This is quite something that I missed the first (and 2nd, 3rd and many another) time around. A second Xavier Rynne come to report on and analyze pseudonymouslyinner workings of a major gathering of bishops.

The first XR, later revealed as an American theologian, did Vatican 2 beautifully, giving session-by-session detailed, just slightly gossipy, accounts run in The New Yorker, and I assure you, avidly consumed by Jesuit seminarians.

They came as each a Letter from Vatican City, the last of them a few years after council close, in 1968 about birth control. Now we have another, not so new “letter” writer, who began with coverage of the 2015 synod.

Dozens such letters followed. Today’s is Letters from the Vatican: #2, the second offering Reports and Commentary, from Rome and Elsewhere, on the “Meeting for the Protection of Minors.”

Do not, repeat not, bet the house on it.

Duchess of Sussex, eh? I say go back to Sussex where you belong.

I hear the sound of one hand clapping when I read about this.

Sample of what’s hot on the young-liberal circuit, where there’s apparently a yuck a minute and definitely lots of eager live audience approval:

Consider, for example, what Stephen Colbert did on The Late Show. Two days after Smollett claimed he was attacked, Colbert invited lesbian actress Ellen Page onto the CBS program to blame the Trump administration, and particularly Vice President Mike Pence, for “what happened the other day to Jussie.” 

After describing Pence’s conservative policies as having “hurt LGBTQ people so badly,” Page said: “Connect the dots. This is what happens if you are in a position of power and you hate people and you want to cause suffering to them — you go through the trouble, you spend your career trying to cause suffering, what do you think is going to happen?”

This was either deliberate slander, or evidence of insuperable stupidity, but neither Colbert nor Page have acknowledged any error, because they don’t have to. Presumably, the advertisers and executives at CBS have no problem paying Colbert to falsely blame Republicans for a “hate crime” that turns out to be a hoax, and Page knows that every liberal in Hollywood will applaud her “courage” for insulting the vice president.

She knows her audience.

Second thought: Her performance was not comedic —  Let’s be clear, she prefaced her remarks — but bathetic.

Or: To adapt Oscar Wilde’s reaction after reading Dickens’ description of the death of a lead character in The Old Curiosity Shop, “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.”

Trump’s got the hang of it, does he not?

Hitler youth for open borders.

Rogues’ gallery.

We have her, Lara Logan, foreign correspondent for CBS’s 60 Minutes, who tore into mainstreamers:

“Although the media has historically always been left-leaning, we’ve abandoned our pretense — or at least the effort — to be objective, today. … We’ve become political activists, and some could argue propagandists, and there’s some merit to that,” [she told an interviewer.]

More, even to using the f-word.

Logan added, “Although the media has historically always been left-leaning, we’ve abandoned our pretense — or at least the effort — to be objective, today. … We’ve become political activists, and some could argue propagandists, and there’s some merit to that.”

“Responsibility for fake news begins with us,” said Logan, referring to journalists and reporters.

Mainstreamers’ watchdog chewed her up once.

Logan recalled that Media Matters for America (MMFA) targeted her following a 60 Minutes report she filed related to the September 11, 2012, Islamic terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. “I made one comment about Benghazi,” remarked Logan, “[Then] I was targeted by Media Matters for America, which was an organization established by David Brock, who has dedicated himself to the Clintons. It was their known propaganda organization.”

In line of duty, she suffered greatly.

In February of 2011, Logan was sexually assaulted — and nearly murdered — by numerous men in Cairo, Egypt, while reporting on the ousting of then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. She shared some details of the attack’s nature.

“Piece by piece, they tore all my clothing off, and just tore my body almost to pieces, and tore my insides apart,” recounted Logan. “I saw people taking pictures. … I remember fighting, being raped, and being able to sometimes push people away, and then I remember just realizing that there were too many of them — and it was over and over and over again — and that there was always someone else when you could fight one person.”

Now what?

Towards the end of the interview, Logan quipped, “This interview is professional suicide for me.”

We hope not.