15 Comments

James Earl
February 11th, 2013 | 9:04 am

To answer Kristof’s question: No.

Mark Movsesian
February 11th, 2013 | 9:19 am

On the BBC this morning, their expert commentator stated twice that Pope Benedict’s resignation would surely shock Catholics, accustomed as they are to “praying to” the Pope.

David Nickol
February 11th, 2013 | 9:32 am

What Nicholas Kristof says on Twitter cannot be attributed to the Times. In fact, Kristof doesn’t speak for the Times (any more than Ross Douthat or David Brooks) when he writes his column.

Leroy Huizenga
February 11th, 2013 | 9:33 am

Mit Dummheit kämpfen selbst Götter vergebens. Wie sagt man “facepalm” auf Deutsch?

Steve Billingsley
February 11th, 2013 | 9:45 am

If you ever needed proof that the mainstream American media’s coverage of religion is nearly 100% pure idiocy, now you have it.

Krisof’s tweet at least touches on the intersection of Church teaching and society. But it highlights the obsession with pelvic issues that characterizes much of the media’s thinking about the Church. Cillizza’s tweet, however, is a lame attempt at snark.

Sigh…

Oremus Pro Pontifice
February 11th, 2013 | 9:53 am

The NYT could barely get through the lede before going on the offensive (pun intended): “Pope Benedict’s well-known stands included the assertion that Catholicism is ‘true’ and other religions are ‘deficient;’”

The nerve of the man! Hopefully the Church will get a successor who isn’t so dogmatic on the whole the-Catholic-faith-is-true thing.

Q: Does the NYT hate the Catholic Church?
A: Is the Pope Catholic?

If the NYT gets its wish that old punchline may have to be rewritten.

Tom O'D
February 11th, 2013 | 9:56 am

Turning on the news this morning was an education in how little the media understands about the Catholic Church. Kristof’s comment is only one of a million similar ones we’ll hear over the next few months, so we just have to get used to that speculation. The Spirit will guide things where it wills, but I think we can predict its road map on these issues.

Richard M
February 11th, 2013 | 10:23 am

At some point, Nicholas Kristof will accept that the Church is not a polity subject to the vagaries of electoral tides. But it may be after he has left this world.

Patrick
February 11th, 2013 | 10:36 am

Reuter’s headline is something in the same highly objective and classy vein: “Benedict: a conservative whose papacy was dogged by scandal,” including sections titled “German Past” (we all know what that means), “Trusted Men,” and “Turning Back the Clock.”

Douglas Johnson
February 11th, 2013 | 10:41 am

Piers Morgan sits down with his staff in the morning and says, “okay, how can we tweet this in a way that’ll get everyone pulling their hair out? I want 20 ideas in 20 minutes!” Then his competitors at the NYT and the WaPo look at what he tweets and figure out a way of saying something even more sensational, aimed at getting even more people to pull their hair out.

And then the folks at NRO and First Things read what the folks on the Left are writing and then post the most sensational tweets. And then guys like me read the tweets and write comments like this. In other words, I should not have written this comment but by the time I figured out what was going on I had already done the work of typing it!

May the Lord bless us all.

publius
February 11th, 2013 | 11:04 am

Mr. Schmitz,

Thanks for posting this material . . . further confirmation of both the ignorance and the bias of the mainstream media. I’m not sure which is worse.

Dimitri Cavalli
February 11th, 2013 | 11:55 am

I am not familiar with Nicholas Kristof’s religious beliefs, if any. If he’s an atheist, an agnostic, or a deist, then why should he be preoccupied with the Catholic Church’s teaching on contraception and its views on female and married clergy?

There are Christian churches that support contraception, divorce, abortion, gay marriage, abortion, have married and female clergy, and use “inclusive” language in their prayers and religious services. So does Mr. Kristof attend any and financially support one of these progressive churches?

David Nickol
February 11th, 2013 | 3:36 pm

If he’s an atheist, an agnostic, or a deist, then why should he be preoccupied with the Catholic Church’s teaching on contraception and its views on female and married clergy?

If you check out the Wikipedia entry for Kristof, you will see that he is intensely concerned about issues involving women. For example:

After covering the protests, which resulted in some 500 deaths, Kristof and WuDunn [Kristof's wife] were shocked to learn that roughly 39,000 Chinese girls died each year because they were not given the same access to food and medical care as boys. Yet WuDunn and Kristof could not find coverage of these deaths, even though they were far more numerous than the casualties at Tiananmen Square. That led them to dig deeper into questions of gender, Kristof said. Half the Sky covers topics such as sex trafficking and forced prostitution, contemporary slavery, gender-based violence, and rape as a weapon of war and method of justice, as it shines light on the multitude of ways women are oppressed and violated in the world.

He may not say very bright things about the Catholic Church, but he is one of the good guys in this world.

Art Deco
February 11th, 2013 | 5:34 pm

If you check out the Wikipedia entry for Kristof, you will see that he is intensely concerned about issues involving women

He may not say very bright things about the Catholic Church, but he is one of the good guys in this world.

If he is an advocate for the slaughter of girls in the womb, he is no such thing.

Michael
February 11th, 2013 | 11:44 pm

Douglas Johnson,

I’m happy to find myself agreeing with you on that point!