More on White Evangelicals & Election: "Majority of This Country's Washed-in-the-Blood/Now-Whiter-Than-Snow Christians Supported the Peculiar Institution and Jim Crow and Segregation Forever"

As a companion piece to what I posted yesterday about the role that white evangelicals played (yet again) in Tuesday's election, please see the following:

"To the Extent There Is a Real Thing Called American Evangelicalism, It Is Deeply Damaged by Now": Commentary on White Evangelicals and the Elections

Three-quarters (75%) of white voters who describe themselves as evangelical or born-again Christians (a group that includes Protestants, Catholics and members of other faiths) voted for Republican House candidates in 2018 https://t.co/HwBSRKIOnK pic.twitter.com/RnWAGoMPc2

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) November 7, 2018

A Post-(U.S.) Election Poem

A poem I wrote some years ago — and I have to say as I share it, I'm not sure if the language of grace works for me any longer. Too old, tired, disheartened to be glib about using it now, I'm afraid.

The political life of this nation has broken my heart for the last few years now, and learning what I have had to learn about some relatives and some friends: rips the notion of grace entirely out of my heart. (Clicking the image will give you a larger picture of it.)

With the Catholic Bishops, It's Always Someone Else's Sin That's Responsible for the Abuse Crisis: A Response to the Bishops' Prayer-and-Fasting Regime

During the next seven days, bishops across the U.S. will dedicate themselves to intensified prayer and fasting. We pray for victims of clergy sexual abuse, the conversion and just punishment of perpetrators and concealers of sexual abuse, and the strength to be holy shepherds. pic.twitter.com/xGvHLSWoU7

— US Catholic Bishops (@USCCB) November 5, 2018

  

The preceding announcement is a prelude to the gathering of the U.S. Catholic bishops that will occur next week in Baltimore. Catholic News Service editor Julie Asher tweeted the following yesterday on behalf of the bishops:

"A Broad, Deep, Clerical Conspiracy" and "Bishop Accountability Has Proved a Contradiction in Terms": More Commentary

And there's more: here's another diptych from recent commentary that I want to offer for your consideration — about a totally different topic than the one discussed in the diptych I just provided in my previous posting:

"People Who Are Most Likely to Appear in These Kinds of Stories Are the Least Likely to Have a Say in How Those Stories Are Told": Lessons for Catholic Media Reporting on LGBTQ Community

A diptych for you today — news commentary dancing two-by-two which, in my view deserves to be highlighted, and which illuminates, I think, themes I've discussed here in the recent past:

National Catholic Reporter Addresses Wave of Catholic Hate Against Queer Community: My Response — Listening Means Listening

The hatred is breathtaking. Online and in person. I've been a Jesuit 30 years and it was only this year that I've had people (literally) screaming at me, poking their fingers into my chest, and calling me "heretic," "apostate," "false priest," "pansy" "faggot" and "sodomite." https://t.co/SAZzc9kuXM

— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) November 2, 2018

For my starting point today, as I direct you to two statements at National Catholic Reporter yesterday decrying the wave of homophobic hate raging through sectors of the U.S. Catholic church now, I want to talk about the media and listening. To be specific: I want to talk about the mainstream media (including the Catholic mainstream media) and listening — or not — to members of marginalized minority communities.