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The News Viewed through a Jaundiced Eye
The editors look for the message between the lines in recent media reports.
April 24, 2000 |
Reporter Frank Bruni comments on the “down-home” style of Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush:
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His folksiness is another iteration of the populism he espouses in his stump speeches, which frame his enormous tax-cut proposal as a gesture of faith—not shared by Mr. Gore, he asserts—in the ability of the American people to spend their money more wisely than the federal government can. And it disregards any concern that what strikes one observer as charming may strike another as just plain goofy.
In Arizona in early December, Mr. Bush gave one speech so laced with Southern spices, Texas twang, homespun truisms and skepticism toward those city slickers in the Northeast that a listener might have developed an image of the governor riding home to the mansion in a dust-shrouded pickup truck, a mound of fresh kill for dinner in the back.
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Mr. Bush also offered an interesting variation on the saying about the pot and the kettle. ‘’Don’t be takin’ a speck out of your neighbor’s eye,’’ he told the audience, ‘’when you got a log in your own.’’
And yet, surprising as it is that a Times reporter would let his ignorance of the New Testament show in a front-page story, isn’t it still more revealing that no one on the copy desk spotted the gaffe?
May 4, 2000 |
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A made-in-Canada movie on CBC Television that features a Catholic parishioner feeding a Communion wafer to her dog is upsetting some Catholics, who say it is an attack that would never be tolerated if any other religion was the target.
The scene—in which an elderly, eccentric and devout Roman Catholic woman in a rural Nova Scotian church divides her Holy Communion wafer and takes half herself and gives the rest to her small dog—is the opening of a short dramatic comedy called “Our Daily Bread.” “It is a very sweet film. It is not for the sake of shock value. It was just an interesting area to explore as a Catholic,” said the movie’s Halifax writer, Christian Murray, who based it on the true story of a woman in the church he attended as a child.
“The Catholic Church comes out looking pretty good. It’s not The Boys of St. Vincent, it’s not a Kids in the Hall sketch. It makes the Catholic Church seem warm and cuddly,” he said. (The Boys of St. Vincent was a docudrama on sexual abuse at a Catholic orphanage; the Kids in the Hall was an irreverent TV comedy troupe.)
April 21, 2000 |
- He is the exemplar of treachery, the shadow defined by Light. To this day his name Judas Iscariot remains a synonym for betrayal.
But what if the traditional understanding of Judas is actually a distortion? What if he is actually a victim of a sort of theological libel, a 1st century bad press—that helped create two millenniums of Christian anti-Semitism?
As Christians observe Good Friday, New Testament scholars are reexamining Judas’ role in the fateful events that led to Jesus’ crucifixion. The scholarship is part of a broader movement to find the historical nuggets that underlie Christian Scripture. Some of the scholars suggest that Judas may be the most misunderstood villain in history.
Notice the series of anti-Christian premises buried within this news story: the assumptions that Christianity is responsible for anti-Semitism, that Christians are likely to be the purveyors rather than victims of “theological libel,” and that the Gospels are only incidentally related to the “historical nuggets” that make up the real story.
But there is more. The story goes on to say that a new lexicon, edited by one William Danker, suggests the possibility that the Greek word used by St. Paul to describe Judas’s “betrayal” of Christ could also have a “benign” meaning.
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Danker, who is an authority on Greco-Roman literature, papyri and epigraphs, said in an interview that “when this hits the fan there’ll be a lot of discussion about some of my departures from traditional wording.”
April 14, 2000 |
Another fascinating Times perspective on the Bush presidential campaign came after the candidate met with gay-rights supporters.
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Flanked by the gay Republicans at a news conference, Mr. Bush said he welcomed gays into his campaign and added, “I want the Republicans, conservative Republicans, to understand we judge people based upon their heart and soul; that’s what this campaign is all about.”
“And I want Democrats, liberal Democrats to understand that I judge people on what they do and say. Only God knows their heart and soul and I don’t want the government second-guessing.”
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Although Mr. Bush did not indicate that he had changed any of his views, the meeting and very public news conference were important symbolic steps for a candidate who is trying to hold together a fragmented party that runs the spectrum from religious conservatives to moderates.
More important, here we see the New York Times picture of the “big tent.” There are no “liberals” on the spectrum opposite the conservatives. There are only the “moderates” who support same-sex marriage and partial-birth abortion.
May 26, 2000 |
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Haven’t we heard this story before?
A priest and nun ordered to end their ministry to gays and lesbians were silenced this week by the Vatican, prohibiting them from publicly discussing their work or the decision to discipline them last summer.
Sister Jeannine Gramick said she and the Rev. Robert Nugent were summoned to Rome and instructed by their religious orders not to talk about the Vatican’s decision. While they ended their ministry, both have spoken about the church’s decision.
Gramick, a member of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, said Friday she would not obey the Vatican.
“I choose to obey the voice of God within me, and in this instance, the voice of God is saying that I should not collaborate with my own oppression,’’ Gramick said Friday night.
A statement released by the order said that Gramick was obligated by her vows to follow the Vatican’s latest directive. She could be dismissed if she fails to comply.
Nugent’s order, the Society of the Divine Savior, said that Nugent would issue a statement soon on whether he would heed the decision. Nugent was scheduled to return from Rome late Friday night and could not be reached for comment.
For the record, Father Nugent declined to comment, thus sparing us—at least for now, at least in his case—from an argument which threatens to eat its own tail.
June 17-24, 2000 |
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From the editorial:
Sadly, over the past decades, some Catholics have caricatured all feminist thought as “radical feminism,” thus labeling any effort to embrace the full humanity of women in the church a sort of nefarious plot. (A notable example is the ICEL controversy, in which inclusive language is regularly described by opponents as part of a strategy by “radical feminists.”)
[Complementarity] is also one of the themes of the 2000 John Courtney Murray Lecture, “Miriam of Nazareth: Friend of God and Prophet,” by Elizabeth A. Johnson, C.S.J., who argues that the tradition that casts Mary as the ideal feminine paradoxically does a disservice to women. . . . There is, Professor Johnson argues, no essential feminine nature.
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