in the digital age. Catholic media is crucial, in large part, because of the many important religion stories that way too many elite mainstream newsrooms are ignoring.

No story has been bigger — in terms of both importance and reader interest — than church fires.

Churches have been targeted in the United States and around the world in what has easily been one of the most underreported (in some cases not reported at all) stories of the last decade. The problem? When it comes to press coverage, not all religious sanctuaries are created equal.

In my final post here at GetReligion, let’s take a look back at this trend.

In terms of news, the biggest was not an act of arson, according to authorities, but an accident. It was on April 15, 2019 that a structural fire broke out in the roof space of Notre Dame in Paris, a medieval Catholic cathedral and one of the biggest symbols of Christianity throughout the world.

By the time the fire was extinguished, the 12th century gothic house of worship’s spire had collapsed, its famed rose window destroyed, most of its roof wiped out and its upper walls severely damaged.

I was in my office at The King’s College in New York City when I saw the news alerts. I had already filed a post for GetReligion — ironically! — regarding a rash of fires at churches across France during Lent.

That new post — with quick rewriting by me and speed editing by tmatt (who was across the hall on that day) — went online while the fire was still burning. It instantly went viral.

Here’s how that went down, as recounted by a tmatt post the following day:

Here at GetReligion, my colleague Clemente Lisi had, days earlier, written a feature about the recent series of fires and acts of vandalism at French churches. Lisi and I quickly rewrote the top of that post and put it up about 3 p.m. EDT yesterday. The headline: “If churches keep getting vandalized in France, should American news outlets cover the story?”


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Mainstream outlets ignore anti-Catholic angles in Merrick Garland's Senate testimony

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Mainstream outlets ignore anti-Catholic angles in Merrick Garland's Senate testimony

It’s almost always news when a public official testifies before a congressional committee. Such was the case when Attorney General Merrick Garland faced the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

As expected, it was an important, and often heated, four hours of testimony that was highlighted by the back-and-forth exchanges between Garland and Republican senators on the panel. You can read Garland’s opening remarks on the DOJ website. 

Beyond his prepared remarks, there were plenty of potential storylines tied to religion that surfaced in the hearing. However, depending on which news organizations one follows, these storylines either made it into the news coverage or they were never mentioned. 

The Garland hearing comes at a time of heightened polarization, something made worse by the Supreme Court decision that rolled back the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. The aftermath of that decision has resulted in increased vandalism of Catholic churches, pro-life pregnancy centers and even a now-retracted FBI memo that targeted some traditional Catholics. 

The content of the coverage of the questions asked and the contents of Garland’s responses depended on what reporters, editors and news organizations deemed important. This has been the case for decades, but the shift has changed dramatically in more recent years as news organizations divide themselves into political camps depending on the beliefs of their faithful audiences. 

Did valid religion angles, especially those involving Catholics, make it into the coverage of national legacy media outlets? 

Here is a hint: Prayers by protestors at abortion facilities appear to be considered much more dangerous, and thus newsworthy, than vandalism, or even arson, at Catholic churches and crisis pregnancy centers. News coverage of this Senate hearing seemed to have been produced by journalists living in parallel universes. Once again, this is the dominant news trend in the Internet age.

Here is the top of the New York Times report on the Garland hearing: 

WASHINGTON — Republicans subjected Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to a four-hour grilling before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, a harbinger of the fights that loom ahead as the party targets the Justice Department in the months leading up to the 2024 election. 


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Death of old-school journalism may be why Catholic church vandalism isn't a big story

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Death of old-school journalism may be why Catholic church vandalism isn't a big story

The start of 2023 has brought with it renewed discussion about the role of journalism in society and, more importantly, how it should be practiced and for whom.

At the same time, more Catholic churches and crisis-pregnancy centers have been the target of vandalism.

You may not have noticed this trend — because it is receiving little elite-news coverage.

I can’t help but think these two things are linked. Here’s how.  

Journalists and news organizations are increasingly abandoning old-school objectivity — think basic standards of accuracy, balance, fairness, etc. — in favor of an ever-changing worldview linked to whatever is fashionable politically or culturally, especially stances that are popular with paying customers. These news organizations are increasingly focused on how to influence the now and future rather than report on basic facts surrounding events.

Journalism, however, is not solely about predicting the future — see, for example, the heavy coverage towards polls trying to predict the outcome of elections — but observing the present and the on-the-record facts that surround us at the moment on a particular topic or issue.  

This growing activism among journalists has led reporters to lose most of their curiosity, a crucial element in news coverage.

Instead of asking questions, many already think they have the answers on an array of issues. In the process, this sense of activism among this new journalist class (and their Gen X editors who suddenly think that journalists have been doing things all wrong for decades) has led it to loss its curiosity. Debates? Who needs debates? Tropes based in secular society’s current values, for example, automatically trump thousands of years worth of Judeo-Christian tradition.

This brings us to the continuing trend that has seen many churches vandalized over the past few years. It’s a story that has received very little news coverage in the national press. Why?


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Once again: Anti-Catholic hate crimes are way up, but where's the mainstream news coverage?

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Once again: Anti-Catholic hate crimes are way up, but where's the mainstream news coverage?

This is a bad time to be a house of worship in the United States, as crazed people are vandalizing and damaging these places in record numbers.

For some time now, this blog has complained about the increasing trend in Catholic churches being vandalized across Europe –- and now here in the United States -– and the secular media barely noticing it. Recently, Religion News Service picked up on the phenomenon of the wreckage happening to Catholic churches.

(RNS) — It was after a pair of Catholic churches caught ablaze last summer, one in Southern California and another in Florida, that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops decided to start documenting and tracking vandalism at Catholic sites across the country.

The two fires occurred on the same morning: July 11, 2020. One destroyed the rooftop of the historic San Gabriel Mission — the fourth of a series of missions across California that Father Junipero Serra founded during the Spanish colonization era. The other ignited in Queen of Peace Catholic Church as parishioners prepared for Mass in Ocala, Florida.

Nobody was injured, but Aaron M. Weldon — of the USCCB’s Office of Religious Liberty — said the fires were “the impetus for us to start monitoring these sorts of events.”

Since then, the USCCB has tracked more than 105 incidents of vandalism of Catholic sites in the U.S., including arson, graffiti and defaced statues. The organization has logged news reports of such incidents dating back to May 2020, but it doesn’t yet have a detailed breakdown that categorizes the different kinds of vandalism.

May 2020 was the fateful month of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis by police officers and the start of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that saw a frenzy of property destruction around the country. (A year later, the Wall Street Journal noted last May, crime in Minneapolis is over the top.)

New FBI stats show the number of hate crimes (8,263) reported in fiscal year 2020 was the highest since 2001. Hate crimes motivated by religious bias accounted for 1,244 offenses, and more than half (683) were antisemitic.

While only 73 were anti-Catholic hate crimes, that represents an annual increase since 2013. There were 64 anti-Catholic hate crimes reported in 2019, and 51 in 2018, according to the FBI data.

The story pointed out that the Catholic Church have been in the news lately for reasons for reasons ranging from Joe Biden’s presidency to whether pro-choice Catholic politicians should be barred from Communion. But Catholics were in the news far more in 2002, when the clergy abuse scandal burst into open, and churches weren’t getting vandalized at such rates then.

Other than the Wall Street Journal, other major media haven’t spotlighted this trend at all.


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Why mainstream newsrooms can't be bothered to cover USCCB church vandalism report

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Why mainstream newsrooms can't be bothered to cover USCCB church vandalism report

Abortion debates continue to dominate American politics. A Texas law banning most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy went into effect just three weeks ago, something that resulted in widespread national news coverage, with many of the stories showing familiar media-bias patterns.

Despite the 1973 Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal, this law makes attaining an abortion in Texas among the most restrictive in the country after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on Sept. 2 not to block it. This unleashed debate and further political animus between Democrats and Republicans as arguments over abortion in this country now stretch into a fifth decade.

The fallout from all this may have increased animosity against the Catholic church. The church’s stand — ancient and modern — against abortion has placed it at the forefront of this cause, along with many other traditional Christian denominations and organizations.

Some of this animosity has led to vandalism against U.S. churches. A Catholic church in Colorado was vandalized with graffiti showing support for legalized abortion days after the Supreme Court decision. This is how The Christian Post recently reported the story. This is long, but essential:

St. Louis Catholic Church, located in the Boulder suburb of Louisville, became the target of vandalism from abortion activists over the weekend. The doors to the church were spray-painted with the declaration “My body, My choice,” a common refrain among pro-choice activists. Church members discovered the graffiti when they gathered for worship on Sunday morning.

In addition to spraying the phrase “My body, my choice” on the church's doors, vandals targeted a marker on the property that read “Respect Life,” replacing the word “Life” with the phrase “Bodily Autonomy.” Additionally, the sign at the front of the church was defaced with the phrase “bans off our bodies.”

In a Facebook post on Monday, the Louisville Police Department noted that a surveillance camera recorded three individuals on the church property at 1:30 a.m. local time Sunday and asked the public for help with identifying them.

The Christian Post, as the name states, is a niche news source. The question here — once again — is why vandalism cases of this kind receive so little attention in the mainstream press.


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Catholic church vandalism still being ignored, while Amy Coney Barrett's faith remains a big story

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It was just 10 days ago that the U.S. Catholic bishops’ religious freedom chair joined forces with interfaith leaders and called for better protection of churches following this past summer’s vandalism at many houses of worship.

In a letter to congressional leaders on Oct. 5, Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami asked for the quadrupling of funding of a federal security grant program for non-profits.

A news release informing journalists of the request, sent along with a copy of the letter to newsrooms across the country, stated the following:

This program provides grants to nonprofits and houses of worship in order to enhance security through improvements to infrastructure, funding for emergency planning and training, upgrading security systems, and some renovation projects. While the program has been popular, lack of funding prompted many applicants for grants to be turned away in 2019. The coalition is calling on Congress to quadruple the total funding for the program to $360 million. From the letter:

“Each of our communities believes that respect for human dignity requires respect for religious liberty. We believe that protecting the ability of all Americans to live out their faith without fear or harm is one of the most important duties of the federal government. … These security grants benefit people of all faiths. At a time of increasing extremism and antagonism towards different religious groups and religion in general, we believe significant increased funding for this important government program in fiscal year 2021 is imperative.”

Other groups joining the letter include the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, National Association of Evangelicals, U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty, The Jewish Federations of North America, National Council of Churches in Christ in the USA, North American Division of the Seventh-day Adventists, Sikh Council for Interfaith Relations, Agudath Israel of America, and The Episcopal Church.

FBI statistics cited in the letter said that 1,244 hate crimes had been committed in 2018 against members of the various denominations in the United States. The letter also comes following a spate of attacks against Catholic churches and statues across the U.S. The acts of vandalism have largely been ignored by the mainstream secular press.

The letter was the latest beat in this ongoing story that was also ignored.

By comparison, the Catholic faith of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett has bordered on fixation by the press over the past few weeks.


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