The U.S. Catholic Bishops have been in the middle of a number of tough fights this year and in a contentious struggle with American nuns who are under fire from the Vatican. Yet they still manage a pretty impressive approval rating.

As this graphic from the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life shows, 24 percent of American Catholics say they "very satisfied" with the hierarchy and another 46 percent say they are "somewhat satisfied" for an overall 70 percent approval.

On the other hand, the American nuns get a hefty 83 percent approval rating -- 50 percent "very satisfied," and 33 percent "somewhat satisfied.

Maybe ordination isn't everything?

PS: This poll was from last summer, so who knows what the rough-and-tumble presidential campaign did to the hierarchy's numbers.

In what could signal a marked change of tone following a bruising campaign struggle beween the Catholic hierarchy and the Obama administration, New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has sent President Obama a message congratulating him on his reelection.

Dolan asked first that Obama pursue the "common good," a concept both the church and the administration stress, and that he work to protect "the most vulnerable" -- from the poor to the unborn to the immigrant. The cardinal also reminded the president about the church's positions against abortion and gay marriage, and on behalf of religious freedom. 

Dolan then concluded with a plea to "help restore a sense of civility to the public order, so our public conversations may be imbued with respect and charity toward everyone." After the many fiery denunciations of Obama from conservative Catholics, including many bishops, that plea could have an audience beyond the Oval Office.

Here is the text of Cardinal Dolan's message:

Dear President Obama,

In my capacity as President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, I write to express my congratulations on your re-election as President of the United States. The people of our country have again entrusted you with a great responsibility. The Catholic Bishops of the United States offer our prayers that God will give you strength and wisdom to meet the difficult challenges that face America.

In particular, we pray that you will exercise your office to pursue the common good, especially in care of the most vulnerable among us, including the unborn, the poor, and the immigrant. We will continue to stand in defense of life, marriage, and our first, most cherished liberty, religious freedom. We pray, too, that you will help restore a sense of civility to the public order, so our public conversations may be imbued with respect and charity toward everyone.

May God bless you and Vice President Biden as you prepare for your second term in service to our country and its citizens.

Sincerely yours,

Timothy Cardinal Dolan

Archbishop of New York

President

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

And from the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI also sent best wishes and prayers:

In his Message, the Holy Father offers his best wishes to the President, and promises continued prayers on his behalf. The Pope assures the re-elected President that he will ask God to help him in his high responsibility to the country and the international community. The Pope also says he will pray that the ideals of freedom and justice, which guided the founders of the United States of America, might continue to shine through the nation as it makes its way in history.

The Director of the Press Office of the Holy See, Federico Lombardi, SJ, commented:

All hope that President Obama, confirmed in his office after the elections, will respond to the expectations of his fellow citizens; that he might serve right and justice for the benefit and growth of every person, in respect for those human and spiritual values, which are essential to the promotion of the culture of life and religious freedom, which are ever so precious in the tradition and culture of the American people, so that that people might be capable of finding the best ways to promote the material and spiritual welfare of all; so that it can effectively promote integral human development, justice and peace in the world.

If you can wait in line for hours on Chick-fil-A Day, you can definitely stand the cold for a couple hours when it matters #RomneyRyanFTW

Her name is Melissa -- Melissa Christ. They met at a Young Hebrews mixer in Bethlehem. At the New Yorker, Paul Rudnick has the scoop. (Spoiler alert: Rudnick is a humorist):

Then Jesus came over and introduced himself and we chitchatted about everything, from keeping the Sabbath to how we both felt really sorry for the lame. Then I asked Jesus about his family, and he said, “My father is a carpenter,” and I could feel myself getting all flushed as I immediately thought, Hello, new coffee table.

After that, Jesus and I started seeing each other, although Jesus’ being unemployed did start to bother me, and finally one night I asked him, “So what are your plans?” And he replied, “Well, I’m thinking about inventing Gentiles.” “Gentiles?” I asked. “What are those?” “You know,” Jesus answered. “Jews who drink.”

Whenever Jesus would start telling me about this whole new-religion business, I would get nervous and ask, “But why isn’t the Torah enough?” And then Jesus would look deep into my eyes and smile and murmur, “First draft.” Which would make me even more nervous, until one afternoon Jesus sat me down on a rough-hewn bench and said, “All I’m talking about is everyone loving and respecting each other, and sharing the Lord’s bounty and bringing peace to the world.” And, while I was definitely intrigued, a tiny voice inside my head kept repeating, “Don’t lend him money.”

Read the rest here.

Photo credit: Istvan Banyai's cartoon accompanying Rudnick's essay

(RNS) So there has been much celebration at Fordham University for next week's "Catholic Comedy Slam" featuring Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert and New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who will talk about their famous sense of humor and their well-known Catholic faith.

(Oh, and popular author and Jesuit priest, Father James Martin, will moderate the panel, lest I forget the lower clergy, as we fondly call them...)

But there has also been much consternation about the media blackout of the event. Only those who get tickets will get to enjoy the Sept. 14 discussion in the Bronx -- no media, no videos, no tapes. Except what enterprising students might record or tweet, natch.

But now there is at least this cool logo for the event, shown here for the first time, the creation of Fordham student Tim Luecke.

So what do you think? Does this caricature make the Cardinal look fat? It gives Father Jim more hair than I think he actually has. But I'm not one to gloat in that regard.

Anyway, it's pretty brilliant in my book.

(RNS) The Obama campaign on Monday (Aug. 13) unveiled its "Catholics for Obama" team for 2012 in an effort to burnish its credentials with a key voting bloc whose leaders have increasingly voiced their opposition to the administration over issues like gay marriage and abortion rights.

The rollout had been months in the making and long expected, given the importance of the Catholic vote -- nearly one quarter of the electorate, concentrated in battleground states.

But it also comes on the heels of Mitt Romney's announcement on Saturday that he was picking Paul Ryan, a Catholic known for budget-cutting ideas that have drawn fire from many Catholic leaders, as his running mate on the Republican presidential ticket. The various developments could make the debate over Catholic teachings on social justice and the common good an important subtext in the November election.

Obama's 21-member team includes a number of Catholics who are well-known to the public but not always welcome to the hierarchy, such as Victoria Reggie Kennedy, the widow of Sen. Edward Kennedy. Last May, a Catholic college in Massachusetts was told by the local bishop to bar Kennedy from delivering a commencement address.

Also on the committee are politicians like Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro of Connecticut, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland, who pushed for that state's law legalizing gay marriage.

In addition, there are Catholic scholars and theologians: Sister Jamie Phelps, director of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University in New Orleans; Nicholas Cafardi, a canon and civil lawyer who teaches at the Duquesne Law School in Pittsburgh; Thomas Groome of Boston College, a theologian and popular writer on the church; and Stephen Schneck, director of the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at Catholic University of America.

“What's distinctive about Catholics and politics is our ancient idea of the common good," Schneck said. "We measure that by how the working class and poorest among us are doing. Government, for us Catholics, is obliged to be caring. It's obliged to serve and to help build the country as whole. President Obama ‘gets’ this at a deep level."

Schneck seemed to be taking aim at Rep. Ryan's conroversial budget plan -- a focus of Democratic efforts since Ryan was named on Saturday -- when he stressed that the GOP ticket "embraces policies that would decimate programs that serve the vulnerable and seniors while giving more tax cuts to the wealthy."

The announcement of course made no mention of the controversial birth control mandate for health insurers that has focused the bishops longstanding anger at Obama and turned them into one of his most vocal opponents.

So far, however, the hierarchy's efforts do not seem to have swayed Catholics, who often agree with the bishops on some issues but still tend to support Obama over Romney. And in October, just before the election, Obama is set to appear with Romney at a high-profile charity dinner hosted by New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan -- a platform some conservatives fear could give Obama a boost with Catholics. That has led to unusual criticism of Dolan from the right.

Obama's Catholic sponsors provide an interesting contrast to the "Catholics for Romney" team that was unveiled two weeks ago. The six national co-chairs are all former ambassadors to the Vatican.

Here are the "Catholics for Obama" national co-chairs:

Former State Representative Polly Baca, Colorado
Ambassador Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, Washington, DC
Representative Xavier Becerra, California
Nicholas Cafardi, Pennsylvania
Former Representative Kathy Dahlkemper, Pennsylvania
Representative Rosa L. DeLauro, Connecticut
Senator Dick Durbin, Illinois
Miguel Foster, Michigan
Thomas Groome, Massachusetts
Representative Marcy Kaptur, Ohio
Victoria Reggie Kennedy, Massachusetts
Victoria Kovari, Michigan
Sister Jamie Phelps, Louisiana
Governor Martin O’Malley, Maryland
Former Representative James Oberstar, Minnesota
Lawrence Parks, Washington, DC
Fred Rotondaro, Washington, DC
Representative Tim Ryan, Ohio
Stephen Schneck, Washington, DC
John Sweeney, Maryland
Mark Tuohey, Washington, DC

The Obama campaign said that state co-chairs will be announced in the coming weeks. 

First and most important, I want to flag the citation of Christianity Today editor Mark Galli’s essay in the piece. Mark wrote to me expressing, in characteristically charitable tone and form, his objection as to how I had lifted one line from his piece on the massacre to anchor the phenomenon of Christians who wanted to focus on the spiritual dimensions of the evil act rather than policy prescriptions like gun control laws.

Mark wrote to me:

“You will note, however, that I said that gun control issues do indeed need to be sorted out by experts, some of whom we can assume are religious, some of whom are not. I never suggested that such sorting out is a distraction for believers. I merely said that in this one piece, I was interested in discussing another line of thought.”

“I was not addressing the penultimate steps we can take to check evil -- something you rightly call for implicitly in your piece -- but only the romantic idealism that suggests that there may be a final political solution to the problem of mass murder. With the best laws in place -- laws we need to enact -- we still need to trust the transcendent God when evil will inevitably happen again.”

Mark’s essay does indeed range widely, and should be read in its entirety. While I still think my article piece legitimately picked up a theme reflected in his essay, that theme was more explicit and focused in the responses of others. I certainly could have cited some others to better effect. 

The SBC’s Albert Mohler, for example, said “the moral madness of mass homicide can never be truly explained” and said Christians must focus on the hard theological questions: 

“We must pray for our nation and communities. And we must pray that God will guard ourselves from evil — especially our own evil. And we must point to the cross. What other answer can we give?”

Folks like NOM’s Maggie Gallagher echoed that view, saying laws aren’t going to “solve” the problem of evil and evil actions like those of suspect James Holmes.

And Mitt Romney himself said it wasn’t gun control laws but “Changing the heart of the American people may well be what's essential, to improve the lots of the American people."

And of course there was the follow up story we had about Father Dwight Longenecker’s speculation that it was the Devil, or Evil, that made James Holmes do it. And that the tragedy was about spiritual combat that public policy cannot really address.

In any event, any of these examples may have been better examples than Mark Galli’s.(And, I would add, any of them were more theologically sophisticated than Mike Huckabee's or Louie Gohmert's, IMHO.)

But I do think they all represent a broader counterpoint to the “other” religious reaction, which was to highlight what believers can do – beyond the priority of prayer – to try to prevent a recurrence of such violence and to help create a culture that does not reflexively resort to guns to start or stop a killing.

And that leads to my second follow-up point, which is whether the religious debate in the aftermath of the Aurora shooting was a replay of the old “Faith vs. Works” debate, one that is often traced to the divisions that developed during and after the Reformation. (Though it goes back to the New Testament.)

Nowadays, this debate doesn’t fit into the neat Catholic-Protestant divide that some would like, and that may or may not have been a genuine divide centuries or decades ago. (Indeed, one of the great successes of the oft-maligned modern ecumenical movement has been to clarify the many misconceptions and stereotypes about the “Faith vs. Works” debate.)

Witness the fact that you had Father Jim Martin, a Jesuit priest, sparking the debate by asserting that gun control was a “pro-life” issue while other Catholics disagreed strongly.

Or that you had Baptist Bob Parham at Ethics Daily, titling a column “Faith Without Works Kills,” pointing to the lack of a policy response as strong as the prayer response from Christian leaders – including Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

So is this "Policy or Evil" argument just religious folks reacting from their usual political stances -- or a reflection of a genuine and important theological debate? And must it be an "either/or" or can it be a "both/and" approach?

And does Mark Galli's essay do that for us?

Lots of folks are, and perhaps understandably, at this point in the nuptial season. There is all the hype and commercialism, not to mention the fact that the focus on the “big day” can make it seem as though many couples are just ticking off sacramental boxes in order to get the church wedding of their dreams.

Well, here’s an antidote for all of that, I promise. Michael Kelly writes in last week’s New York Times about his own daughter’s wedding — a decade after Bridget Kelly was nearly murdered:

Bridget started her teaching career at Fort Hood, the Army post next to Killeen, Tex. On June 21, 2002, after she picked up a friend from a late flight and dropped her off, Bridget returned to her apartment.

A man who had lurked in the parking lot kicked down her door, abducted and robbed her, and drove her to a secluded field. He raped her, shot her in the back three times and drove off.

She had terrible internal wounds (and would need a colostomy bag all summer), but her legs worked. She somehow made it 200 yards to the home of her first hero that night. Frank James, an Army veteran, called 911 after recognizing the gunshot wounds, covered her with a blanket and comforted her until rescuers arrived. Her life was saved in six hours of surgery at the Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood.

The crime and Bridget’s story, first reported in The Omaha World-Herald and The Killeen Daily Herald, soon drew wider interest because she wanted the rape to be reported in the articles with her name as the victim. At the request of the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, she returned to the field where she was attacked and made a video that was shown statewide as part of a public awareness campaign. Her message — that she had done nothing wrong and bore no stigma or shame — resonated with many.

And it led to a beautiful love story, that culminated in a marriage, and a fine piece of writing by her father, a columnist at The Omaha World-Herald. Who needs a toast when you have this?

Read it all. He ends with the "Where was God?" question, that so many have asked after the Aurora, Colo., shooting massacre. Bridget has one answer. 

Photo: The father and the bride, via The NYT.

Political campaigns are all about generating publicity and public support, but Vice-President Biden seems to have upended conventional wisdom -- not a first for him, of course -- by making an under-the-radar visit to the motherhouse of the Sisters of St. Francis in Dubuque during a two-day campaign trip to Iowa last week.

Why the secrecy, Joe? These days everybody loves the nuns. Yet while the media covered Biden's various events as he appealed to the usual constituencies in the battleground state, there was nary a word about his stopover last Tuesday (June 26) to bring dessert to the sisters. 

“The Vice-President got to know the sisters through an old friend in Dubuque, during a previous trip to the city,” said a campaign official, speaking on background. "This was nothing more than a private, casual reunion of friends of faith over ice cream and cookies." There were about 150 people at the gathering.

The news just surfaced along with this campaign photo of Biden greeting some of the sisters. And this would be controversial?

Well, maybe. Consider that American nuns who by and large run the nation's Catholic hospitals have been major supporters of President Obama's health care reform, and that they have locked horns with the Catholic bishops over that law and the contraception mandate and a number of other issues.

Not to mention the Vatican crackdown on the American leadership of the nuns, who Rome says are spending too much time on social justice and not enough preaching about sexual ethics, of the orthodox variety.

And of course the "Nuns on the Bus" are just wrapping up their tour to highlight what they see as a gap -- or chasm, actually -- between Republican budget-cutting policies and Catholic teaching, not to mention fiscal probity. A number of bishops view speaking out on economic issues as "partisan" -- that is, against the Republican Party.

Bonus factoid for those who enjoy their inside baseball, be it politics or Catholicism: Sr. Pat Farrell, the nun who as head of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious is tasked with talking to the Vatican about the attempted takeover of the LCWR, is based in the Dubuque motherhouse.

It is not known if Farrell was there to meet the vice-president. Leaders of the Franciscan community declined requests for comment or details about Biden's visit, but I'm sure plenty of others will be happy to fill in the blanks.

Iowa congressman Tom Latham seemed to think so, as the House Republican reacted with a laugh and a quip on Monday morning when he and conservative radio show host Jan Mickelson were discussing the Ryan budget and the "Nuns on the Bus" tour that is highlighting the gap between the GOP plans and Catholic teaching:

MICKELSON: There’s a bus full of nuns headed towards Washington to lobby against the Ryan plan. Do you guys, do you have any power to pull the Nuns on the Bus over and pistol whip them?

LATHAM: It’s always fun to be on your show. [Laughs]

Har har.

Faith in Public Life has the exchange (H/T NCR). Audio below.

Okay, so pistol whipping isn't exactly a "war" on women. More like a police action. But this probably isn't the kind of rhetoric the Republicans need at this point.

Or maybe the sisters need to pack heat?

While we wait the Supreme Court’s verdicts on health care and immigration, let us ponder other questions. Such as:

Should gay Mormons marry women? Some say it’s an option. Others, not so much.

An Islamist from the Muslim Brotherhood has won Egypt’s first free presidential election, but Mohamed Morsi will have his work cut out for him after decades of authoritarian rule, and with an assertive military.

Can Fox fix what ails Vatican? The Holy See is hiring Fox News’s man in Rome, Greg Burke, to help with media relations. Oh, and he is a member of Opus Dei.

This move, a week after Pope Benedict’s No. 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone Silvio Berlusconi (see comments), accused the media of trying "to imitate Dan Brown" in their coverage of the VatiLeaks scandal. (It was the work of the Devil, Bertone said. Same thing, no?)

Greg is a real pro, good man. But good luck, dude. You’ll need it.

Our own man in the Vatican separates fact from fiction in the leaks scandal.

The pope met with several of his cardinal over the weekend to “restore serenity and trust” in the Curia. He will continue to try to get on top of the crisis, says Edward Pentin.

Monsignor William Lynn was convicted in the landmark verdict in the Philadelphia clergy sex abuse trial, but the vaunted archdiocese has plenty of other problems to face.

Was the trial a watershed for American Catholicism?

Did the late Jesuit and ex-congressman Robert Drinan grope a 19-year-old woman who grew up to be Slate’s advice columnist?

Closing the SCOTUS loop: 50 years ago today the high court said prayer in public school was unconstitutional. Omens?

Finally, Lonesome George (pictured above) is dead after a long and apparently celibate life. He was the last of his kind. RIP.

David Gibson

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       Photo of Lonesome George via The National Post.       

The Vatican's controversial campaign to rein in the American nuns has been led by an American, Cardinal William Levada, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, also known as the Holy Office or the Inquisition, in olden times.

The job of Grand Inquisitor, as it is sometimes called, is a thankless one -- kind of the bad cop to the pope's good cop. You are in charge of enforcing orthodoxy with all the politesse of a bureaucrat and little of the human touch of a pastor.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger headed the CDF for more than 23 years before he was elected pope, and earned such monikers as God's Rottweiler, the Panzerkardinal, and others. Ratzinger's rightwing fans loved the nicknames, actually, and Ratzinger -- now Benedict XVI -- didn't do much to dissuade such characterizations.

But the American nuns may have the last laugh, or at least a momentary chuckle, if it turns out that Cardinal Levada winds up leaving his job before they are kicked out of their.

Vaticanologist Marco Tosatti of the Italian daily La Stampa reports that by the end of June, Pope Benedict will accept Levada's resignation and will appoint a German bishop, Gerhard Mueller, to replace him.

The move would not be a complete surprise: Levada turned 76 last week and has reportedly asked to return to the U.S. Being the "bad cop" of Catholicism is a powerful and influential position, but it can also be a drag. Moreover, as pope, Ratzinger remains the de facto chief theologian at the Vatican. Levada has never had or desired the influence or stature that Ratzinger had under the late John Paul II.

Ratzinger, too, had pleaded with John Paul to let him retire to a quiet life of writing back in Regensburg, the Bavarian university town where Ratzinger still owns a house with his brother, Msgr. Georg Ratzinger, his only surviving relative. But John Paul knew his life was coming to a close and asked the German cardinal to stay on. And when JP2 died, Ratzinger was unexpectedly elected pope. Benedict continues the writing projects he wanted to complete, but in the confines of the apostolic palace, which is not such a fun place these days.

It's unlikely that Levada would be elected pope if the 84-year-old Benedict were to die (or, less likely, retire). But what will his retirement in the States be like? (Read John Allen's NCR exclusive with Levada on the nuns and various topics, to get an insight into Levada's thinking.)

Above all, what will become of the Vatican campaign on the nuns?

One interesting indication is that, as Marco Tosatti notes, Bishop Mueller (he'd be made a cardinal is short order if he gets the post at the CDF, known in the Vatican as La Suprema) is a great friend of the controversial liberation theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez.

Go figure.

Liberal New York Times columnist Bill Keller and conservative Catholic League crusader Bill Donohue have found it -- in Wild Bill's latest book, "Why Catholicism Matters."

As Keller (a self-described "collapsed Catholic," a nifty neological step beyond "lapsed" Catholic) puts it in his op-ed today:

His [Donohue's] point: “Quite frankly I believe, as Pope Benedict the XVIth said just before he became pope, that maybe a smaller church would be a better church.”

Much as I wish I could encourage the discontented, the Catholics of open minds and open hearts, to stay put and fight the good fight, this is a lost cause. Donohue is right. Summon your fortitude, and just go. If you are not getting the spiritual sustenance you need, if you are uneasy being part of an institution out of step with your conscience — then go. The restive nuns who are planning a field trip to Rome for a bit of dialogue? Be assured, unless you plan to grovel, no one will be listening. Sisters, just go. Bill Donohue will hold the door for you.

So Bill and Bill have something in common with the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which has been running their ad telling Catholics "It's Time to Quit the Catholic Church." (Oh, and start sending your money to the FFRF...That ad space is expensive.)

Two cavils:

One, pace Bill and Bill, the Catholic Church isn't the Kiwanis Club. Theologically and sociologically and historically it's all a bit deeper and more complex than that. It's an imprecise analogy, but think of it like being an American. I suspect the United States hasn't become the nation that Bill Keller would want, even under Barack Obama. But should he decamp to Canada? Or Sweden? Or what would be his ideal home?

Two, if all those disgruntled liberal Catholics should leave, what about all those disgruntled conservative Catholics? You know, the ones who dismiss papal teachings and church doctrines on contraception and social justice. Not to mention the ones who reject the reforms of the Second Vatican Counci. Oops, I forgot -- they already left. They're called the Lefebvrists. But even they're coming back.

Yes, a lot Catholics are leaving. Often for very understandable reasons. But it's not always so simple, or easy.

As the novelist Flannery O'Connor put it: “You have to suffer as much from the church as for it."

It's part of the human, and Catholic, condition. It's also part of the human, and Catholic, condition to try to alleviate that suffering, in the name of humanity and Catholicism, when you find it in the world and in the church.

* The original Catholic Common Ground, proposed by the late Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, was also controversial, but a bit more Catholic, and catholic.

John Carr, who has been the point man for the American bishops on social justice issues for the past 25 years, is leaving staff of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, reports Michael Sean Winters at NCR.

Carr's departure would be a serious loss for the U.S. bishops at any point, but it is particularly critical now given the current and coming budget battles in Washington over the fate of social programs, and the wider national debate over balancing individual rights and the common good.

His resignation also comes at a time when social justice issues, rather than being considered co-equal and complementary parts of the Catholic witness, are often seen as at odds or competing for oxygen with the bishops' larger culture war battles -- issues like gay marriage, contraception, and religious freedom.

Moreover, Catholics have increasingly been debating the very meaning of Catholic social teaching. Conservative Catholics in public life, like Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP budget chair and Catholic disciple of Ayn Rand, have been trying to reorient Catholic social teaching toward a more individualistic stance and in Washington, at least, they seem to be moving the needle in their direction.

In his farewell letter, Carr, head of the USCCB Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, said he will be a visiting Fellow this fall at the Kennedy School at Harvard University. He said he wants to "act on my conviction that new efforts are needed to help Catholic laity act on Catholic principles on human life and dignity, economic and social justice, religious freedom and solidarity, care for creation and peace."

"Beyond the fall," Carr continued, "I believe there is an urgent need for more effective efforts to share the breadth and substance of Catholic Social Teaching. With so much confusion and conflict over religion in public affairs, we need new efforts and vehicles to call Catholic lay men and women to principled public engagement and to advance a faithful and positive vision of Catholic participation in the public square."

In a letter to the bishops announcing Carr's retirement, USCCB general secretary, Msgr. Ronny Jenkins, said he would start a national search for Carr's replacement:

"We are dedicated to conducting a search that results in excellent candidates with fidelity to the teaching and mission of the Church and unwavering commitment to assisting the work of the Bishops in this most important area."

Photo: Spero News

I'm not sure why. Father Andrew swears he is not being partisan, and after all, he's just talking about religious freedom. Oh, and gay marriage. And its connection to the socialist threat. And about how "conscience and private property are not human ideas -- they come from God." And they are being threatened.

Money quote: "Socialism is a foreign threat to our democracy! I am tired of this experiment and I hope you are, too!"

Check it out. Maybe the Vatican should as well?

Sister Maureen Fielder reports that when a group of protestors supporting the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), which has come under the Vatican thumb, showed up at the Vatican Embassy in Washington on Tuesday, the papal nuncio, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, welcomed some of them into the embassy.

Vigano invited two people to sit down and chat and he received their petition asking that the sanctions against LCWR be withdrawn:

In the course of the conversation, he [Vigano] made it known he had been at the beginning of the LCWR board meeting (which started Tuesday and ends Friday). Later, he invited about 20 people into the embassy to see the chapel and offer prayers.

I don't have much hope that his welcome represents any new approach from the Vatican to LCWR (or anyone), but it is refreshing in Washington to see any protestors welcomed by any authority for a chat, at least.

Vigano was removed from a Vatican post after cleaning up the Vatican Bank, a process in which he surely made enemies. The recently leaked documents include a letter of his to the pope, asking not to be moved outside the Vatican because of the message it would send. He may have some sympathy for LCWR, given his own experience.

Read the rest here at NCR.

Ta-Nehisi Coates digs up an old Paris Review interview with Dorothy Parker, full of great Parker observations, and Rod Dreher flags this keeper:

INTERVIEWER: You have an extensive reputation as a wit. Has this interfered, do you think, with your acceptance as a serious writer?

PARKER: I don’t want to be classed as a humorist. It makes me feel guilty. I’ve never read a good tough quotable female humorist, and I never was one myself. I couldn’t do it. A “smartcracker” they called me, and that makes me sick and unhappy. There’s a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words. I didn’t mind so much when they were good, but for a long time anything that was called a crack was attributed to me—and then they got the shaggy dogs.

RNS file photo

That would be "Bishop-In-Name-Only." I ask because NCR's Joshua McElwee dug into a seemingly boilerplate announcement of "canonical assignments" posted at the newspaper of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph on Friday afternoon and discovered that Bishop Robert Finn had shifted -- apparently -- some of his authority to a newly-created "Episcopal Vicar with Special Mandate," who is Fr. Patrick Rush.

The move was made in anticipation of Bishop Finn's trial this fall in Jackson County on charges of failing to report one of his priests, Fr. Shawn Ratigan, who was suspected of possessing child pornography and perhaps of abusing children.

Finn has already signed away some of his authority in Clay County (another part of the diocese) on sex abuse and personnel policies in order to avoid trial on similar charges there. Friday's announcement also transferred another official tainted by the Ratigan case.

This latest move ceding his authority is intended, Finn says, to “avoid even the appearance of conflict concerning the juridical affairs of the diocese" as the trial approaches:

Fr. Rush will provide “independent representation, deliberation, and decision-making with executive power” concerning the criminal charge against the Diocese...The appointment carries the authority to make decisions independently of the bishop and will expire upon resolution of the case involving the Diocese.

This seems to raise more questions than it answers, apart from being a highly unusual move for a bishop, whose authority is subject only to the pope. Is this a question of razing a village to save it? Who really runs the show now? Are we really to believe that Fr. Rush will be calling the shots without Finn's input? Is Bp. Finn the Sean Payton of the U.S. hierarchy? And in what ways does this resolve conflict of interest? What are those conflicts, in term of the criminal case? The fact that the diocese will pay for his defense team? What will Bishop Finn still be doing?

My biggest question, and the biggest question for Finn and Pope Benedict, however, would be what they will do should Finn be convicted. Would Finn leave, or be pushed?

Photo credit: Nick Befort for the Catholic Key: Newly ordained Father Darvin Salazar offers a first blessing to Bishop Robert W. Finn.

RNS file photo

Yes, it happened in Austria, but still, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn is a former student of Joseph Ratzinger, a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI, and a confidant, they say. From the Rorate Caeli blog, via Dreher:

The Archdiocese of Vienna confirmed on Friday the election of a 26-year-old homosexual council member in the Stützenhofen municipality of the Weinviertel [region, north of Vienna]. The case had triggered a heated debate. Florian Stangl, who lives in a registered partnership, had been elected in mid-March, and, although chosen by a large majority of the population, had been rejected by the local priest because of his way of life.

Cardinal Schönborn met Stangl and his partner as part of the process before the Bishops Council made its decision to uphold the election -- in this instance, at least -- and reverse the decision by the parish pastor, Father Gerhard Swierzek, who had blocked the man's election and also asked Stangl not to receive communion. Schönborn's statement indicates that some changes to the election process may weed out such unusual circumstances in the future, but his words are interesting:

I thank the many candidates for the parish council elections. By their candidacy they showed their concern for the Church and the Faith. Thus they witness to the vitality of the Church. In their diversity they reflect the diversity of the life and faith journeys of today. Thus there are many parish councilors whose lifestyle  does not in every way conform to the ideals of the Church. In view of the life-witness that each of them gives taken as a whole, and their commitment to the attempt to live a life of faith, the Church rejoices in their efforts. She does not thereby call the validity of her ideals into question.

In the small community of Stützenhofen, which I hold in great esteem, there is lively participation in Church life even in the younger generation. A sign of this is the high turnout the parish council elections. The formal errors which have come to light in that election do not call the results of the election itself (in which the youngest candidate, Florian Stangl, received the most votes) into question.

I was able to have a personal conversation with Herr Stangl, and was deeply impressed by his faithful disposition, his humility, and the way in which he lives his commitment to service. I can therefore understand why the inhabitants of Stützenhofen voted so decidedly for his participation in the parish council.

Austria is in many respects a laboratory for the future of Catholicism in the West -- traditional faith, modern sensibilities. Many Catholics leaving, many Catholics staying and fighting for changes.

Sgt. Dennis Weichel, 29, died in Afghanistan last week as he lifted an Afghan girl who was in the path of a large military vehicle barreling down a road.

Weichel, a Rhode Island National Guardsman, was riding along in a convoy in Laghman Province in eastern Afghanistan when some children were spotted on the road ahead.

The children were picking up shell casings lying on the road. The casings are recycled for money in Afghanistan. Weichel and other soldiers in the convoy got out of their vehicles to get them out of the way of the heavy trucks in the convoy.

The children were moved out of the way, but an Afghan girl darted back onto the road to pick up some more casings that lay underneath a passing MRAP, or Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle. The huge armored trucks can weigh as much as 16 tons and are designed to protect the troops they carry from roadside bombs.

Weichel spotted the girl and quickly moved toward her to get her out of the way. He succeeded, but not before he was run over by the heavily armored truck. The girl was safe, but Weichel later died of his injuries. He had arrived in Afghanistan a few weeks ago and had been a member of the Rhode Island National Guard since 2001.

According to the report, Staff Sgt. Ronald Corbett, who deployed with Weichel to Iraq in 2005, said, “He would have done it for anybody,” adding, “That was the way he was. He would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. He was that type of guy.”

Weichel is the father of three, and he is to be buried today.

As it has been pointed out to me on numerous occasions, there are moral issues where I have differed from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and even the pope -- welfare reform, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and some immigration policies. While all of these issues have profound moral underpinnings none of them involve moral absolutes. War is not always unjust; government aid is not always just or loving. The bishops and I may disagree on such prudential matters, but as with all people of good will with whom I disagree, I have an obligation to them and my country to listen to their perspective and perform a healthy reexamination of my own position.

Give Santorum credit for honesty. He seems to have finished that reexamination, and concluded that the bishops and the magisterium are wrong on a number of issues, including torture and the death penalty, two points of disagreement he does not mention. And the bishops don't seem to be holding his feet to the fire.

Santorum has hit some of these notes before, but they have ever greater resonance today, not least after Pope Benedict's remarks about bringing Catholic social teaching to bear on a Catholic's public life.

Santorum's division of "prudential matters" and "moral absolutes" strikes me as far too convenient, as I said, but also far too clear and simplistic. Many of the teachings he seems to categorize as optional are fairly non-negotiable, and the teachings he holds out as absolute (namely opposition to abortion rights, though I imagine he would include gay marriage) are less absolute than he would like: the church doesn't back the so-called personhood laws, for example, and even overturning Roe wouldn't end legalized abortion in states, and abortion rates are pegged to "prudential" policies on poverty and such as much as anything else.

But Santorum's division does appear to accurately reflect the view of many Catholics as regards public policies and Catholic teaching. That seems to include much of the hierarchy. In other times, the bishops have not been as unwilling to tackle "prudential" issues, like war and peace and the economy. The (false, to me) bifurcation between principles and prudential judgments in Catholic teaching is somewhat inherent to the Catholic polity, however, as bishops are teachers who generally espouse principles, while clergy and religious and lay people have the hard work of putting them into practice.

Principles are much easier to enunciate and defend, hence the appeal of the religious freedom context for framing disputes -- it's not about problems with a particular policy, but about a compromised principle, a precedent that will be set. The Obama administration can funnel more funds than ever to Catholic agencies, but if they deny one relatively small grant because the Catholic recipient does not refer victims for contraception or abortion services, then that is religious discrimination that threatens the entire process. Same with the contraception mandate, and its slippery slope to forced euthanasia and the persecution of believers.

Sometimes, however, the understandable preference for absolute clarity winds up obscuring with false certainty, and it can certainly wind up overshadowing too many other "hard teachings" that may indeed be more in the realm of prudential policy judgments but which nonetheless can't be dismissed as easily as Rick Santorum does.

In a book that has generated much debate, Lawrence M. Krauss rather confidently (arrogantly?) claims to have dispensed with that final redoubt against doubt. In Sunday's New York Times Book Review, David Albert, a philosopher at Columbia, reviews "A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing" with such devastating brio that I didn't really pause to see if Albert is right. Not that I'd know either way. And not that it necessarily matters.

As Albert concludes:

And I guess it ought to be mentioned, quite apart from the question of whether anything Krauss says turns out to be true or false, that the whole business of approaching the struggle with religion as if it were a card game, or a horse race, or some kind of battle of wits, just feels all wrong — or it does, at any rate, to me. When I was growing up, where I was growing up, there was a critique of religion according to which religion was cruel, and a lie, and a mechanism of enslavement, and something full of loathing and contempt for every­thing essentially human. Maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t, but it had to do with important things — it had to do, that is, with history, and with suffering, and with the hope of a better world — and it seems like a pity, and more than a pity, and worse than a pity, with all that in the back of one’s head, to think that all that gets offered to us now, by guys like these, in books like this, is the pale, small, silly, nerdy accusation that religion is, I don’t know, dumb.

Read it all here.

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All that nasty ad hominem stuff Rick says about Mitt? Nothing personal -- it's just business! So he tells The Brody File:

"I talked to Mitt Romney Saturday night. We had a very cordial conversation...My conversations with Mitt are cordial. One of the things I've really kept, this is not about personal relationships, it's about differences on policy, differences on vision for the country, and I try to keep it not personal. And, I like Mitt Romney, I think he will make a great contribution to this country, I hope it's at some capacity within my administration in the future, but I have no personal problem with Mitt, and wish him the very best."

Oh, and in case, that Santorum administration thing doesn't work out, Rick says he'd considered being Mitt's veep.

Romney needs a retriever to gather up the evangelicals.

Cue the New Yorker cover...

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NCR's John Allen posts a transcript of Pope Benedict XVI's in-flight "press conference"* on his way to Mexico (he heads to Cuba today), that includes this standard conservative talking point about being a "personally opposed but..." kind of Catholic:

One sees in Latin America, and also elsewhere, among many Catholics a certain schizophrenia between individual and public morality. Personally, in the individual sphere, they’re Catholics, believers, but in public life they follow other paths that don’t correspond to the great values of the Gospel which are necessary for the foundation of a just society.

Except, oops, B16 is talking about social justice and the gap between rich and poor, and the need to bring the church's social teaching -- all of it -- to bear on political life:

Certainly, in the light of faith we can see many things more clearly that reason can also see, but it’s precisely the faith that also serves to liberate reason from false interests and the obscurity imposed by those interests, thereby creating in the social doctrine the substantive models for political collaboration, above all for overcoming this social division – which is truly anti-social – that unfortunately exists.

Sort of complicates things for Catholic conservatives and Paul Ryan Republicans. Not that you'd know from our political and ecclesial discourse.

* The "air quotes" are to denote that "press conference" is a rather liberal term to describe these pre-fab exchanges in which questions are submitted ahead of time and assigned to particular journalists to "ask."

Photo credit: AP Photo via NewTimes.com

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GQ reports that Rick Santorum has chosen his own code name now that he has earned Secret Service protection (bet he'd trade it for delegates).

Drum roll, please. It is...

"Petrus."

No, really.

The use of code words to refer to candidates are a throwback to the era when Secret Service and White House Communications Agency communications were not encrypted. The tradition has stuck around. The only real rule the Service has is that the word chosen be comprehensible over the radio and not be similar to someone's else's. That's why code names tend to have two or three strong syllables.

It's tempting to associate a candidate's code word with some aspect of their personality. Sometimes this is true and sometimes it is not. "Petrus" is a biblical allusion—as in St. Peter, the first pope. (The Latin name is derived from the Greek word for "rock.")

Well, at least he didn't choose "Sanctum."

My analysis: This is a clever way for Santorum, considered an uber-Catholic by those who generally don't know too much about Catholicism, to let voters in Catholic-rich Illinois know that he is actually Catholic.

Because, it turns out just over four-in-ten Catholic Republicans know he's Catholic, and evangelicals are as likely to think he's one of their tribe as think he is a papist.

Smart move, Rick! Not infallible, though.

Mitt Romney's Secret Service code name is "Javelin." That is way cool. He can't lose.