Bishops had a choice to make about their new leaders:

BALTIMORE (Reuters) – New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan agreed on Monday with Pope Francis’ call for a heightened concern for the poor, but disputed the idea that U.S. bishops haven’t paid enough attention to the issue.

“That’s been a constant, constant concern of the conference of bishops since our founding in 1917,” said Dolan, the outgoing president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which is meeting this week to pick new leaders.

They made their choice:

(Reuters) – U.S. Catholic bishops elected two centrist conservatives as new leaders on Tuesday, an archbishop from Kentucky and a Texas cardinal, both of whom expressed “solidarity” with Pope Francis’ strong emphasis on the poor.

Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, 67, of Louisville, Kentucky was elected to a three-year term as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, while Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, 64, of the Galveston-Houston diocese, was chosen as vice president.

Archbp Kurtz explained a (slight?) shift in emphasis:

“I believe we are very much in solidarity with Pope Francis, and that is, his way of articulating clearly that we need not only to serve the voiceless and the vulnerable, but to be an advocate,” Kurtz told reporters after his election. [boldface added]

A spokesman for The Left registered approval:

Christopher Hale, senior fellow with [eight-year-old] Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, a progressive group that focuses on social justice issues, said he believes both Kurtz and DiNardo “will move the American Church in the direction Pope Francis desires.”

And for the vice-presidential choice as immigration-reformer:

Hale cited Kurtz’s “long pastoral experience” and praised DiNardo as a “tireless leader on immigration reform. He knows firsthand the problems of a broken immigration system.”

My question: How are these two on economics? Advocacy and activism for Jesus’ sake is admirable. But do they know economics?

Given the shift in marriage’s civil legal definition to include same-sex couples, it is time that Catholic conversations about the issue recognize that we are talking about two different realities when we use the word “marriage”—a legal contract on the civil side, and a sacramental covenant between two baptized people on the other—and adjust our practice accordingly.

Doing so would allow Catholics to have a fruitful intramural conversation about our theological understanding of the sacrament of marriage without at the same time being entangled in the question of whether families and couples that don’t fit that vision should have access to the legal benefits and duties that go with its civil parallel.

It would also acknowledge what should be obvious to everyone: Even if civil and religious marriage were once a single entity, the ties uniting those two dimensions have now almost completely unraveled. [boldface added]

They squander teaching time, among other things. Ditto Common Core.

Hallelujah, New York’s mayor is a bum!

The times in New York are about to get, as they say, “interesting.” Having elected a liberal dopier than David Dinkins and John Lindsay combined, New Yorkers are in for a wild ride.

It’s been pointed out that fully one-third of the city’s population is under age 24 and another third between 25 and 44. That means that at least a third has no memory of the Dinkins or Lindsay eras at all—and well over half have no memory of the financial crisis, the welfare spike, the crime wave, the crack epidemic, the Crown Heights riots, the “vibrant” old Times Square, and the whole panoply of scum and villainy that for the better part of two decades made New York so gosh-darn “colorful.”

And that’s only if you assume that everyone who lives here was born here. But New York’s fantastic run over the last 20 years has attracted a lot of out-of-towners, so the actual number of ignorant rubes in for the shock of their lives is higher. Well, all these transplants are about to discover, the hard way, that they aren’t in Kansas anymore.

Those who voted for him will get what they deserve. Alas, so with the others.

Illinois Democrats and three others have reformed marriage, badly in need of it of course. Now pensions? No.

Mayor Rahm and his bluster-filled top cop try this and that ineffective measure to “stop the violence” in black and Hispanic neighborhoods. NY City had the answer. One judge nixed it (no matter if it improves life in neighborhoods). But an appeals panel ruled her out of order and took her off the case.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has credited [‘Stop-and-Frisk’] with helping drive crime in New York City to record lows. But Democratic mayoral nominee Bill de Blasio repeatedly attacked the Bloomberg administration for using stop-and-frisk too often against minorities in high-crime neighborhoods, and said he would reduce its use.

Many have credited his outspoken stance against the policy with helping him win the Democratic primary election. He faces Republican Joe Lhota on Tuesday in the city’s general election. In a statement, Mr. de Blasio said he was disappointed by Thursday’s order. “We have to end the overuse of stop and frisk—and any delay only means a continued and unnecessary rift between our police and the people they protect,” he said.

City officials praised it. “We could not be more pleased with the Court’s findings,” New York City Corporation Counsel Michael A. Cardozo said in a news release. “In short, the ruling of unconstitutional practices is no longer operative, and that question will now receive a fresh and independent look both by the appeals court and then, if necessary, by a different trial court judge.”

This de Blasio is something else in the way of dogmatic far-leftism.

Once, the idea was the independent, self-reliant child.

Nearly 30 years ago, sociologist Robert Bellah and his team of co-authors in Habits of the Heart (1985) described the American parenting ideal as the production of independent children who “leave home,” both figuratively and literally. To never leave home, they wrote, violated the cardinal American virtue of self-reliance, contradicting self-understandings that individuals should “earn everything we get, accept no handouts or gifts, and free ourselves from our families of origin.” The essence of parenting was preparing children for just such a separation, reflecting the American belief that a meaningful life could be had only by breaking free from family and giving birth, in a sense, to oneself. “However painful the process of leaving home, for parents and for children, the really frightening thing for both would be the prospect of the child never leaving home.” Successful launching was the quest, and the empty nest, even though it required adjustment, the reward. If these were the habits of the parenting heart in the 1980s, American parents clearly have had a change of heart.

Now it’s different, we gather from the Culture of American Families Survey, conducted by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.

Two-thirds of American parents of school-age children now say they would “willingly support a 25-year-old child financially” if needed. Two-thirds say they would encourage a 25-year-old to move back home if he or she had difficulty affording housing. Parents still hope, of course, that their adult children will attain financial independence, but this aspiration is no stronger than the hope that children will retain “close ties with parents and family”—both are considered “essential” by about half of American parents. The quest for long-term connection with children has taken central stage. Parenting is still about formation, but its overriding concern has pivoted from formation to connection. One has only to consider parents’ responses to the statement “I hope to be best friends with my children when they are grown” to know something new is happening at home. Almost three-quarters of today’s parents of school-age children (72 percent) agree that they eventually want to be their children’s best friends; only 17 percent disagree. The successful formation and launching of children still matters; it is just that parents don’t want to launch them very far.

You don’t stop being a mother and a father, in other words.

more more more here at this U. of Virginia-based publication.