So the Kavanaugh assault accusation story got a bit stranger today, as his accuser has now said that she’s unwilling to fly to D.C., and must be granted sufficient time to drive there from California instead. Separately, CNN reported that a friend described her as having long been unwilling to fly due to a fear of enclosed spaces, which, that friend said, Ford explained in a conversation “late last month,” was due to having been attacked, something which also caused... Read more
In the Tribune today, “Illinois priest nearing citizenship now faces deportation. Because he mistakenly voted.” (Mini-rant: I’m getting really tired of these multi-sentence headlines.) The Rev. David Boase, an Episcopalian priest who came to Illinois from England 14 years ago, is headed towards being deported as a consequence of having admitted, in the process of applying for citizenship, that, back in 2006, he had voted. Boase, who migrated 14 years ago to Illinois to serve Episcopal churches, told USCIS he was... Read more
The accuser of Brett Kavanaugh now has a name: Christine Blasey Ford. And the details, such as they are, are now in a Washington Post article: While his friend watched, she said, Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his hand... Read more
From the Wall Street Journal: “China and Vatican to Sign Landmark Deal Over Bishops.” This wasn’t paywalled when I read it earlier today; it is now, but the first paragraph is the new news part of it, and the rest mostly context: China and the Vatican are set to sign a landmark agreement later this month ending a long struggle between Beijing’s Communist rulers and the pope over who chooses the leaders of Catholicism in the world’s most populous country,... Read more
Before I get to the most recent of the Catholic Cover-up Crisis news (because, again, this is what’s the greater concern), here’s a bit of a step back. Longtime readers will know that I became Catholic in grad school, after having grown up in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, a branch of Lutheranism which, in contrast to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is, or was, in the incarnation I experienced it, pretty fundamentalist — creationist, ultra-traditionalist in terms... Read more
Because it’s not really a “sex abuse crisis” – it’s the cover-up which matters much more. But I’ve been collecting links which I’ve been intending to put into a coherent piece, but I’m more or less giving up on that in favor of just sharing with readers what’s come across my facebook and twitter feed. First, a preface: I am not an expert on the Vigano accusations. His opponents are taking the strategy of discrediting bits and pieces, or of... Read more
It strikes me that defenses of Catholicism such as https://twitter.com/mpakaluk/status/1039104362147143680 which came across my twitter feed, increasingly have as a theme, the core idea that this isn’t the first time bishops and possibly even the Pope have been shown to have feet of clay, both respect to the individual bishops who have reassigned abusive priests without even any particular repentance afterwards or who have been abusers themselves, and with respect to the bulk of the bishops who are dragging their... Read more
So here I am, three months into my “freelancing” venture, though, to be sure, I haven’t been working full-tilt over the summer, what with the kids home from school and all, which means that the one “independent contractor”-type project that I have has gotten deferred long past what I intended. But I thought it would be useful for me to do a check-in and perhaps interesting for readers as well. First, the “family” part: My oldest son is away at... Read more
Last week, I wrote that Cardinal Cupich was taking the satirical Babylon Bee as an instruction manual, by shrugging off the accusations of the Vigano letter because the Pope has more important things to do. This weekend the Cardinal made the news again, by ordering every parish to read aloud a statement in which he defends himself against accusations of indifference to child abuse. Reports are that parishes complied. (I was out of town this past weekend, though I’m told... Read more
Fr. James Martin, as many readers will know, is a Jesuit priest best known for promoting acceptance of, as he would say it, the LGBT community. He’s always been coy about what he believes specifically, and whenever Facebook-friends would share his posts on his Facebook page, I noticed that many of them tended to be links to controversial statements in which Martin would comment cryptically, never quite saying anything that would clearly contradict Catholic moral teaching, never quite affirming it,... Read more
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