From the Desk of Dan Burke
Executive Director of the National Catholic Register
Dear Register Family,
The Register staff has been hard at work the past 24 hours. From the continuation of the Congressional investigation of the IRS, to the growing anticipation of the HHS Mandate and yesterday’s partial-invalidation of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), our Faith is persistently being challenged.

Our beliefs. Faith is a virtue, one of the big three. The Register does not want to say our faith is tested because of a Supreme Court decision. Its content, yes, but not the believing. So make it beliefs. Please.

And while you are at it, “challenge” is too much used and much abused these days, as in calling the bad driver driving-challenged. Blah. Enough of this going with how news anchors talk coast to coast. Please.

Hearts and headlines for same-sex marriage

Chicago Newspapers

Full court press today Sun-Times for same-sex marriage, which has become THE civil rights struggle of the century. Bias dictates coverage here.

The page-one head:

Despite national victory [at Supreme Ct] for same-sex marriage, gays in Illinois still . . .

[open quadruple-size type]

LEFT AT THE ALTAR

[slightly below]

Complete coverage, pages 10-13, 23 [4 pages]

Below this, sad pic of grim, sad-faced women, Jennifer and Renee, one holding the other for comfort and solidarity, dramatizing poignancy.

The whole covers the length of the front page, 3/4 its width.

It’s Sun-Times saying it hearts same-sex marriage.

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Same-sex history one way or other

“Supreme Court Could Make History on Same-Sex Marriage, or Not,” says igoogle head for NYT story.

Whoa there. SCOTUS makes history with every decision, doesn’t it?

How to escape federal control

Take no federal money.

(H/T Newsalert.)

The Pope calls for “daily martyrdom”

Not for attribution

This kind of language bedevils holy people:

This daily martyrdom consists of people doing their duty with love, according to the logic of Jesus, said the pontiff from the window of the Apostolic Palace to those gathered in St. Peters Square.

How so? It defines martyrdom down. Exaggerate for effect often enough and you lose credibility.

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If Catholics could decide morality with a vote . . .

. . . Rome would bend on same-sex marriage etc. Yes, but.

A survey released recently has shown proof that the everyday Catholics in America actually accept marriage equality and equal rights for LGBT people more than any other branch of Christianity in the US, while the Roman Catholic hierarchy continues to be rabidly against marriage equality. [Italics
added]

Sez who? Link (from GLAAD-affiliated San Diego Gay & Lesbian News) is to GLAAD (was Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation until bisexuals and transgenderites said what about us? now glad to be just GLAAD), but that’s a page-not-found site. So we must ask, sez who?

For sake of argument, however, who thinks Catholic morality is a matter of plebiscite?

–>”Ballots found in back of church, people; fill yours out and put it in the box; we’ll have the results in a week or so.”<–

And if favorable to abolition of sexual morality restrictions in this matter, yahoo! New rules! (Sing “Happy Days are here again,” loudly.)

Media dishonesty

For people who once prided themselves on equal opportunity, in this case for news coverage, our mainstreamers manage to look unrecognizable to those with honesty in mind.

For instance, Dennis Byrne on same-sex marriage:

A Pew Research Center study found that media coverage is heavily skewed (by 5-t0-1) in favor of same sex marriage marriage–to no one’s surprise except, of course, much of the media. In a fight [flight?] of bashfulness, some media ignored the news.

It began many years ago, with regards to another hot-button issue, black crime, as in my book Company Man: My Jesuit Life, 1950-1968, page 180:

. . . . At [St.] Ignatius [as a young priest] . . . . I wrote on the summer’s civil rights agitation [tagging] along with a Newsweek intern whom bureau chief Hal Bruno introduced me to. I’d got to know Bruno through my brother Paul, who headed the Chicago ad office. . . . .

Bruno was a good guy. It was fun sitting in his office talking about the job he was doing. They had done a major story on crime in the cities but had to wait for a cover picture showing a white criminal. It took a while, and the story was put on hold. Bruno did not sympathize with this 1965 correctness, but the news industry was already minding its p’s and q’s in that matter. Dishonesty was replacing hostility to blacks, then still “colored” or “Negroes,” of course. . . .

A fuller treatment of the problem may be found in William McGowan’s Coloring the News; how crusading for diversity has corrupted American journalism.