The always eloquent Peggy Noonan today writes about the meeting with a small handful of Catholic bishops in Washington, D.C. last Monday I attended. I haven’t really commented much on it here because, though its existence was on the record, we were asked to not repeat what others said at the confab, just what we individually said. Hard to say much under those parameters, and I’m generally weary of making The Corner “too Catholic,” so I didn’t say much last week beyond comments to a Catholic newsletter about the meeting. The only thing I would add today, post-Peggy’s column, is this: I would be less optimistic than she is (and she is not very optimistic as is). She writes, “I left with a feeling that some progress may have been made in some area, but I couldn’t say what area or why.” I wouldn’t go even that far.

The conclusion of the meeting reminded me a bit of when the State Department caves and meets with the American parents of children abducted to Saudi Arabia. State officials usually just meet to appease. They know what their policy is (see no evil), and they are sticking with it. But if a meeting now and again means critics will gripe a little bit less, then a bureaucrat or diplomat or two will make a sacrifice.

I would not count the meeting of last Monday a success in any way until some basic things happen: like the bishops’ conference’s bureaucrats and diplomats stop sending mixed signals to Catholics (and everyone else) by appointing people with public records contrary to Church teaching on the most important issue of our day—the sanctity of human life. In other words, Leon Panetta must go.

There are a lot of good things happening in the Catholic Church today, besides the terrible things you’ve heard so much about. It doesn’t surprise me that a bureaucracy in Washington helps further muddy the message of the Church and the good works. Fortunately though, the Church is much more than a bureaucracy in Washington. And, get a few Bishop O’Malleys of Boston in the episcopal conference in D.C., and that problem may soon be worked on, too.