Yes, it’s that time of the year again: Liberty Counsel has released its annual list of places that the Godly may safely shop, and places that the Godly ought to avoid. Because, you know, the War on Christmas, when hatred for Pious Folk and the Baby Jesus is signified by the greeting Happy Holidays, rather than Merry Christmas.
Bah.
Inexplicably, discussing Pope Francis’ unexpected decision to prevent the American bishops from adopting a policy aimed at preventing sexual abuse, Albert Mohler gets something right.
Here you are looking at the magisterial hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church acting as it has throughout the centuries, and that is to protect the Church and to protect itself. And that is something that is now pretty much understood. Even as the Vatican has told the American Catholic bishops, they can’t even clean up their house, they can’t take action until after an international meeting of the presidents of the bishops’ councils.
Unhappily, Mohler fails to address two more important issues:
The same shadow hangs over Protestant churches, most especially conservative and fundamentalist churches (like his own denomination, the Southern Baptists), because …
The sex abuse crisis inheres in the degradation of Christianity’s death-wish theology.
Neither Catholicism nor Protestantism will deal adequately with the sex abuse problem until they stop trying to crush everybody into obedient brainless automatons.
When the future you planned for never comes, God has not stolen from you. Your Father will not hand you snakes and stones. He will only give you what’s best for your journey home. https://t.co/sifa7mztu0
— Desiring God (@desiringGod) November 13, 2018
Uh-huh. Auschwitz, polio, child-raping priests … why on earth does anybody take this schtick seriously?
The story in the New York Times concerning North Korea developing missile bases is inaccurate. We fully know about the sites being discussed, nothing new – and nothing happening out of the normal. Just more Fake News. I will be the first to let you know if things go bad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 13, 2018
Nah. The fabulist-in-chief got taken to the cleaners.
Pope Francis has told the American bishops they are not to vote on a policy to address sex abuse.
The plenary meeting of the Unites States Conference of Catholic Bishops opened with a bombshell. Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the conference, announced that the Holy See had insisted the U.S. bishops not vote on any concrete action items regarding the clergy sex abuse crisis, pending the February meeting of the presidents of all episcopal conferences that Pope Francis has announced. DiNardo said he only learned last night of the Vatican’s decision.
What is going on? People were whispering that the pope should not have intervened, certainly not at such a late date. Is this a case of Rome not grasping the situation in the U.S. or, more worrisome, that Rome still doesn’t grasp the enormity of the sex abuse mess?
It is at least possible, I suppose, that Francis wants to institute a uniform global policy, and doesn’t want the American church freelancing — but I doubt that. The abuse problem has had huge financial consequences over the past few decades, and is surely a worrisome specter hanging over the future of the church; almost certainly, Francis is looking for an approach that at least appears forthcoming while minimizing the likely hits.
