Terry Mattingly
When you walk into any Orthodox sanctuary you are surrounded by sacred art of the saints – icons, or "windows into heaven." Orthodox worship is full of prayers to God, to Jesus and to the Holy Spirit, as well as prayers asking St. Mary the Theotokos (the "God-bearer") and the saints to join with the worshipers in appeals for God's mercy and healing.
"Russian Communists are turning to Christ," Newsweek trumpets, as if the magazine discovered the wheel. It almost deserves one of our "Got News?" logos.
Soon after his elevation to the Chair of St. Peter, Pope Francis warned that the world was entering a time when Satan would increasingly show his power, especially in lands in which believers were being crushed.
The questions jumped into Twitter in a flash, which is what one would assume would happen when there is a chance that a once-a-millennium news story could be breaking.
Churches were burning in Pakistan, while African Christians died and radical forms of Islam threatened monasteries, sanctuaries and villages in Egypt, Syria and Iraq.
My problem is in getting any liberal to agree that any bias is real, and my other problem is to get conservatives to admit that there are biases that have infinitely more influence than mere prejudice, that the simple biases of not having enough space to print all the news you want, or not enough cash to hire the reporters you want — the bias of space, time and resources I call it. And then there's the bias of knowledge: they simply do not understand. A bias of world view. It's hard to cover a story if you don't care if it exists.
The man in the next seat recently asked the priest a question he has heard many times: “What is Orthodox Christianity, anyway?” Ironically, Finley was — at that moment — writing some comments about a contest in which participants prepared a 30-second “elevator speech” response to strangers who asked that very question.
