The Media Blackout On Religious Liberty
President Obama plans to give a press conference later today. I'm hoping, however naive this makes me, that reporters will ask many questions about the federal government's brazen attack on religious liberty.
Even though this is far and away one of the most important issues of the day, the media have steadfastly ignored any line of questioning regarding religious liberty and have grossly mishandled the issue, preferring instead to frame this as a battle over birth control, downplay Catholic outrage, ignore Lutheran outrage, manufacture statistics, lie about the role women play in the religious liberty battle, ask loaded questions, paint this as a partisan issue, fall for PR scams, rewrite partisan talking points, and ignore vehement attacks on false framing, to name a few problems.
The Wall Street Journal writes today in "Bishop Dolan's Liberty Letter":
The debate over the Obama Administration's birth control mandate has been ingloriously fact-free, even more than usual. So amid demonstrably false claims about a plot to relegate women to the era of "Mad Men," if not Salem, Massachusetts circa 1692, Cardinal Timothy Dolan's letter on religious freedom deserves more readers.
"We have made it clear in no uncertain terms to the government that we are not at peace with its invasive attempt to curtail the religious freedom we cherish as Catholics and Americans," the archbishop of New York wrote in a public epistle to Catholic bishops last Friday. It's an eloquent and powerful document, though not one that received much of any media notice. "We did not ask for this fight, but we will not run from it," he continues.
Cardinal Dolan explains that "As pastors and shepherds, each of us would prefer to spend our energy engaged in and promoting the works of mercy to which the Church is dedicated: healing the sick, teaching our youth and helping the poor." The problem, and the genesis of this Catholic confrontation with Washington, is the government's "bureaucratic intrusion into the internal life of the church" and its bid "to define what constitutes church ministry and how it can be exercised."
Dolan goes on to tell about a chilling visit to the White House, ostensibly to negotiate some sort of compromise to protect a scrap of religious liberty:
Having accepted the invitation, the bishops asked if concrete policy changes like broadening the mandate's exemptions were "all off the table. They were informed that they are."
In other words, the White House's solution is merely for the bishops to shut up about the wrinkles. Cardinal Dolan writes that "there was not even a nod to the deeper concerns about trespassing upon religious freedom." White House staffers also cited some writings by vicars of the Catholic left in support of the mandate, in effect telling the bishops that they know less about church teachings than your average Washington Post columnist.
As a study in ideology and power, the anecdote is chilling, compounded by all the recent claims by Democrats and liberals that Catholics who actually abide by their faith are opposed to modernity. Such prejudice is supposedly defunct in contemporary America, except when it's practiced against religion.
There has been a media blackout on this letter. I guess Dolan, leader of American bishops, isn't quite as important as phony outrage over political gimmickry.
But it should be important to everyone here at Ricochet, regardless of our religious convictions. This is a horrific attack on religious liberty, the media are complicit in allowing it to happen, and we simply must do more to fight it.
Now, to end on a lighter note, I have to share this stick-puppet video a friend of mine made to make fun of the religious liberty panel discussion that was held (if perverted and downplayed by the media by Democrats and willing media):
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Comments:
Jun '10
Re: The Media Blackout On Religious Liberty
I wasn't around at the start of Prohibition, but I doubt that many Irish, Italian, or German priests were overcome with righteous anger at the new policy, no matter how much they individually liked their glass of beer with lunch. I'm sure many thought it unwise, but as long as wine was allowed on the altar, and it was allowed, it went against no fundamental church teaching. It was a decision for politicians and referendums--not them. The birth control mandate is something quite different. This is not mandating something unwise. This is mandating something sinful. In this case, government is putting itself directly between a faithful Catholic, and God, and saying "we'll handle this one."
Edited on March 6, 2012 at 4:06pmApr '11
Re: The Media Blackout On Religious Liberty
Naivete isn't a crime.
Luckily for you.
Re: The Media Blackout On Religious Liberty
The problem, Mollie, is that virtually all of the folks in the mainstream media are so committed to the sexual revolution that they cannot tolerate disrespect for their conduct of the sort that stems from the Catholic teaching concerning chastity. What Obama and his flacks in the mainstream press (journalists, they are not) are up to is a well-thought-out campaign to crush religious dissenters. That the former have support from the Sisters of Mercy and the Jesuits says a great deal about the sad state of the American Catholic Church.
Aug '10
Re: The Media Blackout On Religious Liberty
Mollie,
I was struck by the degree of complicity of the world's media with our preent administration. In the same week that Obama shut down the Volt line ( how does a president do that in private industry?) the European automotive industry press named the Volt "Car of the Year " .
Evidently they didn't get the message, but then they gave Obama the Nobel pre factum.
Be not surprised by the media. Pigs will fly before they speak the truth again.
Dec '10
Re: The Media Blackout On Religious Liberty
Mollie,
Religious Liberty is the issue. The Free Exercise Clause is the law. Anyone who doesn't think so is exercising their right to follow the logic of the ostrich.
Regards,
Jim
Apr '11
Re: The Media Blackout On Religious Liberty
Prof. Rahe this is so pathetically true. There is really nothing more to add.
Dec '10
Re: The Media Blackout On Religious Liberty
What Paul A. Rahe said (several times over).
A great post, and I loved the stick puppets! Was there a fly on the wall at the hearing?
May '10
Re: The Media Blackout On Religious Liberty
Why should a journalist worry about religious liberty if that journalist is an atheist to begin with?
Once you have succeeded in turning your genital fixation into a right, the idea of religious liberty is almost laughable.
Jun '10
Re: The Media Blackout On Religious Liberty
...and to drive the competition--those helping the helpless--out of business. For every so many helpless government dependents, there's a high-paying government union job waiting to be filled. Like the mobsters say, you can't skim the take if you never hold the cash.
Mar '11
Re: The Media Blackout On Religious Liberty
Err, no - the press will ask questions about Mr Limbaugh's brazen attack on women's sexual liberty, and Mr Obama's heroic, compassionate, defense of them.
There will be no discussion of women's liberty in Iran, or anywhere that it is actually, you know, like, threatened by religious fundamentalists.
Feb '12
Re: The Media Blackout On Religious Liberty
I've read that many Catholic institutions have chosen health insurance for their employees that covers contraception, and of one that even covered abortion (a college, I think). What do the bishops who are complaining of the mandate say about that? (This is not a rhetorical question; I'd really like somebody to answer.)
I suspect that some bishops really don't mind the mandate because they really don't care about birth control. Maybe other institutions aren't under supervision of bishops, and the Vatican doesn't care that much about birth control either--- not enough to smack them down, or even to watch what they're doing. Am I correct?
The complaining bishops' point about religious liberty remains correct, but the idea that the Roman Catholic Church is one church suffers damage.
Jun '10
Re: The Media Blackout On Religious Liberty
Many institutions--especially colleges and universities--that call themselves Catholic, are not all that Catholic. And in the world of higher education, when they're competing for highly-talented secular faculty members, they feel like they have to conform to what the secular staff expect.
You couldn't be more wrong if you tried. There are something like 400, 000 Catholic priests in the World. Obviously, with so many, some are just rebels, some of them are insane, and some of them are senile.
Jan '11
Re: The Media Blackout On Religious Liberty
The idea that the Society of Jesus is supporting Obama to suppress religious liberty and advance the sexual revolution is simply nonsense.
Feb '12
Re: The Media Blackout On Religious Liberty
Just to add to etoiledunord's response. I think that most bishops will not stick their noses into another bishop's territory, and especially never in public. So if bishop x, who presides over a nominally Catholic institution, which does something against the Church's doctrine, fails to rebuke his flock, no other bishop is going to do anything about this publicly. This is the way it was explained to me anyway.
Like any large and dysfunctional family, the Church has its own versions of crazy uncles no one talks about at the reunion. No matter what the crazy uncle does, he's still a member of the family, and there is still one family. This is not unlike the Church. It is one by definition, not by practice.
Jun '10
Re: The Media Blackout On Religious Liberty
Let's face it, the MSM views "religious freedom" as one of those quaint, old-fashioned little quirks that America needs to put behind it.
Feb '12
Re: The Media Blackout On Religious Liberty
Rather, President Obama plans softball practice for later today.
Re: The Media Blackout On Religious Liberty
KC Mulville
The idea that the Society of Jesus is supporting Obama to suppress religious liberty and advance the sexual revolution is simply nonsense. · 44 minutes ago
KC, the Association of Jesuit Colleges has joined the Sisters of Mercy in embracing Obama's "compromise," and they are doing so in the face of the strong stand taken by the bishops that Obama's "compromise" constitutes an attack on religious liberty. It is time to recognize the Jesuits order in the United States for what it has become.
Re: The Media Blackout On Religious Liberty
Coverage by omission. They craft perception by merely not reporting on stories. That's where people like A. Breitbart filled the gap; Breitbart illuminated stories that were darkened by our mainstream media.
Mar '11
Re: The Media Blackout On Religious Liberty
Paul A. Rahe
KC Mulville
The idea that the Society of Jesus is supporting Obama to suppress religious liberty and advance the sexual revolution is simply nonsense. · 44 minutes ago
KC, the Association of Jesuit Colleges has joined the Sisters of Mercy in embracing Obama's "compromise," and they are doing so in the face of the strong stand taken by the bishops that Obama's "compromise" constitutes an attack on religious liberty. It is time to recognize the Jesuits order in the United States for what it has become. · 9 minutes ago
I'm not a member of the Church, but from the outside, looking at recent history, it sure looks to this guy that the Jesuits have set themselves up as a kind of revolutionary order... sort of a competitor to the established Church itself. A liberal Catholic church from within working to subvert the larger church itself.
Jan '11
Re: The Media Blackout On Religious Liberty
N0 - you went from an ambiguous statement to a broad generalization.
Paul A. Rahe
KC, the Association of Jesuit Colleges has joined the Sisters of Mercy in embracing Obama's "compromise," and they are doing so in the face of the strong stand taken by the bishops that Obama's "compromise" constitutes an attack on religious liberty. It is time to recognize the Jesuits order in the United States for what it has become. ·
Check out what the AJCU actually said.
"The Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) acknowledges and appreciates the compromise that President Obama has made to accommodate religious institutions in regard to the birth control mandate under the Affordable Care Act. We commend the Obama Administration for its willingness to work with us on moving toward a solution, and we look forward to working out the details of these new regulations with the White House."
Note the date: February 10 - in other words, the day of Obama's announcement. It clearly was a diplomatic press release designed to knock down accusations that the Church was being stubborn.
To portray that as "the Jesuits going all in for Obama" - well, you must not know many Jesuits.