Religious unconversion

LAT reporter William Lobdell writes today of his near-conversion to Catholicism and his aversion to further reporting on religion for the LAT. Lobdell describes an emotional coming-to-Christ moment at a weekend religious retreat in the mountains. And of lobbying for a job as the LAT's religion columnist/reporter. He writes of investigating and reporting on the abuse scandal in the Catholic Church and of taking instructions at Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church in Newport Beach, California in order to become a Catholic, which he doesn't complete. He also describes his gradual realization that nearly all religions have bad people in them and he concludes that he hasn't the faith to believe in any church. Finally, he says he asked the LAT to remove him from covering religion and to assign him to other reporting.

Lobdell isn't unique. Lots of other people have gone through what he went through, though not as a newspaper reporter/columnist. A journalist of any kind may find it impossible to believe in any religion because they so often deal with negatives that they become cynics. Lobdell may have become a cynic because he seems to give greater weight to negatives than positives about religion generally and the Catholic Church particularly. Bad priests and other religious in the Catholic Church make up a small percentage of the total but they get most of the news coverage. Good priests and the good works that the Catholic Church does mostly get ignored by the press, for reasons that are understandable. People who are considering joining the Catholic Church get a slanted view of the church if they rely on news media for information about the Church.