THE MARRAGE QUESTION - Vatican Turns Away From LGBTQ

"Could the Vatican’s decree on same-sex unions turn people away from church?" PBS NewsHour 3/16/2021

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  After Pope Francis initially signaled support for same-sex unions, the Vatican decreed Monday that the Catholic Church cannot support them, saying God “cannot bless sin.”  The latest decree has disappointed LGBTQ advocates and cast doubt on the church’s acceptance of gay people.  Rev. Bryan Massingale, a professor of theological and social ethics at Fordham University, joins Amna Nawaz to discuss.

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 8/31/2018

"Shields and Brooks on John McCain’s patriotism, Florida election upsets" PBS NewsHour 8/31/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including the service and sacrifice of Sen. John McCain, American political icon who died over the weekend, takeaways from Florida’s primary election, plus a warning made by President Trump to evangelical leaders about the stakes going into midterms.

Judy Woodruff (NewsHour):  But first of the analysis of Shields and Brooks.  That is syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

So, gentlemen, you just heard — you were sitting here, Mark, listening to Mark Salter remember his good friend John McCain.

What are you thinking right now?

Mark Shields, syndicated columnist:  Well, I mean, Mark Salter was more than a wordsmith or even an alter ego.  I mean, he was — he was John McCain.  They were inseparable in thought and word.

And I thought he expressed it well.  I mean, it’s an outpouring on the part of the nation, Judy, that is beyond presidential in its admiration, its affection and its sympathy.

And I think it gives everybody in politics, in public life pause.  I mean, what is it that this man had that made — that allowed him to touch so many people?

David and I have been lucky enough to spend our company in the — our time in the company of people who run for office, most of whom we like.  And I can tell you what everyone’s going through in their mind right now, whether they’re Democrats or Republicans or liberals or conservatives as they look at this outpouring of affection, and that is, damn it, I will never have a funeral like this.

(LAUGHTER)

Mark Shields:  It’s just remarkable.

Judy Woodruff:  And it’s affection, as Mark is saying, David, across party lines.

David Brooks, New York Times:  Yes.

And it’s for values.  And one of the things that’s interesting about McCain is, though he fought in Vietnam, he’s not really a Vietnam person.  He’s a World War II person.  He missed the ’60s.  He was in Hanoi Hilton.  So all the culture war and all the values shift, which was a lot about self, he never had that.

For him, it was about country, about self.  And I have been traveling around the country recently.  And I found so many people are really attached to their town or their community or their ethnic group, not so many who are attached to nation.

But that World War II generation and the people — the values of John McCain, he really was attached to nation.  And it really was service to nation above Arizona, above anything else, above the Navy.  It really was service to nation and a sense of, we’re all in the same nation, we must at — all at some level be brothers with one another, and then a life of true sacrifice for the nation.

I mean, it’s worth pointing out the guy could not comb his hair.  When they broke his arm, he could not get his arm — his arms up for the rest of his life to comb his hair.  And so that’s just a daily bit of sacrifice he did for the country as a whole.

Mark Shields:  Could I just add one personal note?

Judy Woodruff:  Sure.

Mark Shields:  And that that’s this, that Mo Udall, who was the Democratic — great Democratic congressman, environmentalist, and party leader, or Democratic leader from Arizona, befriended John McCain as a young member of the House.

John was in the minority.  He didn’t really know anybody in the House of Representatives.  Mo was a committee chair and influential.  The Arctic National Wildlife to save is his project.

And he befriended John.  He included John.  And John never forgot it.  They struck, forged a great friendship.  And Mo Udall, who was a giant, was — contracted Parkinson’s in 1980.  He was forced to leave the House a decade later.

And he lingered in the ravages of Parkinson’s for eight years, the last few of which he was crippled, uncommunicative, I mean, that terrible disease, that terrible scourge, on a cot in a veterans hospital in Northeast Washington.

And one person, public person, regularly went to visit him, without cameras, without reporters, to bring with him the news of Arizona, to read, even though he was unresponsive, about sports, about Indian American, national — Native American.  It was John McCain.

And that’s — that’s an incredible value.  And it’s great.  It’s a wonderful tribute to him.  And I just wanted to offer it.

CATHOLICISM - Cardinal Sin

"U.S. Catholic Church’s former public face on sex abuse crisis faces decades of misconduct allegations" PBS NewsHour 7/17/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  One of the most recognized faces of the American Catholic Church was removed from the public ministry last month, making Cardinal Theodore McCarrick the highest ranking Catholic official in the nation to be removed for sexual abuse of a minor.  Now the New York Times reports that McCarrick touched young adult seminarians.  John Yang learns more Rev. James Martin of America magazine.

JOURNALISM - "Spotlight" Gets It Right

"‘Spotlight' Gets Investigative Journalism Right" by Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica 2/25/2016

There's a moment in almost every movie when people in the audience who really know the line of work depicted on screen cry out in frustration and say:  “Oh, come on!”  “Absurd.”  “Never happens.”

Over the decades, Hollywood screenwriters have taken liberties with every imaginable profession and craft, from doctors to lawyers to spies to police detectives.  Rocky Balboa survives punches that would decapitate an ordinary boxer.  The car chases in 'The Bourne Identity' defy physics.  John McClane, the hard-boiled cop in the 'Die Hard' series, displays a supernatural ability to evade bullets.

Journalism movies have had their share of utterly improbable moments.  In the 1994 film “The Paper,” the city editor of a New York City tabloid gets into a fist fight with his female boss as he tries to stop the presses.  (Not a great career move.)  More recently, the first season of HBO's television series 'The Newsroom' showed a producer landing a series of astounding scoops in the first hours after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon.  The reporter's information came from miraculously well-placed sources – a sister who worked at Halliburton and a close friend who happened to be a junior BP executive attending all the key crisis meetings.

All of this makes “Spotlight,” the film based on the Boston Globe's investigation of the Catholic Church, a remarkable achievement.  The movie, which has been nominated for six Academy Awards including best picture, vividly captures the mix of frustration, drudgery and excitement that goes into every great investigative story.  Where liberties were taken, and there were a few, they are in line with the realities of the news business.

One of the most credible aspects of the movie is the cluelessness with which the reporters begin their quest.  As is often the case, the Globe's group of reporters, known as the “Spotlight” Team, have no idea of the size and scope of what they're trying to examine.  At first, they stumble around, lacking the most basic information about how the church bureaucracy worked.

The notion of pedophile priests was not new.  Newspapers from Dallas to Portland had done deeply reported stories on individual cases.  Boston itself had just witnessed the criminal trial of a particularly notorious priest, Father John J. Geoghan.  Initially, senior editors at the Globe are not even persuaded there was a story worth chasing.

As the film briefly acknowledges, the Globe was behind the Boston Phoenix, a respected alternative weekly, in covering the subject for local readers.  Kristen Lombardi, a reporter for the Phoenix, had already written a series of stories implicating Cardinal Bernard Law, the leader of Boston's archdiocese, in allowing Geoghan to remain in daily contact with children for three decades.

“Spotlight” opens with the arrival of Marty Baron, a veteran journalist who took over at the Globe after a stint as editor of the Miami Herald.  As investigative reporters know well, Florida is a reporters' paradise, lousy with graft, corruption and colorful characters.  The state's public records laws are decisively tilted toward openness.  When a Globe columnist covering the Geoghan trial wrote that “the truth may never be known,” Baron sat down with the head of the “Spotlight” team, Walter “Robby” Robinson, and asked him to take a fresh look at the issue.

The editor suggested filing a lawsuit to force release of records the Catholic Church had submitted under court seal.  Such suits were unheard of in Massachusetts.  Liev Schreiber, the actor who portrays Baron, captures the true life editor's white-hot focus and intensity, so much so that long-time colleagues were taken aback by the resemblance.

The movie accurately depicts the team's key early breakthrough.  The reporters figured out that priests who had “acted out” with children were often listed in the diocese's phone book as 'on leave.'  They obtained years of directories and pored through thousands of entries to create a database, using the then-remarkable new technology known as a computer spreadsheet.  With artful editing and a stirring score, director Tom McCarthy made this excruciatingly boring work an inspiring event, which in a way it was.

Another turning point came when Sacha Pfeiffer, the Globe reporter played by Rachel McAdams, knocks on the door of a priest who off-handedly acknowledges that he has abused children.  (He asserts, bizarrely, that his conduct was not improper because he was not sexually aroused.)  The reporter is clearly flustered and unprepared for this admission and she rushes through the interview before a woman at the house can slam the door.  The practice of “door stopping” is routine for investigative journalists; nearly all such encounters end in failure.  But the few attempts that succeed deliver an adrenalin kick unlike anything in reporting.

Fascinatingly, one of the more compelling scenes about journalism in the movie was invented by Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer, the screenwriters who worked closely with the reporters and editors involved the story.

It comes late in the film, after the “Spotlight” team has figured out that scores of Boston-area priests had abused children.  Eric MacLeish, a lawyer for the victims, angrily tells Robinson that he sent the Globe a list of 20 priests “and you buried it.”  Soon after, the reporters come across a story that ran deep inside the Globe's metro section when Robinson was in charge of local coverage.

The writers came across the buried story when they interviewed MacLeish as part of their research for the film.  They seized on it as the perfect way to illustrate the Globe's earlier failures to investigate an important local institution.  The conversation between MacLeish and Robinson is fictional.  But the sentiments portrayed in the movie are real.  “It happened on my watch and I'll go to confession on it,” the Robinson told Entertainment Weekly.  “Like any journalist who's been around this long, I've made my share of mistakes.”

In investigative reporting, of course, nearly all great stories are screamingly obvious in retrospect.  The reporting and documents the Globe obtained through its lawsuit proved that Church leaders had knowingly shuffled around pedophile priests from parish to parish.  Geoghan turned out to be a piece of a much, much larger story, one that has rippled across the United States and the world over the past 15 years.  Baron has pointed out that the movie is not a stenographic record of how the investigation unfolded.  But it gets the big things right, providing a compelling picture of how great reporters break big stories.

RELIGION - After 1000 Years....

"Pope and patriarch meet for first time in nearly 1,000 years" PBS NewsHour 2/12/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In the first meeting between leaders of Christianity’s largest churches since the Great Schism of 1054, Pope Francis met with Patriarch Kirill of the Eastern Orthodox Church Friday afternoon in Havana.  Hari Sreenivasan talks to Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, archbishop emeritus of Washington, and the Most Blessed Tikhon, primate of the Orthodox Church in America, for more on the historic moment.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  This afternoon in Havana, at Jose Marti Airport, a meeting 1,000 years in the making.  Pope Francis met with Patriarch Kirill of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the first meeting between the leaders of Christianity’s two largest churches since 1054, when a schism split the ancient church.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  The meeting on neutral ground was decades in the planning.  The leaders met for two hours behind closed doors, and later signed a joint declaration decrying persecution of Christians around the world.

We explore this historic moment, and its impact going forward, with His Beatitude Metropolitan Tikhon.  He is the Orthodox archbishop of Washington, D.C., and the primate of the Orthodox Church in America, its senior-most leader in the U.S. and Canada.  And His Eminence Theodore Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the Roman Catholic archbishop emeritus of Washington, D.C.

First, for someone who hasn’t been following the 1,000-year-long rift between these two branches, why is this so important, and why did it happen now?

THE MOST BLESSED TIKHON, Primate of the Orthodox Church in America:  There’s been attempts to bridge that gap over the years, none of which have really been successful.

But, in the last, you know, number of years, the last few decades, the groundwork for such a possible discussion has been taking place.  So, while this meeting may seem like a somewhat new or surprising event, it has been discussed with both Pope Francis’ predecessors and patriarchals, but somehow the particular meeting that is happening today in Cuba didn’t take place.

But it’s — there have certainly been relations between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches during the past 1,000 years, but there has been a lot of both theological and ecclesiastical differences that need to be worked out, as well as just the simple physical separation that has sort of contributed to sort of a great divide.

So, a great opportunity now in this time of strife in the world to see two great world leaders come together and begin more — perhaps more formally, a dialogue.