Very influential post, there with the other American, Wuerl:

4) Cardinal Donald Wuerl has announced he will be going to the Vatican to discuss his resignation, which implies it will soon be accepted by Pope Francis.

Not mentioned yet is Wuerl’s membership on the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops, where Pope Francis chose him to replace Cardinal Raymond Burke just nine months into this papacy.

Two Americans sit on the extremely prestigious congregation that selects all new bishops

On all counts a heavy hitter.

Doyle has interviewed 2,000 victims of clerical sexual abuse in the U.S. alone, and has been the only priest to testify in court in over 200 cases as to the legal liability of the Church.

He has developed policies and procedures for dealing with cases of sexual abuse by the clergy for dioceses and religious orders in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. As an expert in this area, he has delivered lectures and seminars for clergy and lay groups throughout the U.S.

In 1989 he appeared as an expert witness before the legislature of the State of Pennsylvania concerning that State’s child protective legislation. As an Air Force major stationed in Germany, and who also recently served as a military chaplain in Iraq, he holds 16 military awards and decorations for distinguished service.

He currently serves as a consultant/court expert in clerical abuse cases throughout the U.S., Canada, Ireland, Israel and the United Kingdom.

His onetime brothers in Christ chimed in:

 In June of 2003 Doyle was also issued an official commendation from the Dominican Fathers for his “prophetic work in drawing attention to clergy sexual abuse and for advocating the rights of victims and abusers.”

But he arguably and apparently paid for his good work in 2004 by losing his job of 30 years as an Air Force chaplain.

Dominican Fr. Thomas P. Doyle, who has been an outspoken critic of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ handling of the priest sex abuse crisis, was dismissed as a military chaplain by the Catholic Archdiocese for Military Services in September.

Doyle has made no public mention of the withdrawal of his “endorsement to serve,” by Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien Sept. 17, but knowledge of the incident, as well as some papers pertaining to it are now circulating.

The Dominican was apparently given no hearing, just notification of the withdrawal, “effective immediately,” according to a copy of O’Brien’s letter obtained by NCR.

O’Brien had called for daily mass in the three chapels which Doyle and another priest chaplain were serving. At the request of his immediate chaplain superior, a non-Catholic, Doyle wrote a private memo about “the legal force” of what O’Brien was asking.

The memo was sent by a Catholic liturgical minister to O’Brien, who (inaccurately, Doyle said) saw it as a denial of the centrality of the Eucharist in church life. O’Brien acted immediately to expel him from the chaplaincy.

Doyle was not angry.

“I have had an excellent military career as a chaplain,” [Doyle told NCR], “with commendations and citations. I have tried to be a good priest and chaplain. I’m saddened this misunderstanding is ending that career on this note. I do not have any hostile, angry or bitter feelings toward the archbishop or the military archdiocese.”

He’s being too kind, said some of his chaplain friends, “less sanguine” about the matter. Moreover, wrote NCR,

The withdrawal of Doyle’s endorsement to serve is regarded elsewhere as the long arm of those determined to punish Doyle for his outspokenness and leadership on the sexual abuse issue.

All too likely, I fear.

Cubbies’ legendary double-play combination has its unfortunate, to say the least, contemporary throwback as described in this analysis of who’s been on first in the upward movement of questionable bishops.

From Wash Post story in Chi Trib today, this ambiguous line:

States including Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York have now launched their own investigations.

“Including.” There are others who have launched etc.?

What Post trying to say is that these five states have launched etc. There are no others, so why “including”?

These are writers and complicit editors who doing a sentence are like the messy person who throws mud against a wall, trusting some will stick.

Sloppy, sloppy.

Sun-Times editorializes on Chicago archdiocese’s abuse-coverup problem.

Before the Archdiocese of Chicago ushered in an era of heightened transparency, Raymond Goedert, a top church official, followed the indefensible practice for dealing with priests who allegedly molested children.

He talked to church lawyers instead of calling the cops.

Standard practice. Clericalism at work there. Closed-shop mentality. Tamp it down, tamp it down. Do not besmirch the institution. Lawyer up.

The last was to defend the coffers whereby, as I heard a Chicago priest tell his (black) congregation in the ’60s, “It takes money to save souls.” Bald, atypical description of good works sponsored far and wide, we presume, not quite of how souls are saved.

As to where Bishop Goedert lives, well where do bishops live who did likewise over the years? One got kicked upstairs to a Vatican job and was buried last December with a protocol-directed solemn-high funeral mass in St. Peter’s Basilica at which Pope Francis did his duty with a blessing over the casket. The cardinals had come to bury him, not to praise him, a spokesman explained.

As to Bishop Goedert’s being praised by fellow priests, it’s because he has been a much appreciated leader among them, a straight talker, stand-up guy, who did what was standard, what was expected of him — which is the problem, of course, as the Sun-Times says.

I recall another priest who in the 2000’s from another pulpit remarked, almost in passing, that hard times were coming for priests, or words to that effect, referring to expected backlash because of widespread reporting of abuse. Legitimate concern, but beside the point at that time, even parochial.

A decade later from yet another pulpit, an out-of-town Jesuit preached up a storm in a parish mission in which along the way he bewailed the role of the press in besmirching the church with its sex-abuse stories. A good man, missing the point.

Now that’s clericalism.

In Chicago Tribune as part of an extensive interview:

“If you say that this is about homosexuality, then in the end what you’re really saying is that people who are gay are more prone to abuse children than straight people are, and that’s an injustice,” Cupich said.

“The research does not bear that out. And I’ve said that time and time again. Well, people are saying, ‘Well, you know you had so much of this abuse that was male-on-male.’ That’s true. But it was due not because homosexuals are more prone to injure kids, it was due to opportunity and also situational factors.”

Opportunity, sure. Access is more direct. Same for situational factors. He uses soft, less particular terms much favored by the bureaucrat. Specificity is for prosecutors and poets, who are more likely to give us a feel for things.

But he’s stuck with the report of 81% of priest victims being male. If they’d been female, they would still have been victimized? That’s a hard argument to make. An odd one anyhow.