Politics

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When pope's hold quick gaggles with reporters, strange things can happen

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When pope's hold quick gaggles with reporters, strange things can happen

As Pope Leo XIV left his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, a circle of reporters pressed forward.

Early in his pontificate, Leo has been cautious with the press. But after some comments in Italian, he agreed to "one question" from the EWTN network. It focused on Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich's decision to honor U.S. Senator Dick Durbin with a lifetime achievement award.

The problem: Durbin consistently backs abortion rights and remains barred from receiving Holy Communion in Springfield, Illinois, his home diocese. The senator has since declined the honor.

In English, Leo stressed looking at a politician's "overall work." The Chicago-born pope added: "Someone who says, 'I am against abortion,' but says, 'I am in favor of the death penalty' is not really pro-life. Someone who says that 'I am against abortion, but I am in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants who are in the United States,' I don't know if that's pro-life. So, they're very complex issues."

What happened next was totally predictable.

"The Catholic right has been divided between those inclined to try to explain away the pope's language, and those insisting he was just flat wrong," wrote Crux editor John L. Allen, Jr. "The American Catholic left, meanwhile, has been gripped by a paroxysm of delight."

It's one thing that didn't happen -- with "all the polarization in social media, instant news and even fake news" -- was a clear statement by Pope Leo XIV about these complex doctrinal issues, said Amy Welborn, a popular Catholic blogger since 2001.

"Popes should not do press conferences or drive-by press gaggles – never, ever," she said, reached by telephone. In fact, popes should avoid all hasty statements on politics and public events. It would be safer for Leo to discuss his tennis game, she added.

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Erika Kirk and the message behind the St. Michael's cross she gave to her husband

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Erika Kirk and the message behind the St. Michael's cross she gave to her husband

Soon after she began dating Charlie Kirk, Erika Frantzve -- a devout Catholic -- asked him: "Why don't you wear a cross?"

Kirk's response: "I'm not a jewelry guy." She gave him a St. Michael's Cross, which he started wearing as "he felt the weight of the world on him," Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet told Fox News. "He never took it off again, until he was assassinated and the people caring for him ripped it off as they tried to save his life."

The St. Michael's prayer, written in 1898 by Pope Leo XIII, describes fierce warfare between good and evil: "St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. … By the power of God, thrust into hell Satan, and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls."

Erika Kirk wore that blood-stained pendant during the September 21 memorial service in State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona -- with an estimated 100,000 people inside and thousands gathered nearby. At least 20 million watched on Fox, X and YouTube, with many more using other simulcasts.

In her 30-minute testimony, she said her husband knew his life was in danger, but he stressed the biblical message in a verse from Isaiah: "Here I am, Lord. Send me."

Kirk said she once told him: "Charlie, baby, please talk to me next time before you say that. … When you say, 'Here I am, Lord. Use me,' God will take you up on that.' … God accepted that total surrender from my husband and then called him to His side."

Erika Kirk's address dominated an event that featured President Donald Trump and multiple cabinet members. While praising what Kirk achieved in his 31-year life, several shared how his death has pushed them to ponder their own beliefs.

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When Charlie Kirk sat down with Bill Maher and discussed the importance of Easter

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When Charlie Kirk sat down with Bill Maher and discussed the importance of Easter

Offered a choice, Charlie Kirk would have preferred not to enter a marijuana cloud to discuss theology, politics, science and the dangers of free speech.

But the Turning Point USA activist -- assassinated on September 10 at Utah Valley University -- had welcomed the opportunity to join comic Bill Maher on the "Club Random" podcast that aired this past Easter.

"Bill treated me great. … He was very pleasant, albeit at times rather crude," said Kirk, in an online commentary about the show. However, he quipped, if football players have to "play in the snow," then a "political commentator fighting for Jesus" needs to "play in the weed."

Maher was shaken by Kirk's bloody death. On his "Real Time" show days later, the religious agnostic and political liberal said: "I like everybody. … But he was shot under a banner that said, 'Prove me wrong,' because he was a debater, and too many people think that the way to do that -- to prove you wrong -- is to just eliminate you from talking altogether. So, the people who mocked his death or justified it, I think you're gross. I have no use for you."

Both men worked with security teams, due to death threats. Kirk described his calling with variations on this: "When people stop talking, really bad stuff starts. … What we as a culture have to get back to is being able to have a reasonable disagreement where violence is not an option."

In addition to discussing the potency of modernized marijuana, Kirk and Maher veered from science debates about gender dysphoria to the origins of ultimate truth, from Hollywood trust-fund "nepo babies" to myriad battles surrounding Kirk's friend, President Donald Trump.

The "real fun" began, said Kirk, with complex issues defined by Maher's "Religulous," a scathing critique of religious faith. Kirk knew the book inside out.

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When did Stephen Colbert's satire, with it's Catholic grace, veer into ridicule and rage?

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When did Stephen Colbert's satire, with it's Catholic grace, veer into ridicule and rage?

Soon after Stephen Colbert landed "The Late Show" he welcomed tycoon Donald Trump as a guest and did something shocking — he apologized.

"I said a few things about you over the years that, that are, you know, in polite company, perhaps, are unforgivable," Colbert said, in 2015.

"Accepted," said Trump, smiling.

That encounter was light years from what happened after Trump celebrated the recent CBS decision to cancel "The Late Show."

On social media, the president said Colbert's "talent was even less than his ratings."

Colbert fired back in his monologue: "Would an untalented man be able to compose the following satirical witticism? Go f*** yourself."

While Colbert retains a faithful congregation, some fans who loved his sly blend of satire and progressive Catholicism mourn his decision to preach to only half of America, said media scholar Terry Lindvall, author of "God Mocks: A History of Religious Satire from the Hebrew Prophets to Stephen Colbert," published in 2015.

"He made you laugh and think," said Lindvall, reached by telephone. "When he turned on the rage, he turned mean. He turned bitter. He acted like he was a prophet, not a jester." Sadly, Lindvall added, the Trump era turned Colbert into "a liberal fundamentalist. … He drank the Kool-Aid."

The goal, in "God Mocks," was to offer a "bumpy tour through Rome, Jerusalem and Lilliput," arriving at Comedy Central. Lindvall praised Colbert's early work on "The Colbert Report," in which he pretended to be a blow-hard conservative pundit, creating an upside-down persona who could mock secular progressives and atheists, as well as thinkers on the right. Conservative guests, especially Catholics, were often treated with respect.

That was satire, wrote Lindvall, recognizing "a moral discrepancy between what is proclaimed and what is practiced. … The biblical satirist shares in the blame and shame of his defendants.

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Lingering Supreme Court mystery: Justice Anthony Kennedy and religious liberty

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Lingering Supreme Court mystery: Justice Anthony Kennedy and religious liberty

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy retired in 2018, but religious-liberty activists still want to know where he hoped to draw a bright line between religious freedom and the Sexual Revolution.

Kennedy knew that the First Amendment's declaration that government "shall make no law ... prohibiting the free exercise of religion" was creating warfare in modern American law and politics. But he didn't know how to end the strife.

In his majority opinion in the court's 5-4 Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalizing same-sex marriage, Kennedy stressed that many Americans opposed this change because of "decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises," and he denied that "their beliefs are disparaged" in the ruling.

"It must be emphasized that religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned," he wrote, in 2015. "The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths."

Since then, the Supreme Court has issued important rulings clarifying the rights of churches, denominations and ministries with clearly stated doctrines on sex, gender and marriage, noted Stanley Carlson-Thies, who recently retired as head of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance, which he founded in 2008 as part of the nonpartisan Center for Public Justice. He also assisted the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations with issues linking faith and public life.

"The court knows that the freedom of religious expression is more than worship, alone," said Carlson-Thies, reached by telephone. "But where will the court draw the line, especially with religious individuals who own businesses that deal with the general public? …

"That's the mystery. Everyone knows the court needs to do something. These issues are not going away. … But it isn't clear the everyone thinks the Supreme Court should have the last word on everything. You hear that argued on the left and the right -- depending on who controls the White House."

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The Rev. Bill Moyers clashed, early and often, with religion gaps in major newsrooms

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The Rev. Bill Moyers clashed, early and often, with religion gaps in major newsrooms

The year was 1976 and Jimmy Carter, a Sunday school teacher from Georgia, had shocked major newsrooms by discussing his "born again" faith.

Presidential candidates were not supposed to do things like that.

At CBS News, special correspondent Bill Moyers received a green light for a prime-time feature, "What It Means to be Born Again." After seeing the finished piece, a network executive pulled Moyers aside to chat.

The man's face was so serious, "that I thought he was about to tell me he'd been born again," Moyers told me in 1987. No, the executive said: "That was the worst show I have ever seen in my life."

The program was "cut to bits," Moyers said. Network leaders "didn't think it was news. They just didn't understand what was going on."

The broadcaster faced this disconnect many times. Moyers died on June 24 at the age of 91, after a long and complex career in which he served as speech writer and press secretary for President Lyndon Johnson, followed by decades of work with CBS, NBC and PBS. However, before that, the Rev. Bill Moyers was a Southern Baptist pastor in Texas towns like Brandon and Weir. He was proud of those roots and his convictions as a progressive Baptist.

"By no means is Moyers a typical Southern Baptist," I noted, in a 1993 "On Religion" column. "He is the rare Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary graduate whose books and tapes are popular at New Age conventions. He is a hero wherever there are Baptists whose annual donations to National Public Radio are greater than their gifts to Focus on the Family."

Preaching before the first presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton, another Baptist progressive, Moyers got down to basics, sharing a saying passed on by his father -- Cain and Abel were "the first Baptists because they introduced fratricide" to the biblical drama.

At the heart of Baptist life "is what we call soul competency," he explained.

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The church bombing in ancient Damascus: This was more than a political drama

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The church bombing in ancient Damascus: This was more than a political drama

The faithful gathered for a more than symbolic rite at St. Elias Orthodox Church in Damascus -- the Feast of all Antiochian Saints.

During this June 22 service, a jihadist -- Syria blamed the Islamic State -- entered with a rifle and began firing. As worshippers tackled him, he detonated an explosive vest. In seconds the Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch had more names to add to its two millennia of saints and martyrs.

"Among the spirits of the righteous perfected in faith, give rest, O Savior, to the souls of Your servants, keeping them in the blessed life which is from You, O loving One," Orthodox believers prayed this past Sunday, in global memorial prayers for the new martyrs of Syria.

"In Your place of rest, O Lord, where all Your Saints repose, give rest also to the souls of Your servants, for You alone are immortal." Bishops circulated names to be read aloud: "Nabil, Emile, Souliman, Simon, Abdullah, Amal, Milad, Razzouk, Farid, Peter, Georgios, Mariam, Susan, Julia, Metanios, Maen, Laurance, Anjie. …"

In a funeral for many of the martyrs, Antiochian Patriarch John X preached about the past, the present and the life to come.

"You, beloved martyrs, have left us and were translated to heaven, to eternal life, in the presence of the Lord Who rose from the dead," he said, in an online translation from Arabic. "You were martyred and entered into eternal life … joining the company of all righteous and holy Antiochian Saints, and all the saints. Today, we turn to you. We ask you to pray for us, now that you rest in the Lord's embrace."

It's hard to shock believers in sanctuaries surrounded by centuries of war, conquest and terror. Young people saw three of the faithful attempt to push the attacker away from the flock inside St. Elias.

"Grace, Peter and Milad. I know them personally," said Patriarch John. "These are our people and our heroes. … They would have done the same and protected the people around them even if they were in the mosque."

The political context was significant and, thus, dominated mainstream news reports. BBC noted: "It was the first such attack in Damascus since Islamist-led rebel forces overthrew Bashar al-Assad in December, ending 13 years of devastating civil war."

But, for Christians around the world, this attack also took place in an ancient, truly biblical context.

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Pollsters need to start asking more detailed questions about American Catholic life

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Pollsters need to start asking more detailed questions about American Catholic life

Theology news rarely sends shock waves through Catholic offices around the world, but this headline did: "Just one-third of U.S. Catholics agree with their church that Eucharist is body, blood of Christ."

The key word in that famous Pew Research Center survey was "transubstantiation," which the report defined as the belief that the "bread and wine used for Communion become the body and blood of Jesus Christ."

It mattered, of course, whether the Catholics in this survey went to Mass. Nearly 70% of self-proclaimed Catholics said the consecrated bread and wine were mere "symbols," but 63% of those who reported weekly Mass attendance affirmed transubstantiation. Insiders noted that this meant that 37% of observant Catholics didn't embrace this crucial church doctrine.

"Any effort to measure human behavior is fraught with peril and complications," noted John C. Green of the University of Akron, reached by telephone. A trailblazer in studies of politics, pulpits and pews, Green has often served as a Pew Research consultant.

"If people say they go to Mass once a week, how certain can you be that they're telling the truth? … When it comes to doing surveys about what believers say and what they do, you can never ask too many questions."

Now, as Catholics prepare for a new pope, Pew has released new insights into lines of tension and division among American Catholics. Five years after the "transubstantiation" study, a new survey includes more evidence that "U.S. Catholics" disagree with many core Catholic doctrines and, thus, want a "more inclusive" church.

The tricky question, again, was how to define "U.S. Catholic," since the survey said:

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Into "On Religion" year 37: There's more to religion news than politics

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Into "On Religion" year 37: There's more to religion news than politics

To no one's surprise, 83% of white evangelical voters backed President Donald Trump in 2024, consistent with voting patterns in recent decades.

The news, this time, was that Cooperative Election Study numbers indicated that Trump's support rose among non-white evangelicals and Catholics. He even won 55% of the votes from mainline Protestants.

The voter base for Vice President Kamala Harris could be described as "Black Protestants + atheists," wrote political scientist Ryan Burge of Eastern Illinois University, in one of his Graphs about Religion X posts.

But in another chart, Burge shared 2022 Public Religion Research Institute data describing the attitudes of people in pews. Survey participants reacted to this statement: "I wish my church talked more about political division in this country."

Among evangelicals, 86% "completely" or "mostly" disagreed, compared to 82% of non-evangelicals and 74% of Catholics.

"Any pastor who chooses to speak up about political division in the United States is going to anger a whole lot of their flock. You just don't see a lot of church going folks who are keen on their pastor talking about … politics, just the opposite," noted Burge, author of "The American Religious Landscape: Facts, Trends, and the Future."

Meanwhile, it seems that "people who aren't religious or don't attend church on a regular basis have a misperception about what happens on a Sunday morning," he added, in his Substack newsletter. Truth is, the vast majority of churchgoers "just want to avoid politics entirely from the pulpit."

In my academic and news experience, that isn't what Americans learn from mainstream news. This week marks the start of my 37th year writing this "On Religion" column and I also spent 20 years leading the GetReligion.org project. That website's archive remains online for those studying religion and the press.

The bottom line: Religion events and trends draw intense news coverage when they are directly or indirectly linked to politics. This is especially true during tense elections.