News Flash!!! - *

In the current issue of Our Sunday Visitor, John Norton offers some thoughts on media coverage of the Catholic church. I think his thoughts are applicable not only to what we hear about Catholicism, but about Christianity in general. He said, “…without the diocesan newspaper, area Catholics wouldn’t be hearing about a lot of important stories regarding the local Church. Those stories are just ignored by the mainstream news outlets… All too often… the mainstream media’s interest in the Church is attracted only by bad news and the stories of Catholics who don’t live up to their religious ideals or commitments. If that’s all you’re hearing about the Church, you’re not getting an accurate picture… Without reliable, well-written Catholic media driven by love for the Church, Catholics will encounter only a warped, caricatured image of the Church...” (The full text of his article may be found here.)


Indeed, the media appears to be interested only in presenting stories of scandal and sensationalism. The countless instances of faithfulness and generosity on the part of religious faith around the world get lost in the reporting of journalistic peeping Toms who prefer to report at length about instances of abuse, infidelity, or religious violence.

With that in mind, I’d like to offer some news resources that will help to counterbalance to the popular media:

Here are two websites that serve as resources for those interested in religious news from a variety of different perspectives, including major religions and denominations from around the world:

• UPI Religion & Spirituality Forum provides links to news resources for a variety of different religions, from atheism (is that a religion????) to Zondervan.
• WorldWide Religious News (WWRN) includes news of interest about many religions from around the world.

The following sites contain news about Christianity in general:

• Absolute News , sponsored by ChristiansUnite.com, includes Christian news stories from around the world.
• Christian Today offering news about Christianity and of importance to Christians in general.

The following news sources focus specifically on news relating to Catholicism

• New Advent has news coverage of interest to Catholics
• Zenit offers coverage of events, documents, and issues relating to the Catholic Church.
• EWTN News aggregates coverage of Roman Catholic news from Catholic World News, Vatican Information Service, ZENIT, and CWNews.com.
• Catholic World News and Catholic News Service post news relating to Catholicism from around the world.

If you know of other resources that may be of value to those wanting to find some balance in reporting about our faith and the faith of others who may be misrepresented in the popular press, please comment below.

Thanks!