Examining the state of religion journalism

Here are my thoughts on religious reporting:

1. Overall, in Boston we are fortunate to have Michael Paulson as our religion reporter. (that is why he is cited in the Schwartz article;) ) I have always presumed that Michael comes from the Jewish tradition, but as a Catholic, i have always found him scrupulously objective and fair. One big thing that differentiated him from other reporters about religion, especially about Catholicism, but probably about other denominations, is that he bothers to get terminology, spellings, technical terms exactly right; that moves one to trust the author. Also, during the horrible sexual abuse crisis, i felt that the Spotlight team not only reported the story, which of course they should have, but also delighted in throwing salt in the wounds, but I've never gotten that impression from Michael.

2. On the one hand, reporting should be as objective as possible. But then, religion writers, especially ones who come from no faith perspective themselves, and 'know no one who goes to church or synagogue, just is not part of their secular social class,' sometimes seem to report religion clinically, as if religion were some insect under a glass, or as if religious people were UFO's, when, statistically speaking, in our country it is the non-believers who are the UFO's. You especially see this on stories about Evangelicals, especially from the South, where the tone of the article is always 'how odd, how peculiar, how quaint, how retro;' but for tens of millions of people this is just normal, unremarkable everyday behavior.

3. I know how to be called news, it has to be 'man bites dog,' not 'dog bites man.' But as a Catholic, i think it is most remarkable (knock on wood) that since (?) (Michael could fill in the date,) there has not been one allegation of clegy sexual abuse of a minor. Who has every heard of the complete and sudden rooting out of an evil like that? Along the same line, every week there could be a headline "400,000 Catholics go to Mass, no problems reported." Usually, when 400,000 people do anything more or less simultaneously, its news.

4. Which goes to show that the things, at least about Catholicism, that seem to dominate the news, abortion, politicians and communion, women's ordination, gay marriage, married priests, who will be the next Pope, etc., is really about .00001% of what Catholicism is about, but you would get the opposite feeling from the news. Most of what Catholicism is about are the doctrines and life common to most Christian denominations.