On the day of Pope Benedict XVI's resignation, the Culture and Media Institute reports:
- A Church In Trouble: Since the Pope’s resignation announcement, networks have characterized the Catholic Church as “troubled 122 times and used the word “scandal” 87 times.
- Catholics Must Get With The Times: ABC, CBS and NBC have pushed for the church to be more liberal – calling for church to “modernize” 32 times, change its stance on women seven times and on gays 13 times.
- Making a Joke of Faith: The resignation of the leader of 1.2 billion Catholics is the time for … making jokes. The networks ran jokes from late night shows about the Pope seven times and even brought on comedian George Lopez to give his sacrilegious perspective on Catholicism.
- All They Learned, They Learned From Fiction: ABC was obsessed with Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code” comparisons, even though Brown was reviled for his attacks on the church and for his outlandish account of Jesus.
Read the full Culture and Media Institute and NewsBusters story here.
Video editor: Katie Yoder.