I think the hierarchy protects its own but God’s will was done anyway at the invisible level since Law according to friends always hoped to be Pope …that ended….and he is in a type of exile and “exile atones for everything” according to the Sanhedrin. Jeconiah e.g. is in the genealogy of Christ yet he was at one time cursed by God in that respect:

‘Thus saith the Lord, write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days, for no man of his seed shall prosper sitting upon the throne of David and ruling, anymore in Judah.’

Thus some Jews and others will aver that Christ cannot be the Messiah but it is the Jewish literature that contradicts them and says that Jeconiah was forgiven since such curses are conditional according to the very same jeremiah who wrote the above curse….Sanhedrin 37b-38a states:
”R. Johanen said: Exile atones for everything, for it is written, ‘Thus saith the Lord, write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days, for no man of his seed shall prosper sitting upon the throne of David and ruling, anymore in Judah.’ ….Further The Jewish Encyclopedia (KTAV Publishing house) states: “…he was pardoned by God, who revoked the decree to the effect that none of his descendants should ever become king (Jer.22:30;Pesik.,ed.Buber,xxv.163a,b)…he even became the ancestor of the Messiah (Tan.,Toledot,20 (ed.Buber,I,140).

So yes Cardinal Law has Veal Piccata in an outdoor cafe in Rome……but not in Boston…not in Manhattan. Exile atones fo everything…..word from the Sanhedrin as the young people say.

The point about the wheat and the chaff is that although I would prefer Cardinal Law become a galley slave somewhere, I realize it’s not just the Pope and Cdl Law as if they were two isolated individuals. To severely punish Law reverberates in ways good and bad, good because it discourages future bad behavior (although I’m dubious whether we are really all that influenced by ‘punishments’ and ‘rewards’ – look at the prison recidivism rate) and I’m not close enough to the situation to know. The Pope might make enemies by punishing Law, and perhaps Law’s not worth creating enemies over. in the ‘pick your battle’ sense. It’s ultimately a prudential judgment I suppose.

There was a time for the woodshed and that’s pretty much past. I’m interested now in wondering what message to take from this. Is this Benedict’s way of asking all of us to be more merciful? Am I unmerciful? Certainly I have a great thirst for justice when it comes to some of these bishops, especially Cdl Law.

Maybe the parable of the wheat and the chaff is operative here such that the Pope has to let the wheat and chaff grow together lest in pulling up the roots we lose both, but if so, I wish he’d said so. The root problem, no pun intended, is a lack of faith (as Benedict has said), and you can’t force people to have faith.

Do you really think that no corporate leader has ever had to give a speech to a room full of managers, some of whom are known to have iffy financial and employee dealings, but none of whom have been convicted in a court of law? To people who have lawyers, could sue for defamation?

Let us add that this meeting is being televised worldwide, and that canon law has its own demands that no corporate leader would want to deal with.

I’m not against armchair quarterbacking, but I’m not seeing anybody say how they’d handle it — just that the Pope is doing it wrong.

There is much to praise in Benedict’s address, especially the state of American culture and the role of the Church with in. Unfortunately, it is underminded by not holding the bishops accountable in their role in the sex abuse crisis. Sorry, but saying that the crisis was, “sometimes very badly handled”, is not going to restore the credibility of the Church in the US. It is this credibility that is on the line.

Yes, it is good for Benedict to say that he is deeply ashamed by the sexual abuse of children and youths by priests. Yes, we need to purify the priesthood, heal the wounds, and protect our children. And yes, the 96% of us priests who have never abused anyone now share more fully in the Passion of the Lord because of the crisis. The phrase “pediphile priests” has now been added to the cultural lexicon and there it will stay. No amount of apologies and court settlements will erase it in my life time.

But where is the accountability for those bishops who knowing covered up the crimes of their priests? Phillip Lawlor and others have pointed out that this part of the crisis has been ignored by the bishops. But it is exactly this part that cries out of correction. And no, sending Bernard Law to take care of a basilica in Rome does not mean that we turned the corner. Perhaps it would ever been too much to ask that Benedict hand out pink slips to some bishops last night. But he simply stated the obvious. It is not enough.

As the Church we have been intrusted with the Truth of revelation about Jesus Christ. We have been given the responsibility to proclaim this Truth in our culture in the modern world. But without credibility in the eyes of many Catholics and non-Catholics like, who will listen to us? Until bishops are called into account expect that quite exodus out the Church to continue.

Within the context of the separation of Church and State, American society has always been marked by a fundamental respect for religion and its public role, and, if polls are to be believed, the American people are deeply religious. But it is not enough to count on this traditional religiosity and go about business as usual, even as its foundations are being slowly undermined. A serious commitment to evangelization cannot prescind from a profound diagnosis of the real challenges the Gospel encounters in contemporary American culture.

Of course, what is essential is a correct understanding of the just autonomy of the secular order, an autonomy which cannot be divorced from God the Creator and his saving plan (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 36). Perhaps America’s brand of secularism poses a particular problem: it allows for professing belief in God, and respects the public role of religion and the Churches, but at the same time it can subtly reduce religious belief to a lowest common denominator. Faith becomes a passive acceptance that certain things “out there” are true, but without practical relevance for everyday life.
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First, as you know, it is becoming more and more difficult, in our Western societies, to speak in a meaningful way of “salvation”. Yet salvation — deliverance from the reality of evil, and the gift of new life and freedom in Christ — is at the heart of the Gospel. We need to discover, as I have suggested, new and engaging ways of proclaiming this message and awakening a thirst for the fulfillment which only Christ can bring. It is in the Church’s liturgy, and above all in the sacrament of the Eucharist, that these realities are most powerfully expressed and lived in the life of believers; perhaps we still have much to do in realizing the Council’s vision of the liturgy as the exercise of the common priesthood and the impetus for a fruitful apostolate in the world.

Second, we need to acknowledge with concern the almost complete eclipse of an eschatological sense in many of our traditionally Christian societies. As you know, I have pointed to this problem in the Encyclical Spe Salvi. Suffice it to say that faith and hope are not limited to this world: as theological virtues, they unite us with the Lord and draw us toward the fulfillment not only of our personal destiny but also that of all creation. Faith and hope are the inspiration and basis of our efforts to prepare for the coming of the Kingdom of God. In Christianity, there can be no room for purely private religion: Christ is the Savior of the world, and, as members of his Body and sharers in his prophetic, priestly and royal munera, we cannot separate our love for him from our commitment to the building up of the Church and the extension of his Kingdom. To the extent that religion becomes a purely private affair, it loses its very soul.

I think this is the issue for the Church in America today.

1) evangelization must include (perhaps even begin from) a real, vigorous, and thorough diagnosis of the problem of secularism and its dominance of the public square, which makes religion a merely private, personal affair; evangelization must be seen as not simply a matter of converting individual souls or getting Catholics back to Church, but that real effort of transforming and creating a new culture.

2) evangelization and Catholic cultural/liturgical life desperately needs to recover its eschatological sense and orientation; if Catholicism remains content proclaiming a social message, or follows the temptations of the Protestant self-help/success gospel, or allows itself to be overly influenced by typically American quantitative measures of effectiveness, it will have failed in its mission; on the contrary, it’s mission and identity is fundamentally otherwordly one, and one that must be clearly and vigorously distinguished (especially in this media-driven age) from worldly alternatives or imitations (e.g. Oprah, Joel Osteen, Obama, etc.)

And what is striking about these two points is, the Pope believes it is the primary responsibility of the Bishop. (Not just theologians, bloggers, what have you.) They need to be the progenitors of this engagement. Even more than they need to be administrators, settling lawsuits, starting capital campaigns, etc.