Religion

What started as a rumor was confirmed by the Vatican mid-morning Wednesday: Kim Davis, the Kentucky County Clerk who went to jail for refusing to give same-sex marriage licenses, met with Pope Francis secretly last Thursday.

Imagine my "surprise" (not really) when I came across a Thursday Daily Beast item originally referenced by Mark Levin on his radio show (HT Joe Newby at Examiner.com) about the comments of a "secular Muslim" in response to what 2016 Republican presidential contender Ben Carson had to say about whether he could support a strict, sharia-compliant Muslim to be this nation's chief executive. The…

Brian Williams and Chris Matthews couldn't resist the opportunity to harp on the lack of married and women priests in the Catholic Church, as MSNBC provided live coverage of Pope Francis's open-air Mass in Philadelphia on Sunday. Williams pointed out that one of the archbishops at the Mass is "from a family, [but] he cannot go home to one. He cannot have one, and be...of service to the Catholic…

CNN's Chris Cuomo painted a cynical picture of Dr. Ben Carson on Monday's New Day, as the newscast covered Jake Tapper's interview of the Republican presidential candidate from Sunday. Cuomo contended that Carson's recent stance against Muslims becoming president of the United States was a calculated move towards a supposedly extreme part of the GOP: "The problem is the candidate...seems to be…

At the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. Friday, GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson slammed the media as elitists who “just don’t get it.” He explained how the media use their position of power to mislead the public by sharing a recent anecdote where a reporter took his words out of context.

On Sunday's Fareed Zakaria GPS, host Zakaria opened the show complaining about American Christians having "heated debates over abortion, abstinence, contraception, and gays," as he argued that Christianity is primarily supposed to be about "be[ing] nice to the poor."

As radical Muslims wage jihad around the world and plot against Western nations including the U.S., ABC’s new show Quantico will try to unravel the mystery of an FBI “inside job” terrorist attack against New York’s Grand Central Station. As it flashes back and forth from the start of FBI training to the aftermath of “the most devastating terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.” The…

On Saturday, NPR’s Weekend Edition celebrated atheist author Philip Pullman and the His Dark Materials trilogy he wrote for middle-schoolers, a sort of anti-Narnia series. Anchor Scott Simon celebrated the 20th anniversary of the first book in this trilogy and interviewed Pullman as he sat a BBC studio in Oxford, hinting they have "maybe the mark of real excellence."

Appearing as a guest on Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, during a discussion of the Catholic Church's refusal to allow women to become priests, liberal commentator Ron Reagan obnoxiously charged that "all of those monotheisms," specifying "Judaism, Islam, Christianity," are "terrified of" and "hate women" and  "hate genitals." Moments later, he mocked these religions as encouraging…

MSNBC's Chris Matthews revealed his loathing for a part of his Catholic upbringing on Wednesday's Hardball, and ended up mangling the theology behind a beautiful and ancient Church ritual for new mothers. Matthews turned to Catholic dissident Sister Simone Campbell for her take on Pope Francis's visit. Sister Campbell touted her liberal "Nuns on the Bus" campaign as a supposed way to "take the…

NewsBusters Executive Editor Tim Graham appeared Friday night on The Steve Malzberg Show on Newsmax TV to discuss the Pope and President Obama. First they discussed the U.S. News website trying to argue the pope “echoed” Obama in attacking Christianity in his speech to Congress. That wasn’t true, Graham said.

Appearing as a guest on Friday's CNN Newsroom, CNN political analyst Carl Bernstein asserted that "zealots are winning the soul of the Republican Party" as he blamed the "zealots of his party" for Republican House Speaker John Boehner's announced resignation from the House of Representatives. Moments later, as he praised the Pope's speech to Congress, Bernstein took a shot at Texas Senator Ted…

Variations on the term “Bush Derangement Syndrome” are common on both the right and the left (a Google search for “Clinton Derangement Syndrome” yielded roughly 180,000 results). Therefore, it wasn’t surprising to see Indiana University law prof Steve Sanders modify Charles Krauthammer’s famous coinage in order to trash religious conservatives. “The Christian right is deep in the grip of gay…

For journalists, it was the best of popes and it was the worst of popes. News outlets were often negative when Pope Benedict visited the United States in 2008, calling him an “enforcer,” “God’s Rottweiler,” and “very conservative.” Not so this time around for Pope Francis. The current pontiff shares the media’s views on climate change, immigration and inequality, and seems ambivalent at best…