Bookends: Brian Hall, Peter Cameron, Patrick Rothfuss

It's been a while since I've shared notes on books I've been reading (above and beyond the daily grind of religion-and-culture commentary).  And what I'm about to share may well be a big disappointment, since it's a set of scattered notes--and by no means a full-fleshed commentary--on several novels I've recently read or am now reading, which may or may not pique readers' interest (and which will, I fear, surely irritate almost anyone who reads these notes).  I offer these for what they're worth, as a long early-summer work week rolls to a close:

From the Blogs: Bishops' "Religious Liberty" War, Attack on Nuns, and More

As the work week ends, a selection of tidbits from blog postings around the web that have caught my eye this week--most of them about the U.S. Catholic bishops' faux "religious liberty" war or the recent Vatican statement about Sr. Margaret Farley, but also (two fine concluding statements in this vein) about the theological issues underlying these current stories:

Archbishop Lori Spins Religious Freedom Initiative as Non-Partisan: Reality-Based Catholics not Buying Spin

Archbishop William Lori, head of the GOP organizing committee Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Freedom of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, announced to the Catholic Press Association yesterday that the U.S. bishops are "not trying to throw the election" through their Catholic-GOP machine politics religious freedom campaign.  This two days before the GOP rallies "Stand Up for Religious Freedom" rallies the USCCB is sponsoring around the U.S. tomorrow.

The Catholic Identity Debate: When Politics Trump Catholicity

Matthew 13:28-30

At the risk of thoroughly boring readers, I'd like to revisit my recent discussion of Peter Steinfels's Commonweal essay re: the bishops and religious liberty.  I'd like to revisit it for one quite specific reason: as discussion about Catholic identity continues (and sharpens) in American Catholicism during the current national election cycle, we would spectacularly miss the point of this discussion and of the bishops' religious liberty initiative if we failed to see that the Catholic identity discussion is unfolding against a very particular backdrop of political and cultural interchange.

Bob Hoatson, "Cardinal Dolan: Where Are My Twenty-Thousand Dollars?"

Bob Hoatson, 2007, SNAP Conference

In my posting yesterday about the Dolan affair and the double standard in how the Catholic hierarchy treats priests found to be abusing minors, as compared to how it deals with those who blow the whistle, I referred to a statement that Bob Hoatson had sent to NSAC News, which hadn't yet appeared at the NSAC site.  I had gotten the statement by email through NSAC News.

Attack on Nuns Continues with Condemnation of Sr. Margaret Farley (and Updates on Contraception Debate)

And another batch of articles updating stories about which I've blogged previously here--the common theme of these is, loosely, both the ongoing and increasingly aggressive attack by the Vatican on American nuns, and the politicking of the USCCB and the Vatican against the Obama administration's HHS guidelines:

Recent News about Dolan Affair: Glaring Double Standard in Treatment of Pedophile Priests and Whistle-Blower Priests

In case you've missed these pieces, folks, I thought that this morning I'd point you to some statements about the Dolan affair that have come to my attention following my posting about that topic this past Monday: