My friend Jack Smith, Fearless Archidocesan Paper Editor, writes from St. Louis

I made a post earlier today about funds drying up for VOTF and their serious financial straits. The Boston Globe has picked up on it and I’ve updated the post to include information on SNAP and their financial irregularities.

I don’t know if it is a particularly worthy post, but it does provide a lot of information that other more talented bloggers and news sources might run with. My background belief is that both groups have been funded by trial lawyers and now that money has dried up.

VOTF has never known what the hell they were doing. They began as a gut reaction to the Scandal and operated from the get-go on the George Lucas Theory of Force-Directed Action, meaning they just shut their eyes and lunged, trusting their feelings. Not surprisingly, people with no particular interest in seriously tackling the abuse problem instantly co-opted them and made them into a clearing house for every stupid lefty fad and trope to afflict the Church since 1969. Now they are gasping out their last breaths, having repeated all the tired Woodstockian crap that We are Church and FutureChurch and McChurch have blathered till the old coots got too feeble to change the Marty Haugen CDs.

Meanwhile, Benedict–their worst nightmare–seems to be quietly and methodically undertaking the reforms that have actually been needed. I’m reminded of a priest I know who was teaching himself Latin a few years ago. One of our trendier Dominicans (who, while the rest of have have spent forty years since 1969, had spent his time living 1969 forty times) asked with distaste, “Why do you want to learn Latin?”

My friend replied, “So that when the Reform is done I can talk to the Reformers.”