USCCB Report And National Press Apathy Toward Church Vandalism Trend

(ANALYSIS) Abortion debates continue to dominate American politics. A Texas law banning most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy went into effect just three weeks ago, resulting in widespread national news coverage, with many of the stories showing familiar media-bias patterns.

Despite the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal, this law makes abortion requirements in Texas among the most restrictive in the country after the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on Sept. 2 not to block it. This unleashed debate and further political animus between Democrats and Republicans as arguments over abortion in this country now stretch into a fifth decade.

The fallout from all this may have increased animosity against the Roman Catholic Church. The church’s stand — ancient and modern — against abortion has placed it at the forefront of this cause, along with many other traditional Christian denominations and organizations.

Some of this animosity has led to vandalism against U.S. churches. A Catholic church in Colorado was vandalized with graffiti showing support for legalized abortion days after the Supreme Court decision. This is how The Christian Post recently reported the story — it’s long but essential:

St. Louis Catholic Church, located in the Boulder suburb of Louisville, became the target of vandalism from abortion activists over the weekend. The doors to the church were spray-painted with the declaration “My body, My choice,” a common refrain among pro-choice activists. Church members discovered the graffiti when they gathered for worship on Sunday morning.

In addition to spraying the phrase “My body, my choice” on the church's doors, vandals targeted a marker on the property that read “Respect Life,” replacing the word “Life” with the phrase “Bodily Autonomy.” Additionally, the sign at the front of the church was defaced with the phrase “bans off our bodies.”

In a Facebook post on Monday, the Louisville Police Department noted that a surveillance camera recorded three individuals on the church property at 1:30 a.m. local time Sunday and asked the public for help with identifying them.

The Christian Post, as the name implies, is a niche news source. The question here — once again — is why vandalism cases of this kind receive so little attention in the mainstream press.

Let’s start here. Are the two issues — Texas’ new abortion law and church vandalism — connected?

In this story, it certainly appears to be the case. That can make it more or less of a story depending on the outlet and the ideological bent that governs story selection in newsrooms. Hold that thought — more of that later down in this post.

The overall reality is that quite a few Catholic churches have been vandalized — even before this month and the coverage around abortion. This trend was outlined in a new report by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, recently posted to its website. This is a summary from the report:

At least 95 incidents occurred across 29 states since May 2020. Incidents include arson, statues beheaded, limbs cut, smashed, and painted, gravestones defaced with swastikas and anti-Catholic language and American flags next to them burned, and other destruction and vandalism.

Why has there been so little mainstream news coverage of these various acts of vandalism?

On the other hand, there has been a lot of coverage about President Joe Biden, whether he should continue to receive Holy Communion and what Pope Francis thinks about all this — something that dominated the headlines just last week.

But church vandalism isn’t just about politics. It’s primarily about disrespecting the faith of millions whose religious freedom is guaranteed under the First Amendment, as well as crimes involving the physical destruction of property. None of these factors seem to excite editors running elite newsrooms.

This past June, New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan wrote a piece in Catholic New York, the official archdiocese newspaper, condemning attacks that had occurred in and around New York City.

Where is the outrage? As I observed to the congregation at Temple Emanu-El at their Sabbath prayer last Friday, an attack on one is an attack on all. We preach love! Why do some hate us?

That’s a very good question. The reason for such attacks is that the Catholic Church is often an easy target of ire for those who disagree with it. Churches are also very often empty and lack adequate security. Again, that makes them targets.

The prism of politics, meanwhile, is just too alluring for mainstream news outlets when it comes to covering most anything these days. Religion, of course, isn’t immune from any of these newsroom decisions in terms of coverage. It may be why this trend, long ignored, continues — even after the USCCB report was made public. National news outlets, especially those who lean on the ideological left, are not so quick to cover these attacks if they deduce that the perpetrators could be people who agree with the cultural biases in many newsrooms.

Interestingly, the USCCB lists every act of vandalism — from December 2020 to the present — with a link to various news accounts. This gives us not only a list of the 95 acts of vandalism (37 so far this year alone) but also a quick guide as to the news organizations that were at the forefront of such coverage.

The list confirms much of what I observed and reported in July of last year on the dearth of national news coverage regarding these acts of vandalism. Here’s a section from that post:

Legacy news outlets (such as The New York Times and ABC News) as well as newer journalism models (like Buzzfeed and Vox) haven’t reported on this trend, even though local newspapers and TV stations have in terms of individual incidents affecting their coverage zones.

This has resulted in disjointed coverage — leaving it up to Catholic media to employ news judgement and produce trend pieces in the aftermath of the protests and riots that followed the death of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police officers. What followed a few weeks back were attacks on Confederate statues, followed by vandalism to ones of America’s founders like Thomas Jefferson. Caught in all this was desecration in California of statues honoring Saint Junipero Serra for his alleged mistreatment of Native Americans. The debate over statues has now spilled over to Catholic sacred art, a trend that may be linked to some activists calling for statues of “white Jesus” be torn down.

The most-detailed timeline of this string of desecration wasn’t produced by The New York Times or Washington Post — but rather Aleteia, a Catholic news site.

The USCCB posted that detailed timeline on its website as part of this detailed report.

The report, a solid, factual resource for journalists, does not make any connection between these crimes or whether they were committed by the same people or groups. In a country as big as the U.S., it is highly unlikely that these acts of vandalism are connected. There isn’t, as far as we know, an anti-Catholic terrorist organization looking to destroy sacred spaces. Many are likely crimes of opportunity committed by solo actors, some of whom may even be mentally ill.

In many cases, no one has ever been arrested for these crimes, and often, there are no security cameras to catch the person or people in the act.

The list of incidents gives us some details into this trend that can be plotted out. This is what the National Catholic Register reported on Sept. 13:

Incidents occurred across 29 states.

The report referenced 12 incidents in California since May 2020, including the defacement and removal of a statue of St. Junipero Serra in October 2020 and arson in July 2020 that destroyed parts of a 249-year-old mission church in San Gabriel.

The report also cited 14 incidents in New York, including anti-Catholic and anti-police graffiti on the exterior of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in January.

In some cases, dioceses have requested increased security following vandalism.

The Diocese of Brooklyn requested increased police presence in May, after two incidents of vandalism at church properties in three days. A statue depicting the Blessed Mother holding the infant Jesus was discovered vandalized outside the diocesan administrative offices, with Christ decapitated. A crucifix display outside a parish was also found toppled over, with an American flag outside the rectory burned. Both incidents were investigated as potential hate crimes.

Interestingly, the two states that led in incidents — New York and California — are blue, in terms of election patterns. They are centers of progressive politics. They are also large media and cultural centers for both the mainstream press and Hollywood in this country.

Could that be a factor in all this? Nonetheless, these are also regions in which politicos have demonstrated little support for or tolerance of religious freedom claims. This has also been the case in France and increasingly in secular Canada in recent months.

Journalists at local outlets and religious publications understand the need to cover such incidents. It’s only when there is a trend that national news organizations choose to ignore it. The acts of vandalism are a dangerous trend. Continuing to ignore such incidents is similarly dangerous for the quality and nature of modern-day American journalism.

This post was originally published at GetReligion.