End-of-Week News Roundup: From L.A. to Twin Cities to Japan, Virginia, and Rome--Where's the Pope and the Hope He's Said to Represent?

As I read about the plans of Newark Archbishop John Myers to add yet more swank to an already swanky retirement house, I can't avoid, of course, thinking about Francis, the pope. The pope of hope. 

Mahony to Media: Vatican Instructed Me to Attend Papal Conclave

In other cardinals-in-the-news news: as Francis X. Rocca reports in National Catholic Reporter, Cardinal Roger Mahony told Catholic News Service last week that he has been amazed at calls for him not to attend the papal conclave because of what the public now knows about his track record in dealing with priests abusing minors in the Los Angeles archdiocese. Mahony states that the Vatican, through its ambassador to the U.S., instructed him to attend the conclave--despite the pressure from lay Catholics for him to stay at home.

Cardinal Mahony Ready to Forgive Victims of Abuse: Narcissism and the Failure of Top Catholic Pastoral Leaders

While Michael Sean Winters throws yet another of his tired tantrums at the "anti-Catholic" bias of the New York Times (and of Catholics Maureen Dowd, Garry Wills, Frank Bruni, and John Patrick Shanley), here's how the real world increasingly sees the Catholic church. This is how the world outside the precious (and tightly controlled) parameters of the centrist Catholic tribe looks at the Catholic church--and what the world sees is not pretty:

The Shaming of Cardinal Mahony: Betty Clermont and Jerry Slevin on Political Background

And, as a companion piece to what I just posted about the shameful way in which the U.S. Catholic bishops have chosen to behave regarding one human rights initiative after another at this point in American history, I'd like to recommend two good essays that provide critically important background information about the choice of the Vatican to shame Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, while it leaves convicted criminal Bishop Robert Finn in place as bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph:

Obama Administration Grants HHS Concessions to Catholic Institutions, Centrist Commentators Cry Victory, While Headlines about the Catholic Church Say . . .

And here's where the determination of the current leaders of the Catholic church to maintain at all costs the historically developed and entirely mutable system of clericalism about which I just blogged has brought the Catholic church at this point in its history: 

Latest Revelations from Los Angeles: Archbishop Roger Mahony Actively Orchestrated Abuse Cover-Up

At the Commonweal blog, Paul Moses puts his finger on what is, for me, the dark heart of the story emerging from documents newly released in the archdiocese of Los Angeles, about priest abuse cases in that archdiocese: