Tom Hoopes: If I Were a Sports Reporter ...

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Tom Hoopes here. Tim and I were chatting with some "mainstream media" journalists yesterday. I mentioned something the Register's publisher, Legionary Father Owen Kearns told the editorial board of a daily newspaper (I forget which).

Father Owen said that it's nice that newspapers are trying to cater more to religious audiences, but that good intentions aren't enough. "You would never assign someone who had little understanding of sports to the sports beat," he said. "So why do you assign people who know very little about religion to your religion beat?"

I remember that now because I am sitting in the media center listening to one side of an interview a "mainstream media" guy is doing. He just asked:

"Now, I'm just learning about all of this so bear with me. But tell me if this could work out. What I'm hearing is that there are some differences between, like, traditionalists and folks stateside about, like, what's allowable for homosexuals or abortion or whatever. Now, could this just be a restructuring issue? I mean, can't they just have kind of like a corporate policy out of Rome and, maybe, give some of the countries that have these different interests, give them some leeway to structure their own thing?"

And so he's kind of, like, suggesting a second Reformation or something, maybe.

Which makes me think of what I would be like as a sports reporter.

"So, I understand that there's a problem in that lots of guys try to tackle the one quarterback while he's, like, about to throw the ball. Could this just be a restructuring issue? I mean, what's to stop you from hiring, like, six quarterbacks and five running backs, and then have them all fan out so that, maybe, the other team wouldn't know who to go after, and they'd all go after different guys and then you'd have, maybe, a better chance to throw the ball?"

By the way, when I quoted that line of Father Owen's to our "mainstream media" friends, the one I was facing suddenly got kind of quiet and a little red, let an awkward silence build, and then began talking about how gusty the winds were on an otherwise sunny day. Pope2008