Catholic Church

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…

This month's historic trip of Pope Francis to the United States cannot halt The New York Times from its relentless obsession with decades-old cases of sex abuse committed by Catholic priests. Despite the Church's unprecedented corrective measures just in the past dozen years, not to mention nearly $3 billion in settlements and over $85 million in therapy to accusers, one would think it was 1992…

Thomas Roberts set aside four full segments on his MSNBC Live program on Monday and Tuesday to a panel of six Catholics who dissent from the Church's teachings on sexuality and abortion. Roberts hyped his guests as "Catholics like me who have been deeply wounded in life by the Church." He noted how a divorced woman stayed with the Church and asked, "Do you feel as if you're almost on a cyclical…

In the run-up to the papal visit to America, The Washington Post keeps pushing stories against allegedly heartless Catholic positions on the life issues. On Monday’s front page, they promoted this story: “A Catholic hospital in Michigan cited religious reasons for refusing to perform a tubal ligation requested by a woman with a brain tumor.” (Emphasis theirs.) The headline on page A-3 was “Mich…

The Washington Post loves pushing those stuffy conservative church folk around in the Sunday paper. The entire top half of the Sunday Outlook section carried a condom package with wings and the headline “Why the church needs condoms: A more honest position on contraception would help reestablish the Vatican’s moral authority.” That’s according to former New York Times religion reporter (and…

The long and short of Jill Filipovic's Friday op-ed in the New York Times was her outrage that the Catholic Church – and specifically, Pope Francis – still considered abortion to be a grave sin. The former Cosmopolitan political writer asserted that Pope Francis "offering forgiveness" to women who've had abortion is "a softer version of the same judgment: that the millions of women around the…

Anthony Faiola hyped how Pope Francis is "grappling with a conservative backlash to the liberal momentum building inside the [Catholic] [C]hurch" in a front-page, above-the-fold item in Monday's Washington Post. Faiola played up the "growing sense of alarm among strict conservatives, exposing what is fast emerging as a culture war over Francis's papacy," and underlined that the "conservative…

Ahead of Pope Francis’s upcoming visit to the U.S., Wednesday’s NBC Today touted a new Pew Research Center poll finding that a minority of Catholics do not believe abortion to be a sin. Willie Geist used the Pope adjusting the process of forgiving abortion as a segue: “...the Vatican announced priests may now forgive women who’ve had abortions....The Pope isn't alone when it comes to a bit of a…

Jeffrey Tayler of The Atlantic offered more of his anti-theist – and especially, anti-Catholic – vitriol in a Sunday item for the left-wing Salon. Tayler likened God to Don Corleone of The Godfather, and then spent most of his column ranting about how Pope Francis is akin to the fictional Mafia boss.  The atheist claimed that "Don Corleone could only have dreamed of committing crimes on the scale…

While Chris Cuomo worried out loud on Friday about The New York Times questioning an excessive focus on the religion inspiring ISIS when they resort to rape, the same concern about stereotypes didn’t come up pseudo-Catholic Cuomo for the Catholic-bashing front of The Washington Post. In “Pope urged to address clergy sex abuse in visit,” religion correspondent Michelle Boorstein repeats the never-…

When you think of tough crowds, Philadelphia sports fans or the audience for Amateur Night at the Apollo may come to mind. The Washington Monthly's D.R. Tucker thought of the “right-wing Republicans” he expects will heckle Pope Francis when the pontiff speaks before a joint session of Congress late next month. “Joe Wilson’s…infamous 2009 'You lie!' outburst will be considered a term of…

Gayle King expressed her astonishment on Tuesday's CBS This Morning that two Catholic sisters were unmoved by Katy Perry, after the hyper-sexualized pop singer sang to them in an attempt to get them to sell their property in Los Angeles to her: "I was surprised to hear they met her, and still weren't impressed, because – you know, she's a doll! She's a really, really nice, nice girl."

CNN's Chris Cuomo tried to shame Rick Santorum on Tuesday's New Day over his opposition to same-sex marriage. Cuomo indicated that Santorum wasn't in line with Pope Francis on LGBT issues: "Your Pope says tolerance is the message of Catholicism, when asked about gay marriage and LGBT existence within humanity. He says, 'Who am I to judge?' That doesn't work for you. You say you want an amendment…

Like The New York Times, The Washington Post also undertook a political tour of the summer movies. Movie critic Ann Hornaday hailed Magic Mike XXL as a harbinger of more progressive male characters who are in touch with their “inner drag queens.” Even stranger, Hornaday labored to compare the stripper corps of Magic Mike XXL to....mendicant priests? Since when do priests bump and grind?