Author: Andrew Sullivan

A reader writes:

I am a (currently non-practicing) Catholic mother of two adult sons, both of whom were altar servers at our beloved church in Florida. The span of time during which they served was 1979 through 1997. During those years, we became close friends with several priests. My protestant husband even converted to Catholicism during those years. Even though my husband and I were very involved in volunteer positions in our parish and were considered quite devout, we were constantly on the alert for any hints of unusual priestly interest in our boys.

One of our close Franciscan priest friends brought one of his Franciscan colleagues (I refuse to call him a priest) to our home for dinner and swimming one Sunday. The Franciscan colleague was not serving at our parish, and we had never met him prior to this Sunday visit. He played piano as did our younger son, who was about 9 years old. 

That man insinuated himself onto the piano bench and could not get close enough to our son while they played duets. And, that Sunday afternoon, after having just met us, he invited our two boys to Disney World for a long weekend, suggesting that it would be nice for my husband and me to have a weekend break from parenting.

Needless to say, we never again invited that person to our home, nor did we take him up on his offer! (This event would have occurred in 1988.) My husband and I still shudder to think what might have happened if we had been naïve and trusting. After reporting this incident to a different priest friend, we learned that the Franciscan had been transferred to our diocese because of some “troubles” in his Pennsylvania diocese, and he was not supposed to have contact with children.

Bernstein agrees with Fallows but isn't fazed:

Look, the same market forces that have the White House press corps, which always tries to get access, even potentially more craven than usual are the market forces that give outside reporters a strong incentive to get the stories that the White House press corps can't and won't get.  Those kind of stories don't depend on access, anyway; they use sources, but sources who are motivated to leak things that the administration doesn't want aired, not sources who are motivated to make the president look good.  They also depend on the kinds of digging that are as easy or, most of the time, easier to do away from the White House than from inside it.  And they aren't subject to a bias far more pervasive than the book incentive, as this excellent Lane Wallace article explains.  Overall, I'd say that the "problem" of White House reporters writing books is a prime example of something not to worry about.

This is almost as good a takedown as you could get:

"You've got to get your facts straight," Donohue said on CNN's "Larry King Live," addressing abuse victim Thomas Roberts.

"The vast majority of the victims are post-pubescent. That's not pedophilia, buddy. That's homosexuality."

No, that's pedophilia, buddy.

If an adult man has sexual contact with a 13-year-old girl, he's committed an unspeakable offense and he should do hard time in prison.

But if an adult man has sexual contact with a 13-year-old boy, that's just homosexuality at work? Is this man crazy?

I think it's better described as pederasty. But whatever it's called, it remains stautory rape. Which is not the same thing as homosexuality.

'What is man? One answer on offer is, An organism whose haunting questions perhaps ought not to be meaningful to the organ that generates them, lacking as it is in any means of 'solving' them.

Another answer might be, It is still too soon to tell.

We might be the creature who brings life on this planet to an end, and we might be the creature who awakens  to the privileges that inhere in our nature – selfhood, consciousness, even our biologically anomalous craving for 'the truth' – and enjoys and enhances them.

Mysteriously, neither possibility excludes the other. Our nature will describe itself as we respond to new circumstances in a world that changes continuously.

So long as the human minds exists to impose itself on reality, as it has already done so profoundly, what it is and what we are must remain an open question," – Marilynne Robinson, from the forthcoming "Absence of Mind."

Jonathan Zimmermanconfronts it:

[T]he most vehement critics of the abuse – and of the church's inadequate response to it – have often been Catholics. In a Temple University survey after the 2005 grand jury report in Philadelphia, 40 percent of Catholics described themselves as "very dissatisfied" with the way the archdiocese handled the issue. An even greater share of Catholics – 77 percent – said bishops or cardinals should be removed from office if they knowingly reassigned abusive priests without notifying the police.

I agree with that. And saying so doesn't make me anti-Catholic – any more than criticizing the president makes me anti-American. Shame on the pope and his apologists for invoking a sordid history [of anti-Catholic bigotry] to escape their own responsibility.

Ackerman analyzes the Anwar al-Awlaki story:

The administration may very well be making the correct evaluation of the threat al-Awlaki poses. But if citizenship means anything, it means that a citizen can’t be killed because the government uses secret evidence to say he or she is an intolerable threat. Al-Awlaki is certainly exploiting his American citizenship. But CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano told the Post’s Greg Miller, “This agency conducts its counterterrorism operations in strict accord with the law.” We at least have the right to know the legal basis the Obama administration reached to order the extra-judicial killing of an American citizen, and so I’ll be spending my morning filling out FOIAs.

The loss of this vital and strategic Muslim ally is almost as huge an error for Israel's government this past year and a half as Gaza, Dubai and the settlement intransigence.

How do you get an op-ed published about Benedict XVI's "bad rap" in the recent explosion of the Catholic sex abuse crisis without mentioning even once the two cases that directly implicate Benedict personally in covering up and tolerating priestly child-rape?

You work for Fred Hiatt.

Massie looks at Brown’s missed opportunity. Julian Glover wonders what the press is supposed to write about:

There’s a risk this election will eat itself: so much commentary, so little (so far) to comment about. By the end of each day, everything will have been analysed, tweeted and polled to death. All that remains is mockery. Which is what the first Newsnight of the official campaign resorted to: political editor Michael Crick shipping an ice cream van to Kent to remind Gordon Brown of his 2005 election appearance eating a ’99 flake with Tony Blair.

It was either funny or demeaning, depending on your view, but either way it wasn’t informative. There is a lesson here for all political journalists. We are so keen to mediate between the public and politicians that we risk failing to report. Comment (of which this is a part) is replacing news.

The key issue so far is a planned 1 percent increase in the British equivalent of FICA taxes. Yes, the Obama-Clinton showdown this isn’t.

But in an almost-exciting moment, Gordon Brown visited a smoothie store today and just missed a potential landmine of a photo-op. Yes, below was the banner under which Brown campaigned today – but the press never got a chance to take the critical pic of the two together. Where are the Brit paparazzi when you actually need them? Photographic proof that Brown was right below the slogan is here.

It is, of course, an almost perfect summary of the Tory case against Labour and the real issue in the election: