They report on a different world because they inhabit a different world.

They report on a different world because they inhabit a different world.

From New York Times hits new low with mortifying Notre Dame correction by Mark Hemingway. The headline writer is over egging the pudding a bit. But it is also telling. The urban secularists of the mainstream media are not only underexposed to the important role religion plays in the life of most Americans but actually surprisingly careless and unaware.

Just in time for Easter, The New York Times has been forced to run yet another correction that speaks to the paper’s profound ignorance regarding the basic beliefs of Christianity.

In a Thursday report on the fire at Notre Dame, The Times highlighted the actions of Father Jean-Marc Fournier, the Paris Fire Department chaplain who exposed himself to certain danger in order to recover the cathedral’s treasured relics.

“I had two priorities: to save the crown of thorns and a statue of Jesus,” the Grey Lady quoted him. The story was full of gripping details about the scramble to preserve this statue. “As the chaplain began removing a statue of Jesus, he said, his colleagues were fighting the fire from the cathedral’s towers,” the paper reported. “With the statue in hand, Father Fournier, alone in the nave, gave a benediction to the cathedral, he said.”

There’s one small problem here. There’s no statue of Jesus inside Notre Dame. What Father Fournier was referring to was the Blessed Sacrament, communion bread that, according to Catholic doctrine, contains the real presence of Jesus Christ.

Sure enough, The New York Times later appended this correction to the story: “An earlier version of this article misidentified one of two objects recovered from Notre-Dame by the Rev. Jean-Marc Fournier. It was the Blessed Sacrament, not a statue of Jesus.”

How could the newspaper possibly confuse these two things? The most logical explanation is that Father Fournier referred to the “body of Christ,” and the reporter took his words literally and not seriously. It doesn’t appear to be a translation error; the reporter who wrote the story, Elian Peltier, appears to be fluent in French and tweets in the language regularly.

Of course, embarrassing as Peltier’s gaffe might be, it’s hard to top this correction the venerable paper ran in 2013: “An earlier version of this article mischaracterized the Christian holiday of Easter. It is the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, not his resurrection into heaven.”

Hemingway goes on to document a litany of such errors over the years. Still, they are a major paper reporting a lot of breaking news over the years - there are bound to be errors. That said, these are kind of fundamental errors. Its not like some esoteric question about the Trinity. Sort of like wondering what language they speak in Germany or not knowing for whom Washington's Monument is named.

I saw this NYTs error earlier but ignored it. But then there was this from the AP.

"TOURIST MECCA"?!!!! "ALSO REVERED AS A PLACE OF WORSHIP"?!!! https://t.co/WxDmgj0jNS

— Rachel Fulton Brown (@RFultonBrown) April 19, 2019

Its as if they live in a parallel universe where everything is recognizable but off.