How an AP Reporter Found Religion

Get Religion ^ | Sarah Pulliam Bailey

[marshmallow]

You might consider Associated Press reporter Tom Breen to be the anti-William Lobdell. Breen recently told me he eventually became a weekly Mass attendee after educating himself on the Catholic abuse scandals for his journalism job. His story is quite the opposite from Lobdell, whose work on the religion beat at the Los Angeles Times caused him to drop his faith and write Losing My Religion.

Instead of re-writing Breen’s story into an intro, I’ll let him tell you about it before he answers some questions about the religion beat:

I was baptized a Catholic, but never really in any tradition other than a vague understanding of Christianity coupled with a sort of tribal pull toward the Catholic Church. My mother died when I was very young, and my father had enough bad experiences with church growing up in an Irish neighborhood in Chicago that he wasn’t particularly driven to make sure my brother and I were raised as active members of the faith.

My father is a journalist, though, and it was his influence that steered me toward news. After college, I was working at the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Mass., at the time the most recent sex abuse scandals began to break in Boston. Partly because I had some Catholic bric-a-brac on my desk, my editor assumed I actually knew something about the church, and so I was assigned to cover a few local stories related to the scandal.

I quickly realized that I didn’t know anything about Catholicism, and so to avoid embarrassing myself and the paper I resolved to learn what I could. In addition to reading everything I could get my hands on, I started pitching stories on religious topics that had nothing to do with the abuse scandal, hoping to.........

[miele man]

Interesting read. Thanks for posting this.

[Salvation]

This is really a conversion story!  God bless him.

 

**So that’s how I became hooked on religion coverage. On kind of a parallel track, I eventually became a devout Catholic, going through the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults and becoming a weekly churchgoer. Ironically, it was my work covering elements of the sex abuse scandal that led me to become an “official” Catholic; I learned all I could about the faith to make sure my stories were accurate, and my learning convinced me this was the truth.**

 

Tom Breen

[married21]

Very interesting. Thanks for posting.

[RnMomof7]

Too bad he did not find Christ..

[A.A. Cunningham]

Too bad you committed spiritual suicide.

[Salvation]

He did find Christ, through study, through scripture and in the Blessed Body and Blood of Christ at Communion.

I don’t understand why Protestants think that Catholics don’t worship Christ.

There is always a Gospel reading, a homily/sermon (usually on those words of Christ) and the entire Liturgy of the Eucharist is focued on Christ.

Prayers for you to see the light of Christ in the Mass.

[Salvation]

“Learn from Me,” He says,
“for I am meek and humble of heart” (Matthew 11:29),
and again,
“Everyone that exalteth himself shall be humbled,
and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (Luke 14:11).

[RobbyS]

But he did.Jesus is right there in the tabernacle. Too bad you have too many veils before your eyes.

[Cronos]

Of course he found Christ in Christ’s Church. Just because your group abandoned Christ is no reason to be snarky.