Pope Francis

The Cardinal couldn't have been more polite, but it didn't take much reading between the lines to get what he was asserting: that when it comes to the encyclical on the environment, Rush Limbaugh doesn't understand what the Pope was saying. On today's Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace played a clip of Rush saying that the encyclical "is suggesting is that everyone should vote for the Democrat party…

Jeb Bush, a convert to the faith, is a bad Catholic who all but denies the dogma of papal infallibility. That's an argument put forward by that eminent Catholic scholar... Jonathan Alter?! Yup, Alter made that argument on the June 19 edition of Now with Alex Wagner as he reacted to the former Florida governor's dismissal of Pope Francis's views on climate change as promulgated in his latest…

Strange new religious respect: The formal release of Pope Francis's long-anticipated encyclical on global warming dominated Friday's New York Times, which avidly covered it from both environmental and religious angles -- quite unlike the paper's hostile treatment of the Vatican's stands on abortion and birth control. Laurie Goodstein, the paper's chief religion reporter, seemed to thoroughly…

In a Thursday item on NBC News's web site, Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, and Andrew Rafferty asserted that "just like the issue of gay marriage, the Pope and the Catholic Church have gone from being wedge issues that benefitted the GOP in 2004 to ones that now favor Democrats." The three journalists cited Associated Press's reporting on Pope Francis's new encyclical on the environment, and concluded…

The broadcast news shows have hyped climate change in Pope Francis’s new encyclical – but did they hint at his arguments on abortion and gender identity? Short answer: No. The Vatican released the pope’s media-hyped encyclical, Laudato Si’, on June 18. Out of the three broadcast networks, only NBC and ABC commented on the “climate change” publication from the “popular pope.” They also emphasized…

The media’s tendency to use the Pope to criticize Republican candidates and officials was on display Wednesday afternoon as MSNBC’s Live with Thomas Roberts and Bloomberg’s With All Due Respect took shots at the 2016 GOP presidential field and, specifically, Catholics Jeb Bush and Rick Santorum (in the case of the latter show) for opposing Pope Francis’s upcoming encyclical on global warming.

Delia Gallagher touted Pope Francis's upcoming encyclical on the environment on Wednesday's Wolf program on CNN by claiming how "Church leaders say that this is the first time the release of a papal encyclical has been so anticipated." Gallagher spotlighted an "epic theatrical trailer for the Pope's words" from an environmentalist group in Brazil," and hyped that "with the Pope's popularity, this…

Liberal media outlets have attacked Pope Francis for being “tone-deaf” when they disagreed with his views, but now that he’s hawking climate alarmism they’ve begun fawning. The Washington Post front-page praised the Pope on June 15, and suggested he could impact environmental policy through his “highly anticipated” letter to Catholic bishops about global warming, called an encyclical.The story,…

Pope Francis “has echoed the sense of crisis” from some scientists about the environment, and on June 18 will tackle the subject of climate change in an encyclical, a letter to Catholic bishops. That was the same day as former Vice President Al Gore’s Live Earth concert was scheduled to take place. Will anyone in the media note the coincidence? The Vatican announced June 18 as the release date…

Alex Wagner took the unusual step of running to the defense of Pope Francis on her MSNBC program on Wednesday. Wagner blasted Rick Santorum for asserting that the Catholic Church  was "probably...better off leaving science to the scientists," especially on the controversial issue of climate change. She pointed out that the Pope "has a master's degree in chemistry," and therefore, has more "cred"…

On Sunday, HBO's John Oliver gave the latest evidence that the last acceptable prejudice is bigotry against Christianity, especially anti-Catholicism. Oliver blasted the Vatican secretary of state's "defeat for humanity" condemnation of Ireland's vote that legalized same-sex marriage: "Okay, settle down a little, Catholic Church. Remember, you're an organization whose victories for humanity…

The competition is fierce, but perhaps the most consistent area of outright and arguably deliberate U.S. and worldwide press distortion is found in their coverage of the Catholic Church and its pontiff. Last week, the major international wires and several U.S. outlets once again demonstrated that readers, listeners and viewers can never trust that they will get an accurate story relating to…

On her Monday MSNBC show, host Andrea Mitchell gushed over Cuba's Communist dictator possibly heading "back to Church" and returning to "his Jesuit roots" after a meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican: "Cuba's president Raul Castro is praising Pope Francis for helping to thaw relations between U.S. and Cuba....he said that the Pontiff inspired him to consider returning to the Catholic Church."

Taylor Wofford spotlighted how Pope Francis "publicly affirmed his stance on so-called traditional marriage between men and women" in a Wednesday item for Newsweek. Wofford did his best to indicate that the pontiff was commenting about the recent oral arguments on same-sex "marriage" at the Supreme Court: "Though he made no specific mention of the case before the court during his daily general…