Is it news when a U.S. senator claims Catholics are under attack?
(OPINION) Is it news if a sitting United States senator pens a letter to the U.S. Justice Department? It depends on a number of factors. Let’s also say that the letter in question is made public by the senator’s communications department via the Internet and on social media. Is it a news story then?
This depends, of course, on what the letter says and whether it is connected to facts that journalists can seek out and report — if they are willing to do so. Is the story linked to nasty political partisanship? Does it involve President Donald Trump? Does it involve religion, sex and maybe even money?
This post isn’t some esoteric exercise in press freedom or news judgement. It’s about something real that is plaguing the national press in this country at this very critical moment in time.
A letter of this very kind was written and made public on August 11 by Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy (no relation to the Kennedy’s of JFK and Massachusetts fame). The letter in question had nothing to do with Russian election interference or the disappearance of mail boxes. Those topics would have been covered immediately and extensively.
Instead, the letter was about the surge in vandalism targeting Catholic churches and statues, a story that the vast majority of pros in the national press (as I have noted in this space before) have ignored. The reasons for that vary greatly, but my best hypothesis is that it just doesn’t resonate among secular newsroom editors and reporters who don’t have a high regard for Catholics or religion in general in the importance in the lives of everyday Americans.
Here is a snippet from the letter sent out by Kennedy, a Methodist who hails from a state with a substantial Roman Catholic population:
These crimes span from coast to coast and show no sign of ending. Christians have historically been and continue to be one of the most persecuted religious groups in the world. To escape religious oppression, the pilgrims took a treacherous journey across the Atlantic to America, setting the stage for the eventual creation of the United States.
The letter was widely reported on by Catholic news outlets, since it is linked to a story they have been diligently covering since the attacks began earlier this summer. The question of why national newspapers and legacy media have largely ignored the attacks may be the issue highlighted by the senator: the ongoing battle of religious freedom that dominates the courts in this country over the past decade.
Religious freedom is seen largely by the mainstream press as an issue that excites and motivates political conservatives. Progressives, on the other hand, see religious freedom as discrimination against the LGBTQ community and anyone who deviates from the way evangelicals and traditional Catholics view society.
With that in mind, here’s another tidbit from the senator’s letter:
The Founding Fathers considered freedom of religion so integral to the fabric of the nation that they codified it in the First Amendment to the Constitution. We cannot let a handful of people destroy this fundamental right.
Who are these people doing all of this?
That remains an open question, although signs point to the anarchist-led unrest that has plagued several U.S. cities such as Minneapolis, Portland and, most recently, Kenosha. The rioting and looting unleashed by these agitators that have plagued the Wisconsin city over the past week has left in its wake anti-Catholic vandalism.
If not coordinated, these acts of vandalism are perpetrated by people at least sympathetic to the forces that find religion to be a problem in our society. None of the coverage in the Catholic press and few mainstream outlets that have covered the issue have found any link between the culprits and what may have motivated them.
This disturbing trend against churches, believers and statues — the latest this past Sunday in Philadelphia after a churchgoer was attacked during Mass — comes as the mainstream press and Catholic news sites that lean doctrinally left laud the faith of former Vice President Joe Biden.
The Democratic presidential nominee, recently nominated by a convention that was held online, has never addressed the vandalism. None of the convention speakers, which included former First Lady Michelle Obama and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, made references to this trend. AOC, specifically, has said nothing even though we have read that the self-proclaimed Democratic socialist is the future of the church.
Biden has received some fawning news coverage about how he’s able to juggle his Catholic faith and the political contradictions that often sprout up when Catholic doctrines come into direct conflict with the changing mores of American culture and society.
An example of this is a Religion News Service piece, which also ran in the Jesuit-run magazine America, on August 17 that was labeled a news analysis. This is what stands out from the piece:
His refusal has become a hallmark of how Biden manages his faith, a throwback to a brand of mid-20th-century political Catholicism that eschews obsessive obedience to the Holy See on matters of policy.
An Irish Catholic educated by nuns in parochial schools, Biden is quick to invoke the church’s social teaching on the stump. But where Catholic morality rubs up against welfare or justice issues such as abortion and gay rights, Biden's understanding of his duty as a politician and a Catholic is clear: Decisions are to be informed by the faith he learned from nuns of his youth, not dictated by it.
The interesting phrase here is “manages his faith.” It’s as if Biden is a member of some extremist group that needs for him to pick and choose which beliefs he can support. While adhering to all the tenets of any faith tradition is a struggle for its adherents, this piece gives Biden a pass so that he can openly support abortion, for example, and still call himself a devout Catholic, as CNN recently did on its website. Related to this topic of labeling people devout, a very good Robert P. George in First Things does a good job addressing the debate. Click here for tmatt’s post and podcast: “Biden 2020: 'Devout' Catholic? 'Cuomo' Catholic? 'McCarrick' Catholic? 'Pope Francis' Catholic?”
If Biden is indeed devout, as some in the mainstream press proclaim, then why not address the church vandalism spree? He didn’t do it at the recent Democratic National Convention. No one has asked Biden the question, even in the very limited number of interviews he has granted over the last few weeks.
Even so, there is a senator willing to publicly address the issue — a non-Catholic no less — and the general response has been something like this (please click).
There was a time when journalists were supposed to be curious and ask lots of questions. The desecration of Catholic churches and statues across the country may be the ultimate sign that this is unfortunately no longer the case in newsrooms in New York and Washington, D.C.
This post originally appeared at GetReligion.