I forget where now, it might have been a carnival, a fair, or a zoo. But when I was young, I saw trained chickens play the piano. There was a little cage containing a rooster, a tiny piano, and a coin-operated light bulb. When a dime was inserted, the light would come on. That was the chicken’s signal to peck out a few bars of “Three Blind Mice” on the keyboard. When he finished the song, the light would go out, and the chicken would get a food pellet for his reward.

Watching the press try to cover religion is like watching that chicken play the piano. When the light goes on, they sit at their keyboards and peck out the same sequences of keys over and over and over again, with no understanding of the words they’re producing. And someone keeps feeding them.

In the coming days of interregnum, you will be treated to many news stories with sentences like this:

(AFP) Pope John Paul II, who died at age 84, revolutionized the papacy, contributing to the collapse of communism in eastern Europe but alienating many Roman Catholics with his conservative social views.

Huh? Conservative social views? But John Paul II, the author of Centesimus Annus, had visionary social views, even revolutionary in their way. Anything but conservative, surely. What can the author mean? Oh, there it is, in the ninth paragraph.

At the same time, Church reformers, the young, and Third World congregations in the grip of a devastating AIDS epidemic became dismayed at his refusal to give ground on contraception and the use of condoms.

Oh, that. But the ban on contraception isn’t a “conservative social view.” Being immutable Church doctrine, it’s not a ‘view.’ And it isn’t ’social,’ unless that’s the current euphemism for sexual. Finally, it’s only ‘conservative’ in the sense that the pope’s job is to conserve the deposit of faith until Christ comes again. And we read that His Holiness was “immensely popular,” except that “Church reformers, the young, and Third World congregations” were “dismayed”? Right. Nice work, AFP. Here’s your food, get back to your keyboard.

Let’s see what Reuters came up with.

Bishop William Oden, ecumenical officer for the United Methodist Church Council of Bishops said the pontiff “will be seen as one of Catholicism’s greatest popes…” But, he added, “he left a legacy of many unresolved issues, including women in the priesthood, celibacy and the call for greater lay involvement in decision making.”

No offense, Mr. Methodist bishop, but ordaining women is what you call a resolved issue. The doctrine was settled quite a few years back, by Jesus and the Apostles. No pope will be able to change this doctrine, or for that matter any doctrine, ever. That goes for contraception, abortion, divorce, gay marriage, and euthanasia, too.

On the other hand, priestly celibacy and the government of the Church are not doctrine, and could conceivably be changed some time in the future. In fact, there are hundreds of married Roman Catholic priests right now; I’ve met two of them. But this reporter never bothered to learn which of the pope’s ‘conservative views’ are doctrines, and which are not.

And naturally, if they mention that President Bush mourns John Paul II, they’ve got to trot out the late pope’s “opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq,” which is well known despite being utterly untrue.

Can you imagine a news story on, say, a state governor or a corporate CEO that showed this much ignorance of its subject? But the reporters and editors covering the Church know astonishingly little about what they are supposed to be covering. They just peck out the stories when the light comes on.