Mainstream Media's Allergy to Catholicism

Every time the media attempts to cover the Catholic Church, I find myself less and less likely to trust them on, well, anything and everything else.

No, it's not just me.  When you can manage to get a Jesuit this riled in a public forum--especially this Jesuit!--you're seriously screwing up.  Excerpts:

The conclave hasn’t even started, and I’m already submerged by a sea of stupid articles, idiotic commentary and boneheaded op-eds about the Catholic Church, by people who have no clue what they’re talking about. I’m not talking about people with whom I disagree, or who challenge me with new ways of thinking about the church, but writers who seem completely clueless about the most basic concepts. Some of this is to be expected: the church is a highly complex institution with 2,000 of history behind it.

But the number of misinformed articles I’ve read about celibacy, the priesthood, the papacy, the church in this country, the causes of the sexual abuse crisis, church authority, papal infallibility, the role of the magisterium, life in a religious order, the vow of chastity, and Benedict XVI, just boggles the mind. Or at least my mind, which perhaps is too easily boggled. Needless to say, I don’t expect commentators to know everything about the church. (I sure don’t.) But I think it’s a reasonable to expect that people should refrain from commenting (especially publicly) on stuff that they clearly don’t know much about...

This and the March for Life--the two events which convince me of the difficulty the media has with accurately reporting important stories on religion and the non-trendy side of public life.