Christianity

When the news pertains to issues in the Catholic church, CNN loves to promote liberal theologians and religious, especially ones that are defying Catholic teaching. In contrast, orthodox priests and bishops might receive vastly different treatment – if they even get on CNN, that is.

So when an American nun's book on sexual ethics was found by the Vatican to be "not in conformity" with the Catholic Church's teaching, CNN contributor Stephen Prothero smacked the Vatican for its "unjust" condemnation of the book and accused the Catholic Church of continuing to "attack the sort of apple pie, mom kind of institutions in America."

When a nun tows her vows, she pledges among other things obedience to the Catholic Church and its teachings. So when a sister writes a book on sexual ethics that in various ways contradicts Church teachings and refuses for six years to recant, is it really all that shocking when the Vatican issues a rebuke (and an extremely mild one at that)?

That's exactly what has happened in the case of Sister Margaret A. Farley, whom the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith rebuked yesterday* for her 2006 book Just Love: A framework for Christian Sexual Ethics. But to Reuters's Philip Pullella, the Vatican is waging war on a "popular American nun." From Pullella's June 4 story headlined "Vatican attacks popular U.S. nun over sexuality book" (emphases mine):

Appearing as a guest on Monday's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on NBC, actor and comedian Martin Short lambasted several of the GOP presidential candidates, as he called Rick Santorum a "crazy Catholic," compared Michele Bachmann to the Taliban while questioning her intelligence, and suggested that Mitt Romney has sent jobs to other countries.

"Black preachers [are] divided on same-sex marriage, not Obama," insists the Washington Post's headline for a June 1 Religion News Service article about how African-American ministers across the country may disagree with President Obama on same-sex marriage, but that they are 100 percent committed to his reelection.

RNS's Lauren Markoe based this analysis on the amen chorus of some 200 pastors at a recent meeting of the Conference of National Black Churches. But Markoe failed to report a dissenting group of African-American ministers, the Coalition of African-American Pastors, which has sent a letter requesting an audience with President Obama as the Washington Times' Stephen Dinan reported Friday:

One frequent demand from Catholic Church abuse victims is that abusive clerics be laicized or removed from the priesthood as expeditiously and quickly as possible.

So if the Archdiocese of Milwaukee discovered a fast and economical way to make that happen, wouldn't that be a good thing for both victims and the Church? Not according to the New York Times' Laurie Goodstein.

Elitist film critics at several big city papers, Friday, mocked the Christian-themed movie For Greater Glory as "catnip for crusaders," a movie that exploits the struggle for religious freedom with "maximum teary-eyed outrage."

The movie, directed by Dean Wright, tells the story of a Catholic uprising against religious persecution in 1920s Mexico. However, Los Angeles Times film critic Robert Abele sneered, "'For Greater Glory' is mostly single-minded, dying-for-the-cause fodder, catnip for crusaders but not so interesting to those looking for a deeper view into how politics and religion can tragically clash."

CBS made little effort to hide that it was siding with liberal dissenters inside the Catholic Church on Wednesday's CBS Evening News and Thursday's CBS This Morning. Scott Pelley hyped that there was a Vatican "crackdown on America's 57,000 nuns." Gayle King touted how "some Catholics compare it to the dark days of the Inquisition, a crackdown on a prominent organization of nuns accused of being radical feminists."

King and co-anchor Charlie Rose sympathized with the group of dissenting sisters during an interview of left-wing public radio host Sister Maureen Fiedler, and hinted that the Catholic hierarchy was "out of touch." Correspondent Wyatt Andrews also overwhelmingly slanted towards the disobedient religious and their supporters during his reports on the two programs, and played only one brief soundbite from a spokeswoman for the bishops.

The liberal host of the public radio show Interfaith Voices, Sister Maureen Fiedler has cheered for the Occupy protests, railed against the Ryan budget, advocated for single-payer healthcare, and pined for the Obama of 2008 – and it is now her taking umbrage at the Vatican that got her a nice soft interview on CNN, Tuesday morning.

Anchor Carol Costello actually made light of the Vatican's announcement last month to reform the U.S. Leadership Conference of Women's Religious (LCWR) – of which Sr. Fiedler is a part – by asking her, tongue-in-cheek, if she wasn't the "kind of radical, feminist nun the bishops are concerned about?" That prompted a chuckle from her guest, followed by her liberal lines. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Appearing as a guest just past 9:30 a.m. on FNC's America's Newsroom on Monday, liberal FNC analyst Kirsten Powers, as already recounted by Mediaite, observed that "obviously, there's a bias behind" the broadcast networks giving so little attention to the lawsuit against the Obama administration that was recently filed by numerous Catholic institutions challenging the requirement that employers provide free contraception to employees.

On Monday's Good Morning America, as ABC's Jeffrey Kofman recounted the news that Pope Benedict XVI's butler has been arrested, implicated in leaking Vatican documents to the media, the ABC correspondent asserted that the Pope's "seven-year papacy has been consumed by very public scandals," and then recounted a group of demonstrators who recently accused the Pope of "covering up evidence" in the case of a 15-year-old girl who went missing in 1983. Kofman:

On “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace not only interviewed Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington DC, but asked him about the MRC’s finding that the broadcast network evening news shows only gave the Catholic lawsuits against Obamacare 19 seconds of air time.

He asked: “I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but it you haven’t, I’ll inform you. What do you make of the fact that the broadcast networks have spent a grand total of 19 seconds this week on their evening newscasts – 19 seconds covering the lawsuits by the 43 Catholic organizations. What do you make of that?” (More transcript as well as video below)

Don’t look for sophistication in The Washington Post’s coverage of the Catholic lawsuits against ObamaCare. Religion columnist Lisa Miller began on Saturday: “Mommy and daddy are fighting, and the anguished children don’t know where to turn.”

“A small group of very conservative bishops has hijacked the church, or at least the public voice of the church,” Miller complained. “The bishops are playing the role of the authoritarian father. In case after case, their message to the faithful is ‘Do it because I say so.’” Mommy, naturally, is represented as the people who support Obama or favor ongoing "dialogue" with Obama:

On Saturday's Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC, NBC correspondent Richard Engel conveyed that the reform advocates who led the toppling of Hosni Mubarak's regime in Egypt are distraught at the kinds of candidates that Egyptian voters are choosing to replace Mubarak, with both major presidential candidates likely to curtail freedom if elected. Engel recounted: (Video at bottom)

MRC president L. Brent Bozell III had his Letter to the Editor published in Saturday's Washington Post. He objected to liberal Post columnist E.J. Dionne trying to make a mountain out of the molehill of one liberal bishop granting an interview to one liberal Catholic magazine. Dionne did not note that this same bishop, so nervous about the bishops being used by political partisans "far to the right," delighted liberals by attacking the Paul Ryan budget.

Dionne wrote the conservative bishops who are "eagerly picking fights with President Obama....have angered more progressive Catholics and led to talk among the disgruntled faithful of the need for a 'Catholic spring' to challenge the hierarchy’s shift to the right." So now the Catholic hierarchy is like Arab dictators? Brent wrote in reply:

NewsBusters for days has been strongly admonishing the media for ignoring the recent lawsuit by numerous Catholic entities against the Obama administration for its contraception mandate.

Appearing on Fox & Friends Saturday, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee likened this press boycott to "not covering the 'I Have a Dream' speech by Martin Luther King in 1963. It’s like missing the Roe v. Wade decision and not thinking that’s significant. It’s like somehow missing Brown versus Board of Education" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

NPR obviously thought the case of Monsignor William Lynn, "the highest ranking Catholic official in the U.S. to be criminally tried for covering up child sex abuse by priests," was newsworthy, as they devoted four and a half minutes to the story on Thursday's All Things Considered. Meanwhile, the public radio network has yet to cover the Monday filing of 12 major lawsuits against ObamaCare's contraception/abortifacient mandate by Catholic dioceses and organizations on the air.

Correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty's report aired mere minutes before the CBS Evening News led with the Lynn case. On Friday, Media Research Center president Brent Bozell took both CBS and NPR to task for playing up the story, while remaining completely silent on the pro-religious freedom litigation.

The broadcast media's blackout on news of the Catholic Church's lawsuit against the Obama administration continues apace, while the news media covers much more important events like who won American Idol.

So it's no wonder that MRCTV's Dan Joseph found only one person yesterday who knew about the lawsuit. Watch the video in the embed below the page break.

Updated with new statements | Fury over the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts’ continued refusal to report the lawsuits Catholic entities have filed against the Obama administration has spread beyond the Media Research Center watchdog group and Catholic leaders to 11 additional Christian leaders equally concerned about this decision to deliberately not report national news. Below are statements released by FRC’s Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer of American Values and nine more leaders.

The Big Three networks' evening newscasts have all but punted so far on the 12 lawsuits filed on Monday against the Obama administration, challenging the abortifacient/birth control mandate which is part of ObamaCare. However, CBS actually followed up on their exclusive interview of New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan on the regulation on Tuesday's CBS This Morning.

Correspondent Norah O'Donnell confronted Press Secretary Jay Carney during the Tuesday White House press briefing over Dolan's sharp critique of the mandate on the morning newscast: "He [Dolan] said that it's a 'strait-jacketing' and 'handcuffing exemption.'...Is that what the President is doing...strait-jacketing and hand-cuffing religious institutions?" O'Donnell's question didn't make it on the air on Tuesday's CBS Evening News or Wednesday's CBS This Morning, even after Carney evaded directly answering her question.

CNN devoted over twice the air-time to a "stroller moms" protest against toxic chemicals than it did to the biggest religious lawsuit in U.S. history filed Monday.

A dozen lawsuits filed by 43 Catholic institutions against the Obama administration merited only news briefs on Monday with one full segment on Tuesday morning. The coverage totaled under seven minutes. In contrast, CNN gave almost 18 minutes to a march of about 100 people pushing for a Democratic-sponsored bill.

Nine prominent Catholic leaders have joined the Media Research Center to voice outrage over the broadcast networks deliberately withholding news of the momentous 43 Catholic entities suing the Obama administration for violating their religious freedoms. They represent major organizations including the Acton Institute, Cardinal Newman Society, SBA List and others. More are coming in every hour.

There are 60 million Catholics in the US.  The Catholic vote will be the most important swing vote this year.  So it’s not just a major policy issue, it is one with massive political implications.  Yet, 19 seconds of news coverage remains the only attention given by the evening broadcast networks. Two days after news broke, the tally is:

“[sigh] When will those mouth-breathing right-wingers give up their caves and clubs and learn to love science?” Pity the sophisticated liberal like CNN contributor Laura Sessions Stepp, whose impatience at Neanderthal misogynists and snake-handlers is palpable.

It’s also an act that helps them continue to push the falsehood that conservatives are anti-science and anti-contraception – and continue to play fast and loose with the facts in order to advance that narrative.

The evening news broadcasts all but spiked the largest legal action in history to defend our constitutionally protected religious freedom. The May 21 editions of ABC’s World News and NBC’s Nightly News refused to report the fact that 43 Catholic dioceses and organizations filed a lawsuit on Monday against the Obama administration. CBS Evening News gave this historic news a mere 19 seconds of air time.

This is the worst bias by omission I have seen in the quarter century history of the Media Research Center. Every American knows about the Chinese communists withholding for 20 years the news that the US had landed on the moon, because it reflected poorly on the government. Our US media today are no different. They are now withholding news from the American people if it is harmful to the re-election of Barack Obama.