When all is said and done, he is the persecuted one.

Some conservatives have argued that Francis, who constantly denounces walls and champions the building of bridges, has shut them out by ignoring their formal complaints that he is diluting church doctrine and leading the faithful astray. They argue that when even his top Cardinals present him with such criticism, Francis responds with pink slips.

But Francis claimed that he respected such critics. “This is loyal,” he said. “This is to love the church.”

He should name them, even (maybe?) talk to them — and not to dress them down in private.

What he didn’t appreciate, he said, were “little closed groups” who refuse to hear an answer to their critiques, or worse, who feigned allegiance by “throwing a stone and hiding the hand.”

“I don’t like it when the criticism is under the table and they smile and show their teeth,” he said. “And then there is a knife in the back.”

Oh the bastard children! When will they ever learn?

He suffers, like contradicted fathers the world over.

via Pope Francis: ‘I Pray There Are No Schisms’ – The New York Times

He has a message for critics, but to newsies, not to them.

He discusses them with others, not deigning to engage them directly:

Some of Francis’ closest allies have in recent months publicly said that he is the target of a conspiracy by conservative enemies who are threatened by the more pastoral direction that he has taken the church.

One close adviser, Antonio Spadaro, a prominent Jesuit who edits the Vatican-vetted magazine, Civiltà Cattolica, has accused American Catholic ultraconservatives of making an unholy alliance of “hate” with evangelical Christians to help President Trump.

The ineffable Spadaro!

Francis plays the benign daddy, who knows and pities his children.

On the plane, Francis suggested that some of his most ardent critics were working out their own problems by lashing out.

Poor souls!

“We have to be gentle, gentle with the people tempted by these attacks, by these things,” he said. “Because they are going through problems and we should accompany them with gentleness.”

Their problems, not his. From his bully pulpit.

via New York Times

Vatican cops raid Vatican office — its most powerful, in charge of investigating corruption — cart off documents and computers.

It’s as if  a special prosecutor raided the DOJ. And major media yawns, editors looking at each other and asking what else is new? Nothing there there.

The Vatican News editorial sought to put a positive spin on the story, asserting that the raid showed the determination of the Vatican to root out financial corruption, and it “proves concretely that the processes begun by Pope Benedict XVI, and carried out by Pope Francis, really work.”

But that’s exactly what we don’t know. We know that an investigation has been undertaken: perhaps the same investigation that was thwarted two years ago. We know that it’s being taken seriously. We don’t know whether it will be allowed to run its full courses, or whether it will be thwarted again.

For now, I’m afraid, what we know is that the world’s mainstream media, presented with a sensational story from Rome, showed only tepid interest. Because a story about dysfunction in the Vatican, a story about corruption in the Roman Curia, is no longer big news.

Phil Lawler  on this at Catholic Culture.

Someone there is who does not like an auditor general. Two years ago one was forced out, arguably for trying to do his job.

. . .  consider this measure of the Vatican’s commitment to financial transparency: In June 2017, when [Libero] Milone resigned, the Vatican promised that a new auditor general would be appointed “as soon as possible.”

Heh.

More than two years later we’re still waiting. Instead of filling the post, in February of this year the Vatican issued new statutes for the office of the auditor general, trimming his powers.

Sure.

via Catholic Culture

A case of quis custodiet custodes.

Di Ruzza was appointed by Pope Francis in 2015 as director of the AIF [ Financial Information Authority], serving under the president, Rene Brulhart. The AIF, ironically, was established in 2010 to monitor Vatican financial affairs, to guard against graft and money-laundering. [emphasis added]

Plus:

Prior to his current assignment in the information section of the Secretariat of State, Msgr. Carlino [also suspended] was secretary to then-Archbishop (now Cardinal) Angelo Becciu, who until June was the sostituto, or deputy secretary of state, in charge of the daily administration of Vatican affairs.

Big job!

(He is now prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.) According to L’Espresso, the suspicious transactions that are now under investigation date back to the period when Cardinal Becciu was sostituto. [Again, emphasis added]

He had a say in who became a saint? What next?

via News Headlines | Catholic Culture

One for the ages here.

Dallas County sentenced former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger to 10 years in prison for murder after she shot and killed 26-year-old Botham Jean in his own apartment.

Guyger said she “mistook Jean’s apartment as her own and thought he was a burglar. Guyger lived one floor directly below Jean. She was off duty, but still in her uniform when she shot Jean.”

The final verdict for the case occurred this week.

Jean’s brother, Brandt,  provided a victim statement after the jury announced Guyer’s sentence. Brandt addressed Guyers, giving a powerful statement that truly represents Christ’s mercy and forgiveness.

Listen to his statement, which begins:

“I don’t want to say twice or the hundredth time…how much you’ve taken from us,” Brandt began. I think you know that. But I hope you go to God with all the guilt, all the bad things you’ve done in the past.”

“If you truly are sorry, I know, I can speak for myself–I forgive you, and I know if you go to God and ask him, he will forgive you.”

Etc.

In an elaborate comparison of a 2016 Hillary-Donald debate, a longtime liberal news sheet worked up a latter-day Moby-Dick story that made of Donald a thwarted Ahab, obsessed with his enemies the Clintons but unable to harpoon them.

D. had planned to confront H’s husband Bill with four female accusers, thus to embarrass the old womanizer and do him and his protector-enabler serious harm but had to settle with seating them in his family box.

The sheet’s conclusion:

Trump may have now fulfilled his destiny. Perhaps it, too, was foretold in some Fedallah’s prophecy. [Of doom for his captain, in Melville’s novel.]

But his party is now as shattered as The Pequod, [Ahab’s ship] and Trump’s presidential ambitions are sinking to the bottom of the sea. [Yow.]

How wrong can an insider source be? They were so sure and were themselves so thwarted a few months later, when Trump won, as to become instantly Ahab themselves, obsessed.

via Washington Monthly