Pro-life advocates attend the annual March for Life in Washington Jan. 27, 2017. (CNS/Tyler Orsburn)
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This item is for all those bishops who attested to the integrity of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò: Vatican Insider reports that a Milanese court has ordered him to pay restitution to his brother in the order of 1.8 million euros for having confiscated all the proceeds of the family inheritance. This is the same brother that Viganò told Pope Benedict XVI needed his attention so desperately that he could not leave the Vatican and become nuncio in the U.S., even though the brother was actually in Chicago, not Rome. Is this what integrity looks like to Archbishops Coakley and Cordileone, to cite only two U.S. bishops' conference committee chairs elected this week who had attested to Viganò's trustworthiness when he issued his call for the pope to resign?
At the New York Review of Books, an article by Alexander Stille makes some good points, but since when does the NY Review of Books traffic in rumors such as Stille's, saying that Pope Paul VI was rumored to be gay?
At New York magazine, Sarah Jones looks at the 2018 midterms and concludes that pro-life Democrats are going extinct. Of course, she is talking about candidates, not voters. There are plenty of us pro-life Democrats out here, but Planned Parenthood and Emily's List act like the Holy Office of the Inquisition within the ranks of the party. Look at the Electoral College folks and ask yourself if this is a good trend for Democrats?
Relatedly, Bret Stephens at The New York Times recognizes the dangers for the Democrats in the midterm results. And, at The Washington Post, Ruy Teixeira uses a military metaphor to chart how the Democrats can succeed in 2020.
"Now I know I have a heart, because it's breaking," said the Tin Man. At USAToday, one of my heroes, Melinda Henneberger, announces she is leaving the Catholic Church. Hers is an act of conscience, and I respect it as such, even while I regret it and hope that someday her conscience will reach a different conclusion. Her reasons are entirely understandable, and every bishop should read her essay and ask themselves how they could have let something like this happen.
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At Working Class Perspectives, Juan Belman Guerrero of Georgetown's Kalmanovitz Center, looks at the revocation of temporary protected status (TPS) provisions by the Donald Trump administration and the harm that is being caused to these now long-established workers. And it isn't just Trump. Fox News whipped up the fear about "the caravan" and applauded the revocation of TPS for desperate countries, too.
Robert Shine, at New Ways Ministry's website, responds to my column about the language pertaining to LGBT issues in the final synod document. In the process, I think he makes my case for me better than I did myself the first time around.
[Michael Sean Winters covers the nexus of religion and politics for NCR.]
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