A trip to the United States from Pope Benedict is still nearly six months away (April 2008), but the Los Angeles Times is already in a tizzy. An editorial in Wednesday's Times (11/14/07) advises the Pope to shun "hard-liners" and "conservative Catholics" and listen to "other Catholics." The Times is concerned with the issue of whether or not abortion-friendly politicians who claim they are Catholic should receive Holy Communion. As they so often do, the Times avoided the "liberal" tag for these "other Catholics":

In recent years, the liberal press has become increasingly upset with conservative religious people who maintain the rightfulness of having their political views stem from their religious ones on issues like abortion, gay rights, and welfare. Such views, according to the media, are illegitmate and even threaten the balance of church and state within our society.

Trouble is, though, liberal journalists don't apply this standard consistently. While the media are adamantly opposed to religious motivations on cultural issues, rarely do you hear the media grouse about Christians and Jews who oppose capital punishment on religious grounds. That's because religion is like anything else to the radical left--a means to an end. In the eyes of the media, the moral value of anything or anyone is directly proportional to its usefulness to liberalism.

It's for this reason that I highly doubt you'll hear any complaints from the press gallery about the latest initiative of Pope Benedict XVI, promoting the idea of human-caused global warming:

Since he became pontiff, the biased secular media have relished using harsh, loaded language like "ruthless" and "medieval" to describe Pope Benedict XVI. Blogger Mark Shea noticed those words appearing 126- and 169,000 times, respectively in a Google search.

But even worse, Shea argues, is how the media betray their utter lack of understanding of religious subjects when reporters start prattling on about how Benedict is "growing" during his papacy (h/t The Anchoress), when in reality they're just now discovering the clarity of what he's preached and taught all along:

Jeff Israely's September 6 article on Time magazine’s website about Pope Benedict XVI’s upcoming trip to Austria is more proof that the mainstream media fear a muscular Christianity more than radical Islam. The article’s title itself asked, "Will the Pope Behave in Austria?," and recounted the Pope’s "provocative lecture about faith and reason" at the University of Regensberg, which took place nearly a year ago on September 12, 2006, and, as Israely put it, "set off riots in some corners of the Muslim world." Needless to say, the author is directing his question in the wrong direction, given the rage-filled Islamic masses that ran amok in reaction to the lecture.