Washington Post created own Catholic history

http://www.aim.org/media_monitor/4235_0_2_0_C/

Martin E. Marty, professor emeritus of religious history at the University of Chicago, and an ordained Lutheran minister for more than 50 years, had just written his 55th book, "When Faiths Collide."

The Post article said that "talk of religion's role in the disaster irks Marty. Following the devastation in Lisbon in 1755, priests roamed the streets, hanging those they believed had incurred God's wrath. That event 'shook the modern world,' he notes, changing people's idea of a benevolent, all-caring God."

That sure sounds like Marty was making the claim that priests were roaming the streets and hanging people who they believed had incurred God's wrath. But in fact he never said that, though he was interviewed for the article. The author of the article, Jose Antonio Vargas, has admitted that Marty never said that, and that his source was Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an online "encyclopedia" that anyone can edit and thus everything on it can be questionable. It was also caught falsely claiming that retired journalist John Seigenthaler, Sr. was once suspected of being involved in the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy.

This rumor took on a life of its own. It appeared this year in a book titled "A Crack in the Edge of the World," by Simon Winchester, an Oxford-educated journalist, and was used in a sermon by the Reverend Phil Blackwell, who has since retracted it. George Will, the popular columnist for the Washington Post, included it in a column, referring to Winchester's book. It appeared in numerous newspaper articles, including one by David Shi, the president of Furman University, who has also since retracted it.

Simply a pawn of Screwtape.