He continues to offer too little, too late.

With recent revelations of institutional cover-ups of sexual abuse in the United States and Chile, many Catholics had hoped that Francis, who has struggled throughout his tenure to grasp the enormity of the scourge, would use the wreckage of the Irish church as a backdrop to announce muscular new measures to protect children in his church.

Instead, on the first day of his two-day visit here for the ninth World Meeting of Families event, he offered a familiar account of his disgust at the sins of priests and bishops, disappointing advocates of abuse survivors who found his remarks too tepid and disconnected from concrete plans to take action.

He’s been talking a good line, in generics, from Day One, but remains sooo cautious in this matter. Why? Has someone got his number among the institutional conspirators that surround him?

If Illinois (that is, Chicago) goes this Pennsylvania-style route, one might say so goes the nation. It’s a town with a sign on it, Church Run It.

via abc7chicago.com

Ouch. Not exactly, with all respect to the busy headline writer.

The letter, after scrolling down:

I much appreciated Georgie Anne Geyer’s defense of the media in Sunday’s Sun-Times. Typically for her, it was a clear and concise statement of that defense.

I was surprised to see her close the column urging people to “start reading, and paying for and appreciating, real news as reported by newspapers — or just lean back and be had.”

This sounded too much as if the market ought to wise up and do the right thing before it’s too late. It’s like General Motors telling car buyers to wake up and smell the coffee and buy their cars.

Newspapers can do nothing about trends that treat them harshly or competition like cable news. All they can do is come up with a product that sells.

Jim Bowman, Andersonville

That is to say, generally speaking, the producer can bemoan the market, as people can bemoan the weather. But doing something about it? Nope. Look to the product, therefore, not the ingrates who don’t appreciate it.

As for making a splash, it’s what daily papers have been doing anyhow, for a long, long time. It’s been their bread and butter. My quarrel with the head is that it made explicit what I left unsaid.

And you know what? It’s the letter that’s to blame, and it’s my fault.

I think.

via Keep bicycles off Chicago’s busiest streets: letters (after scrolling down)

He told lay people it’s on them too.

The letter offered no specific plans, but the pope said all lay members of the church should take part in those efforts. He laid much of the blame for the sex-abuse crisis on excessive deference to the church’s hierarchy. [boldface added]

Is he kidding? Hardly. He really believes if lay people paid less deference to bishops — in what way, we ask — there would have been less covering up? I don’t know how he could.

He spared his own operation, complains Amnesty International’s Colm O’Gorman, an abuse survivor .

“There’s no acknowledgment of responsibility by the Vatican for what’s been perpetrated across the Catholic world. Yes, the pope talks about cover-up, but he doesn’t say who’s responsible for the cover-up. Yes, he talks about accountability, but he doesn’t say who’s going to be held to account and why.”

His own record, before this letter, included the Chilean fiasco in January, when he admitted disowned his behavior while blaming others.

The pope later said he had committed grave mistakes in the matter because he had been misled.

Trying to repair the matter, he called for resignations, then ignored a process he himself had established.

[The] pope has accepted five. But critics, including [abuse survivor Marie] Collins [former member of the pope’s child-protection commission, who resigned last year to protest Vatican inaction], objected that the bishops were allowed to resign rather than go through the process Pope Francis established in 2016 to discipline bishops who cover up sex abuse.

In other words, the more things change . . .

via Pope Expresses Shame Over Pennsylvania Report on Sex Abuse – WSJ

(For the full text of the letter, go here, keeping in mind Antonio on quoting Scripture to one’s purpose. Also consider the dangers and prevalence of  pious pap in what church people say.)

. . . and a familiar complaint:

“Everybody’s always lambasting the Catholic Church,” complained Elizabeth Rhodes, a former Fox News producer, as she had lunch with her daughter near the campus of Catholic University of America on Thursday.

“They don’t look at people in sports, the ones who are training kids in soccer. There are plenty of other religious communities, Jewish and others, where there’s sexual exploitation.

Any religion, any time, it’s a tragedy, but I hate this focus (on Catholics).”

I’m glad for it. How else get some change?

Also, focus on the church is a backhanded compliment, a recognition, intended or not, of what the church considers its role in the world, a beacon not just another socio-political gadfly.

via NOLA.com

A man who has decided to live out his term in this heartland diocese:

It is time to admit that there is a homosexual subculture within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church that is wreaking great devastation in the vineyard of the Lord.

Unless Francis finds a way to get him out of there before he’s 75.

via Vox Cantoris

And does this contribute to family solidarity? 

Americans Uproot Themselves for a New Job
Better job prospects near home, growing reluctance to disrupt children’s routines prompt more people to stay put

The share of job seekers relocating for new employment has fallen dramatically since the late 1980s, when more than a third moved to take new opportunities elsewhere, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. PHOTO: CHRIS DUNN/YORK DAILY RECORD/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Clearly it does. How important to the health of family life? You answer the question.

Trumponomics, my friend. It’s blowin’ in the wind.

via WSJ

Ball is in whose court?

Misbehaving Cardinals (and heads of state) can only be judged by the Pope, but lesser mortals are handled by the Roman Rota. This court, which we have all heard of, remains rather obscure in its functions, at least to most of us, but there is absolutely no reason why it should not act in a way analogous to the Star Chamber of old.

Some years ago now there was talk that the Pope was going to set up a special court to deal with Bishops who failed in their duty with regard to child protection. (This new court would presumably have taken over some of the jurisdiction exercised by the Rota.) But though this was announced, nothing happened.

Yes. Ball dropped again by the incumbent Holiness, busy perhaps with climate control and other things he can do nothing about.

via   CatholicHerald.co.uk

As the Wuerl turns:

Catholic writer Elizabeth Scalia, a prominent critic of the website, said: “This is the sort of action we usually see being taken by a Chairman of the Board, or a CEO, or a politician, and that’s very telling; it exposes a mindset that is geared toward management and administration, with a less-than-optimal pastoral sensibility on display. It’s all too much of the world.”

Later on Wednesday, the archdiocese deleted the website, saying it had become a “distraction”

From what, your eminence?

via  CatholicHerald.co.uk