18 Mar 2014

Awkward Correction

Religious 18 Comments

Josiah Neeley posted about this Washington Post article on Facebook:

Screen shot 2014-03-18 at 11.09.08 PM

18 Responses to “Awkward Correction”

  1. GabbyD says:

    why is it awkward?

    • Andrew' says:

      Because on his blog, Jesus was like, “why, oh why can’t we have a better press corps!?!” and it got, like, hella retweets, and they were all like, “whoa!”

    • Josiah says:

      why is it awkward?

      It’s awkward in the same way that a news article referring to David Cameron as “President of the United Kingdom” would be awkward.

      • GabbyD says:

        “President of the United Kingdom” is awkward coz… its obvious that its wrong?

        i agree — if u think its obvious that its wrong, then any correction would be awkward, humiliating, a show of ignorance by the original author.

        i’m just not sure that the case with the origins of the catholic church. alot of people may not know what the origins are, who gets to be the authority that determines that, etc.

        • Josiah says:

          GabbyD,

          The Catholic Church is one of the largest religions in the world. It has more than a billion members, including around a quarter of the U.S. population.

          The Washington Post, meanwhile, is one of the most prominent newspapers in the U.S. It’s perfectly reasonable to expect that a journalist writing about the Catholic Church for Washington Post should know the basics about the institution.

    • Z says:

      The joke is that the Pope prayed that he wouldn’t get the job, but he got it anyway. The correction made clear that the Pope probably prayed to St. Peter, when, according to the Church, he should have been praying to Jesus to not get the job. So no wonder he got the job, he was praying to the wrong person.

  2. Gamble says:

    And Jesus requested nicene creed be tattooed on His forehead…

  3. Andrew' says:

    I guess Jesus is the founder and Peter is the foundee.

    But I always feel like things like this are from my nightmares about a qualifying exam.

    Here is this: http://carm.org/is-peter-the-rock

  4. Matt M (Dude Where's My Freedom) says:

    I LOVE how they put that “according to the church” in there. As if there’s some subtle implication that it’s just some crazy opinion the church has, but they themselves maintain that their original claim was completely accurate.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Right, that’s why I thought it was hilarious. Sort of like, “According to the Church, Jesus fed 5,000 people with a few loaves of bread and fishes, not the 3,800 we originally reported.”

    • GabbyD says:

      ” but they themselves maintain that their original claim was completely accurate.”

      matt, its a correction — they DO NOT maintain the orig claim is accurate.

      this is what “correction” means.

      • Matt M (Dude Where's My Freedom) says:

        But including “according to the church” makes it seem like they aren’t taking a position one way or the other.

        If Bob writes a blog post about how Krugman is a jerk, and then he updates the post to say: “Correction: According to Krugman, he isn’t a jerk,” then Bob isn’t really admitting anything one way or the other.

        It just sounds very funny the way they phrase it. They aren’t saying “We incorrectly credited Peter with founding the Church when it was actually Jesus Christ” as they presumably would if they attributed a scientific article to the wrong author or some such thing.

    • John Becker says:

      I think that they are on firmer ground attributing the creation of the church to Saint Peter as Jesus wasn’t that into organized religion and may or may not have existed. On the other hand, Saint Peter was clearly an organizer while Jesus (if he existed) was more of the prophet, dreamer, inspiration, or muse.

  5. Andrew' says:

    I always knew Peter would try to take credit!

  6. joe says:

    It’s not even clear that Jesus actually even existed. Many believe Jesus was merely a myth or collection of myths.

    Did Jesus Really Exist?
    http://www.godlessgeeks.com/JesusExist.htm

    • Gamble says:

      I thought Jesus was a psychedelic mushroom. Bible does say to eat His Flesh and become one…

    • Matt Tanous says:

      Idiots and fools believe that. You’d have a very difficult time finding a credible atheist historian that even hypothesizes such a thing. One can’t really go around convincing vast swaths of a society to DIE for someone that “may or may not have actually existed”, particularly in the area where this man was supposed to have been traveling and preaching to large crowds.

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