Lyin’ for China, he says. No more simoleons for a while.

He’s home free.

CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s highest court has dismissed the convictions of the most senior Catholic found guilty of child sex abuse.

High Court Chief Justice Susan Kiefel announced the decision of the seven judges on Tuesday in the appeal of Cardinal George Pell. The decision means he will be released from Barwon Prison outside Melbourne after serving 13 months of a six-year sentence.

A Holy Week gift. Now, back to Rome, where he was putting Vatican finances in some kind of order?

Not clear, per this Wall St. Journal account:

Cardinal Pell has said privately that he wants to remain in Australia, near friends and family members, following his release from prison. But his continued presence in the country, where he is the most prominent symbol of the clerical-abuse crisis, might make it harder for church leaders to move beyond the scandals.

On the other hand, his…

Doubles down as public complainer.

A day after President Donald Trump accused him of “always complaining,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker kept up his critique of federal efforts to provide states with the gear needed to protect health care workers and treat patients in a pandemic that has now claimed more than 300 lives in Illinois.

“To anyone who wants a response to some of the blame-shifting coming out of the White House, all I have to say is, ‘Look at the numbers here in Illinois,’ ” Pritzker said Monday at his daily coronavirus news conference in downtown Chicago.

He has his audience, know what to do with it.

Gets tiresome.

By the learned and articulate Fr. Hunwicke.

The claim, explicit or implicit, that these things were ‘ordered by the Council’, is a wantonly and grossly mendacious retrojection. It bears the finger-prints of the Father of Lies himself. Most of the Council Fathers expected a very much more modest reform. That is why only four voted against the draft decree. The Fathers certainly did not anticipate the displacement, however optional, of the Roman Canon — a move which is not even hinted at in the Decree.

Sock-em bust-em.

You wanna feel good about our prospects? Don’t read this.

Remember the old “devout” tag for any Catholic who showed up for mass on Sunday? It’s back, for Joe the pro-choice candidate. 

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is ramping up its courtship of Catholic voters ahead of a likely November matchup against a devout Catholic Democrat, former Vice President Joe Biden.

Ignorance abounds among large portions of the mainstream. Last night Chicago’s NBC Channel 5 reader spoke of a not-Catholic evangelical church as having “held mass” in violation of  viral lockdown edicts.

Young woman said it with straight face, per her assignment.  It was the newswriter who provided the text.

By such a standard does this AP writer hang the tag on Joe B., who in some (few) dioceses would be refused communion.

Let us see how long the tag lasts this time around.