Catholic Church

While Hollywood and The Boston Globe would want you to believe that the new movie Spotlight is an impartial dramatization of the paper's 2002 reporting on sex abuse in the Catholic Church in Boston, the truth is something else entirely. As Spotlight slowly makes its way to theaters across the country, mainstream media movie reviewers are grossly distorting the truth about the Catholic Church sex…

The media are pushing Spotlight, the movie that opens on Friday about the Boston Globe team that exposed priestly sexual abuse in the Boston Archdiocese prior to 2002. But there is little interest in this issue when non-Catholics are implicated in such crimes. As recent cases show, many courts around the nation evince disparate treatment as well.

NBC's Today on Monday aired a sensationalistic report on the upcoming release of two books that are "exposing alleged corruption and infighting within the Catholic Church." Keir Simmons boosted a statement from one of the publishers involved, who claimed that "if the Vatican were a company they'd be in Chapter 11, and heads would be rolling from all the mistrust and financial abuses." Simmons…

A group of purported Catholic professors wrote an open letter on October 26, 2015 to "the editor of the New York Times" decrying a October 18 op-ed item about the Catholic Church by a conservative writer Ross Douthat. The letter, which was initially signed by 25 academics from Georgetown University, Villanova University, and other schools (the list has grown in subsequent days), claimed that…

On Thursday, the Washington Post's Anthony Faiola spun the latest synod of Catholic bishops at the Vatican as a "theological slugfest" between two main factions of the Catholic hierarchy: the "liberal"/"progressive" backers of "Pope Francis's vision for a more inclusive church," versus a "backlash" from "conservatives/"traditionalists." Faiola even hyped how some unnamed "moderate conservatives"…

Several couples attending the Roman Catholic Church’s synod on family issues were most surprised at how distorted the press coverage has been of the closed-door discussions. They must be new to the press to discover that reporters are constantly insisting the church bow to liberal ideology on sexuality and the family.

In the largest security detail in American history, there's no such thing as a "chance" meeting. But that's exactly what the media is claiming took place between Pope Francis and Kentucky's Kim Davis. Frustrated by the Pope's obvious support for the jailed clerk, the press is stirring up speculation about whether the conversation even took place.

On September 30, the New York Times ran a front-page story that smeared St. Junipero Serra. Repeated attempts to have the paper correct the record have failed. This is yellow journalism at its worst. When I submit paid ads to the Times, I am often asked to identify my sources. Yet it accepts hit jobs like Holson's. The fact is there is no list of historians who claim Fr. Serra tortured Indians,…

In January, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was asked by a reporter if an unborn baby at 20 weeks is a human being. She shot back that when she was a new member of Congress, someone quipped, “Nancy Pelosi thinks she knows more about having babies than the pope.” She added, “Yeah. That would be true.” That same smarter-than-the-pontiff feminist arrogance unfolded again on October 1, a few days…

Esquire’s Charles Pierce is a graduate of a Jesuit university (Marquette). It’s among the many reasons he’s been a big fan of Pope Francis, the first-ever Jesuit pontiff, and it’s probably one factor in his vehement disappointment that Francis met with, and apparently encouraged, gay-marriage objector Kim Davis last week in Washington. Pierce referred to the pope’s behavior regarding the “…

Brian Williams and Chris Matthews couldn't resist the opportunity to harp on the lack of married and women priests in the Catholic Church, as MSNBC provided live coverage of Pope Francis's open-air Mass in Philadelphia on Sunday. Williams pointed out that one of the archbishops at the Mass is "from a family, [but] he cannot go home to one. He cannot have one, and be...of service to the Catholic…

MSNBC's Chris Matthews revealed his loathing for a part of his Catholic upbringing on Wednesday's Hardball, and ended up mangling the theology behind a beautiful and ancient Church ritual for new mothers. Matthews turned to Catholic dissident Sister Simone Campbell for her take on Pope Francis's visit. Sister Campbell touted her liberal "Nuns on the Bus" campaign as a supposed way to "take the…

On Thursday, the New York Post, Mediaite, and several other online outlets reported that CNN's live feed of the Pope's address to Congress caught a woman saying off-camera that she wanted to "take my shoe off and throw it at his head" – moments before the pontiff entered the House chamber. The threat was also caught on the audio of MSNBC and Fox News (though on-air personalities were also…

The media have a knack of turning giving liberal activists a platform when it covers the Catholic Church. The latest example is CNN's Chris Cuomo turning to Episcopalian bishop/LGBT activist Gene Robinson moments after Pope Francis spoke at the White House on Wednesday. Cuomo noted that Robinson was part of "a number of people that were seen as controversial" among the invited guests at the…