As Cardinal Pell Is Buried, He's Acclaimed a "Saint for Our Times," While Abuse Survivors and LGBTQ People Protest

As Rod McGuirk reports, as Cardinal Pell's funeral is held today, police have refused to permit LGBTQ-rights protesters outside the Catholic cathedral in Sydney, and have sought a court injunction against them.

"George Pell AC (born 8 June 1941) Is an Australian Cardinal of the Catholic Church and Convicted Child Sex Offender": Questions We Might Ask

Plus ça change: for people who profess to be all about taking history and tradition seriously, many self-professed Catholic conservatives/traditionalists seem uncommonly unwilling to learn anything at all from history. Several decades ago, there George Weigel and the folks at First Things were, loudly proclaiming the innocence of the notorious serial abuser of youth and drug addict Father Marcial Maciel and defaming those like Jason Berry who did their journalistic duty and told the world the truth about what Maciel was doing — and how top Catholic officials were covering up his activities.

Backwards-Focused and Angry: Parallels Between Trump Voters and One Nation Voters in Australia

Yesterday, The Guardian published an excerpt from an essay written by David Marr for the Australian journal Quarterly Essay, entitled "The White Queen: One Nation and the Politics of Race." The Guardian's excerpt is called "Looking Back, and Angry: What Drives Pauline Hanson's Voters." Marr's commentary on what's driving Australian One Nation voters is fascinating, because of the clear parallels between what he discovers and what has also been noted regarding Trump voters in the U.S. As Nate Silver has found, educational levels and not income levels predicted who voted for Trump. College graduates voted for Hillary by a 9-point margin, while those without college education voted for Trump 52%-44%, by far the largest gap between college- and non-college-educated voters in exit polls since before 1980.

Parramatta (Australia) Diocesan Newspaper Catholic Outlook Back Online, with Text of Bishop Vincent Long's Ann D. Clark Lecture Calling for Catholic Church to Reassess Approach to Gay Folks

For those who may not have seen the note I added last night to my posting earlier yesterday noting that Bishop Vincent Long's Ann D. Clark lecture had once again disappeared from the website of his diocesan newspaper Catholic Outlook (and, indeed, h/t to Bose, that the entire website was down):

Text of Bishop Vincent Long's Lecture Calling for Reassessment of Catholic Cruelty to Gay People Has Disappeared Again

The text of Bishop Vincent Long's recent Ann D. Clark lecture in Penrith, Australia, about which I blogged recently, has once again disappeared from the website of his diocesan newspaper Catholic Outlook. As I noted in the posting I've just linked, Catholic Outlook published the text on 19 August, the day after Bishop Long presented the lecture, and within a day, after the lecture began circulating and being commented about online, it vanished from the Catholic Outlook site. It then popped back up briefly, only to be removed from the website again.

Footnote to Commentary on Bishop Vincent Long's Ann D. Clark Lecture: Link Is Now Back Up

A footnote to what I posted yesterday about the disappearing link to Bishop Vincent Long's Ann D. Clark lecture, which had been uploaded to the website of his diocesan newspaper, Catholic Outlook, on 19 August, and then vanished from that website after the lecture began to be discussed and circulated online on 20 August:

On a Disappearing Lecture by a Bishop Challenging Injustice Towards Gay Folks: Churches Hostile to Gays Might Consider Just Shutting Up about a Loving God

Last Friday, the publication Catholic Outlook, a publication of the Catholic diocese of Parramatta in Australia, uploaded to its website the text of a lecture given by the diocesan bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen the preceding day as the annual Ann D. Clark lecture in Penrith, Australia. When I saw links to Bishop Long's lecture on Twitter over the weekend, I shared a link to the Catholic Outlook text of the entire lecture. That link is here.*

Call to Cardinal Pell to Come Home and Face the Music Ruffles His Eminence's Feathers

Even in Lent we can laugh, right? Though sometimes it's through our tears.

Charles Pierce and Joelle Casteix on the Rot in the NY Archdiocese: The Sordid Story of Father Peter Miqueli and What Cardinal Dolan Knew When

Until yesterday, the story of what's happening with Father Peter Miqueli and former USCCB president Cardinal Timothy Dolan in the New York archdiocese seemed largely confined to the tabloid news, and for that reason, I haven't commented on it. I'm averse to wading through tabloid slime, I'm far from confident that what the tabloids report is accurately reported, and stories they break have a nasty way of twisting and turning, leaving folks who comment precipitously on them  embarrassed at having trusted a tabloid report.

Frank Brennan, SJ, on the Australian Catholic Bishops and Marriage Equality: My Response and Critique of the Clericalist Closed-Circle Argument

I very much appreciate that Chris Morley recommended to us Jesuit Father Frank Brennan's recent article at Eureka Street noting the futility of the battle of some church leaders, the Catholic bishops of Australia included, against same-sex marriage in Australia. As Father Brennan rightly notes, there are compelling reasons — moral ones — for recognizing the right of same-sex couples to civil marriage. These include the protection of children such couples may be raising, the state's interest in supporting couples committed to each other who provide care for each other as they age, and the undercutting of homophobia, which, as he notes, has toxic social consequences.

Theological Roots of Bitter Battle of Some Christians Against LGBT Rights: The Bible Can't Be Wrong (We Can't Be Wrong, and Heterosexual Men Rule)

Here's a set of interlocking observations that, to my mind, share a common theme: 1) a comment an Episcopal priest made to me yesterday about why some streams of Christianity are so adamant today in their opposition to LGBT rights; 2) Diarmaid MacCulloch on the same topic and how it's all about shoring up the supremacy of heterosexual males; 3) David Marr's commentary on why the Australian Catholic bishops are bitterly opposed to legalization of same-sex marriage; and 4) Fred Clark's account of the baffling determination of some U.S. white evangelicals to continue, generation after generation, choosing the wrong side of the moral arc of history in battles for human rights:

Kieran Tapsell on Bishop Geoffrey Robinson's Testimony Before Australian Abuse Commission: Vatican's Belief That Church Law Trumps Civil Law Is Big Obstacle for Commission

Highly recommended: Kieran Tapsell's conversation with Noel Debien of ABC Australia yesterday evening. Kieran Tapsell is an attorney and author of the book Potiphar's Wife: The Vatican's Secret and Child Sexual Abuse (Adelaide: ATF Press, 2014). In introducing Tapsell, Debien notes that the testimony last week of Bishop Geoffrey Robinson before the Australian Royal Commission about Sexual Abuse has gotten surprisingly little media coverage. I suspect this may be the case because, as I noted in my posting last Wednesday about Robinson's testimony, he was unsparing in his criticism of the silence of the powerful Pope John Paul II about the abuse crisis in the Catholic church, and he also stated bluntly that the popular Pope Francis has not provided real leadership for the church as it addresses this crisis.

Christina Keneally on Bishop Robinson Before Australian Royal Commission: The Difference Silence Makes

As Christina Keneally has reported for The Guardian, in his testimony before the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Bishop Geoffrey Robinson minced no words. He excoriated the silence of the powerful pope John Paul II, and said that Pope Francis has not provided "real leadership" regarding child sexual abuse in the Catholic church. 

More Blooms (or Weeds?) from My Garden: Catholic Mexico Has Marriage Equality, "Progressive" Australia Doesn't — What Gives?; Why the Huge Overlap Between Men's Rights Movement and Libertarian and Atheist Movements?

I keep plucking blooms (Or are they weeds? It's often hard to distinguish) from my garden, and want to offer you a few more today as a little nosegay:

Irish Vote for LGBT Equality Continues Rippling Out to Other Nations: Chris Morley's Update

Chris Morley left two wonderful reports (and here) in the comments section of this blog today, about the ripple effect (already) of the Irish vote last weekend. To make sure that more readers have a chance to see these reports, I'm lifting them from the combox and posting them as a posting as this work day ends: Chris writes,

After Ireland, Heat On in Many Other Countries to Respect LGBT Equality: Australia, Italy, Germany, Etc.

As I've noted in a number of postings in the past few days, a theme now emerging following the remarkable Irish vote for LGBT human rights has been the example the little island of Ireland now sets for many other places in the world. There's a venerable trope of talk about Ireland as the surprising little place that makes a huge and unanticipated splash in the rest of the world — as when Irish missionaries, monks who had preserved Greek and Roman texts destroyed in the rest of Europe, tramped across Europe in the early Middle Ages to Christianize many places in the continent, a story explored by Thomas Cahill in his popular book How the Irish Saved Civilization. Much of the commentary about the possible effects of the Irish vote on other countries implicitly builds on that trope.