"Imposing Our Beliefs"

I recently found this excellent article by Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk.  For those who aren't familiar with his name, Fr. Pacholczyk (or Fr. Tad, as he is often called by people -- like me -- who have trouble pronouncing his last name) is a Catholic priest with a doctorate in neuroscience, and he is the director of education for the National Catholic Bioethics Center.  He is also an expert on the moral and ethical issues involved in embryonic stem cell research.  In the article I linked, Fr. Tad gives a great rebuttal to the common argument that we should not legislate against embryonic stem cell research (or abortion, or euthanasia, etc.), because to do so would be to "impose our beliefs" on others.  Here is part of Fr. Tad's response:

Recently I was asked to speak in Virginia at legislative hearings about embryonic stem cell research. After I gave my testimony, one of the senators asked a pointed question. "Father Tad, by arguing against embryonic stem cell research, don't you see how you are trying to impose your beliefs on others, and shouldn't we as elected lawmakers avoid imposing a narrow religious view on the rest of society?" The senator's question was an example of the fuzzy thinking that has become commonplace in recent years within many state legislatures and among many lawmakers.

Two major errors were incorporated into the senator's question. First, the senator failed to recognize the fact that law is fundamentally about imposing somebody's views on somebody else. Imposition is the name of the game. It is the very nature of law to impose particular views on people who don't want to have those views imposed on them. Car thieves don't want laws imposed on them which prohibit stealing. Drug dealers don't want laws imposed on them which make it illegal to sell drugs. Yet our lawmakers are elected precisely to craft and impose such laws all the time. So the question is not whether we will impose something on somebody. The question is instead whether whatever is going to be imposed by the force of law is reasonable, just, and good for society and its members.

The second logical mistake the senator made was to suppose that because religion happens to hold a particular viewpoint, that implies that such a viewpoint should never be considered by lawmakers or enacted into law....

Click here to read the rest of the article.

The Media on Religion

Terry Mattingly wrote an interesting column recently about the way that mainstream media reporters, even religion reporters, often simply don't understand religion, which leads them to report inaccurately on religious topics. Here's an excerpt:

Picture this scene. A flock of Pentecostal Christians has gathered at the U.S. Capitol for yet another prayer rally about sex, abortion, family values and the public square.

"At times, the mood turned hostile toward the lawmakers in the stately white building behind the stage," wrote The Washington Post in its coverage of the event. Then, without explanation, the story offered this on-stage quotation from a religious broadcaster: "Let's pray that God will slay everyone in the Capitol."

Slay what? Clearly, the reporters didn't know about the experience that Pentecostal Christians call being "slain in the Holy Spirit," in which they believe they are transformed by a surge of God's power. The result was a journalistic train wreck that ended up in the book The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect.

"The problem," wrote authors Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, "was that the reporters didn't know, didn't have any Pentecostals in the newsroom to ask, and was perhaps too anxious for a 'holy s---' story to double-check with someone afterward whether the broadcaster was really advocating the murder of the entire Congress." This mistake made "a strong case for the need for humility" at the news desk, they said.

Let me say "amen" to that, speaking as a journalism professor and as a religion-beat veteran who has winced in recent decades when reading these kinds of corrections (including a few of my own).

Truth is, far too many journalists veer into mental ditches when asked to cover events and trends rooted in religion. That's bad news when it comes time for serious, accurate coverage of a variety of stories that ordinary readers care about — from trends in Hollywood to debates about free speech in schools, from "sectarian" bloodbaths in Iraq to hard data linking what happens in pews to what happens in ballot boxes.

Click here for the full article: The Media, God, and Gaffes

I think that the problem identified in this article is actually symptomatic of a larger problem with the mainstream media, which is that they often don't seem to be all that knowledgeable about any advanced topic, whether it is religion, science, law, or whatever. I notice this myself, any time that the media reports on a topic that I happen to know a lot about. I find that it is not uncommon at all for the media simply to get facts wrong, and to perpetuate a distorted view of certain topics. And I don't think that this always or even usually means that they are biased, but rather that when it comes to many advanced topics, they sometimes just don't adequately understand what they are talking about. But maybe I'm just too much of a perfectionist -- I'd be interested to know if people besides me have noticed this same phenomenon.