Christianity

Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church are now competing with Sarah Palin and Nancy Pelosi as Jack Cafferty's favorite subject of ire, as the CNN personality devoted yet another commentary to attacking the Pontiff and the institution on Tuesday's Situation Room. It was fifth commentary in 20 days where Cafferty devoted a segment to bashing the two.The commentator first derided Vatican…

On Monday evening and Tuesday, ABC, CBS, and CNN all highlighted a Catholic priest's call for Pope Benedict XVI's resignation due to his alleged mishandling of the Church sex abuse scandal, labeling him "outspoken," and even going so far to compliment him as "brave" and "gutsy." All three networks, however, ignored the priest's affiliation with a liberal group and his dissension from Church…

Editor's Note: What follows is a statement Mr. Bozell released earlier today wherein he declared the intentional disparaging and false reporting of the Catholic Church and its leader Pope Benedict XVI an atrocity, and demanded the media immediately end their exaggerations:The Catholic Church has always endured unfair characterizations from the left-wing media, but the most recent and phony ‘…

Maureen Dowd compared the Catholic Church's treatment of women to that of Saudi Arabia in her Sunday column "Worlds Without Women," before comparing herself, as a Catholic woman, to those living under that harsh Islamic regime. When I was in Saudi Arabia, I had tea and sweets with a group of educated and sophisticated young professional women.I asked why they were not more upset about living in a…

Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times addressed a "welcome letter" to the incoming Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles, Jose Gomez [at right], in a April 7 column which focused almost entirely in forwarding the mainstream media's talking points on the Church sex abuse scandal, and stereotyped the religious community that the bishop is a member of. Lopez wasted little time in delving into the…

For some reason, washed up celebrities simply cannot resist weighing in on the Catholic Church's ongoing abuse scandal.The latest is Roseanne Barr, who last weekend wrote on her personal blog that Catholics who bring their children to church should lose custody. "Taking your kid where you know sex offenders hang out is inexcusable!!!"This is but the latest example of vitriol directed at the…

The broadcast networks couldn't ignore Holy Week, the pinnacle of the Christian calendar, so instead they used it this year to smear the Catholic Church as a harbor for abusive priests. ABC, CBS and NBC featured 26 stories during Holy Week about Pope Benedict's perceived role in the sex abuse scandal the Catholic Church is now facing. Only one story focused on the measures the church has…

On her April 5 satellite radio show, Rosie O'Donnell took her anti-Catholicism to a new level by likening the Catholic Church to the Jonestown cult. As Brian Maloney of The Radio Equalizer put it, "in Rosie's twisted world, there's really no distinction to be made between the Pope and Jim Jones, murderous cult leader responsible for the deaths of more than 900 people in the Guyanese jungle."O'…

On Monday's Situation Room, CNN's Jack Cafferty continued his attack on Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church, devoting his fourth commentary in 12 days on the Church sex abuse scandal. Cafferty spun a recent comment by a high-ranking cardinal who denounced the media's campaign of innuendo against the Pope as "petty gossip," falsely portraying it as being about the abuse itself.The…

On CBS's Sunday Morning, host Charles Osgood marked Easter Sunday by proclaiming: "For many Roman Catholics, the joy of this Easter is mixed with sadness over continuing charges of child abuse and of cover-ups within the Church's hierarchy." In a report that followed, correspondent Dean Reynolds declared that the scandal was "like a heavy blow to the soul."  Reynolds went on to cite the latest…

Just another sign that the media just don't get religion. Here's the ABCNews.com headline for an April 4 story on President Obama's attendance of Easter Sunday service at Allen Chapel AME Church in Southeast D.C.:Of course, the term Easter Mass would connote a Catholic liturgical celebration, but the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) is a thoroughly Protestant denomination, as its articles…

Of all the images to accompany its Facebook feature on "Easter observances and celebrations from around the world," MSNBC chose the one displayed here.  As it turns out, the man hooded in white is a participant in a traditional Easter procession in northern Spain.  But how many readers will click through all the images to discover that? How many more will assume, as did I until informed otherwise…

The Associated Press was the only American major media organization (as of 4 pm Eastern on Friday) that picked up on a March 31 altercation in the world-famous Catholic cathedral in Cordoba, Spain (at right, taken from The Builder blog), where over 100 Muslims responded with violence after security guards ordered them to stop praying inside the building, which once served as a mosque. Two of the…

Is it possible to be so wrapped up in a media culture that one could minimize a sacred religious holiday in a shoddy attempt to write a clever headline? Mediaite's Tommy Christopher and his editors seemed to have pulled this feat off. Christopher, who has had a much-publicized run-in with Andrew Breitbart, has a new hero, former American Enterprise Institute scholar David Frum. Christopher…