This Has Happened: What to Make of Recent Chain of Events from Opus Dei-McCloskey to Cardinal Burke to Peter Steinfels to Archbishop Viganò?

So this has happened:

1. Jan. 7: Washington Post breaks Opus Dei-McCloskey story.

2. Jan. 8: Cardinal Burke mounts an attack on Pope Francis on German t.v., saying his response to the abuse crisis is "confusing." /1

— 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚖 𝙳. 𝙻𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚜𝚎𝚢 (@wdlindsy) January 14, 2019

It's Never About Racism: White Catholic Voters, Abortion, and How the Religious Right Culture Wars Began (Hint: It's About Racism)

In 1958, Jerry Falwell wrote the following:

“When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line,” and said that integration of “blacks & whites...will destroy our race eventually.”

This is the root of today’s #MAGA movement. They haven’t changed.

— Chris (@goingglocal) January 27, 2018

It's never about the racism with white Catholics who have signed onto the culture wars of the U.S. Catholic bishops, and who vote — or so they say — primarily on the basis of the single issue of abortion (with same-sex marriage also often thrown into their calculus as they choose predictably to vote Republican). It's never about racism with the alliance those white Catholics made a long time ago with white evangelicals who got the religious right ball rolling because of overt racism.

Where Do Christians Go From Here? When "Pro-Life" Christianity Deals Death, Time to Turn Our Backs on the "Pro-Life" Game

4 in 5 white evangelicals, 3 in 5 white Catholics and Mormons — "pro-life" voters — brought us the Trump nightmare.

I will not forget.

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) December 15, 2016

"Now is the time to talk about what we are actually talking about," declares Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in a powerful, hard-hitting post-election essay rich in moral insight that refuses to entertain the palavering, both-sides-have-a-point games of the American chattering classes — when those morally evasive games have brought us Donald Trump. They have been, in fact, signposts and paving stones for the path that has led the nation to Trump, though getting the nation's intellectual arbiters in its media,  its churches, and its academies to admit the large role they have played in paving and signposting the road to Trump is a meaningless and futile enterprise: moral awareness is simply not what the chattering classes do, even as they engage in moral rule-making and ethical pontificating.

When Toxic Religion and Toxic Politics Meet to Create a Death Cult of Historic Proportions: Where Do Christians Go From Here?

Any political movement that is

anti-women
anti-poor
anti-Muslim
anti-LGBTQ
anti-immigrant
anti-refugee

is anti-human and anti-Christ.

— Nathan Hamm (@NathanHamm) December 12, 2016

Here are some things I've read in the past week or so that I'd like to share. I will use them as the basis for a subsequent posting asking where we go from here — "we," as in any of us interested in the question of what Christian churches or religion in general can contribute to the American public square, now that white American churches and their leaders have placed the country in extreme moral crisis and have displayed the complete vacuity of their "Christian" message through their support of Donald Trump.

Three More Takes on Amoris Laetitia: Danger of Continuing "Toxic Patterns of Dissemblance at Every Level of Church Life" As Poison Enters the Church's Bloodstream

Peter Steinfels at Commonweal: 

In Catholic News: Smoke, Mirrors, and Pope Francis on Abuse; Pope's Zika-and-Contraception Remark; Diocese Settles with Employee Fired for Same-Sex Marriage; U.S. Bishops' College Plans to Fête Archbishop Viganò

Some bits and pieces of commentary that has caught my eye in recent days, which I want to pass on to you. These snippets are all commenting on recent Catholic-themed news stories:

Update, Further Commentary, on Recent Firing of Gay Teachers at Two Catholic High Schools in Midwest

And another brief update to a story I posted yesterday — this one about Matthew Eledge, who was recently fired by Skutt Catholic High School in Omaha after he became engaged to his partner, and Tyler McCubbin, who saw job offer made to him by Dowling Catholic High School in Des Moines revoked because he's gay and engaged to a partner. My posting yesterday linked to Bob Shine's report on these two stories at New Ways Ministry's blog Bondings 2.0, which notes that more than 40 people have lost jobs in Catholic institutions in the U.S. over LGBT issues since 2008.