In a Thursday item on NBC News's web site, Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Andrew Rafferty asserted that "just like the issue of gay marriage, the Pope and the Catholic Church have gone from being wedge issues that benefitted the GOP in 2004 to ones that now favor Democrats." The three journalists cited Associated Press's reporting on Pope Francis's new encyclical on the environment, and concluded that "what this news does is guarantee that climate change is a conversation in GOP presidential debates, especially since several of the candidates...are Catholic."
The NBC correspondents hyped that the "Pope puts GOP candidates on the spot on climate change," and accused Jeb Bush of "cherry-picking when faith should (and shouldn't) matter in politics:"
Campaigning yesterday in Iowa, Bush responded to the Pope on climate change. "I respect the Pope, I think he's an incredible leader, but I think it's better to solve this problem in the political realm...I don't go to mass (sic) for economic policy or for things in politics, I've got enough people helping me along the way with that." But there's a problem with that kind of answer: When you're a politician who brings faith into your own decision-making, you could be living in a glass house. Just see the Terri Schiavo controversy. "It's appropriate for people to err on the side of life. I'm completely comfortable with it," Bush said about the Schiavo case earlier this year.
Unlike NBC's morning and evening newscasts, Todd and his colleagues did acknowledge that "while the left is cheering the Pope's call to action on climate change, he does have an anti-abortion message that they might not like as much. 'Francis also included a strong criticism of abortion while also belittling the argument that population control represented a solution to limited resources and poverty,' the New York Times writes." However, the correspondents didn't see any problem for the sole self-identified Catholic in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination: former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, who is pro-abortion.
Instead, the NBC journalists spotlighted how "Martin O'Malley, who is sitting in the low single digits in post polling, is trying to capitalize on today's climate-change news," and cited an article from the Washington Post that touted how O'Malley, "who is a practicing Catholic, plans to issue a white paper Thursday morning that declares that the United States has a 'moral obligation' to address climate change and outlines steps he would take to accelerate a move toward clean energy."
By contrast, on Wednesday's CNN Newsroom, anchor Carol Costello pointed out that "politically, the Pope's stances on issues cuts both ways...because the Democratic presidential candidate, Martin O'Malley, is a devout Catholic. Yet, he's opposed to the Pope and the Catholic Church on abortion rights and same-sex marriage. So this isn't just a Republican problem, is it?"
The Washington Post's Max Ehrenfreund echoed the NBC correspondents in a Wednesday item titled, "Pope Francis's views on climate change put Catholic GOP candidates in a bind." The writer pointed to the New Republic's reporting on the encyclical which emphasized "longstanding traditions in Catholic social thought criticizing unfettered capitalism," and contended that "those traditions raise difficult questions for conservative Catholic politicians, including Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor."
Ehrenfreund quoted from Governor Bush's statement on the papal document, and continued by criticizing the candidate's answer:
The problem with that answer is that politics has always been and always will be about who we are as people. Our views on political questions such as the economy, the environment, abortion or civil rights depend on our beliefs about our duties to others, about the right way to live our lives. These are fundamentally moral issues. Bush's remarks make it sound as though he thinks of politics as some big game of Risk, in which the players' choices do not reflect on them as people.
Like Todd and his peers, the Washington Post journalist also spotlighted O'Malley's "clean energy agenda," without noting the Democratic politician's opposition to his Church's teachings on marriage and family.
Unlike NBC and the Washington Post, the National Journal's Clare Floran and Jason Plautz did directly quote Pope Francis's condemnations of abortion and the population control agenda of many left-wing environmentalists in their Thursday article on the encyclical:
For Pope Francis, caring about the environment goes hand in hand with taking a strong stand against abortion. "Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion," the encyclical says. "How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties?"
Francis suggests that efforts to slow population growth are misguided and a distraction from the underlying cause of the world's environmental crisis—the hoarding of the Earth's resources by the rich and powerful. "To blame population growth instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues," the encyclical says.
It should be pointed out that none of the media outlets mentioned above mentioned the pontiff's criticism of the social left's "gender theory" in his document, which came in paragraph 155:
...Pope Benedict XVI spoke of an "ecology of man", based on the fact that "man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will". It is enough to recognize that our body itself establishes us in a direct relationship with the environment and with other living beings. The acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home, whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation. Learning to accept our body, to care for it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine human ecology. Also, valuing one's own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different. In this way we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator, and find mutual enrichment. It is not a healthy attitude which would seek "to cancel out sexual difference because it no longer knows how to confront it".
