1. Rod Dreher:

We have entered a time of darkness in the world, and that any Christian who hopes to come through it with his faith intact can no longer live as a go-along-to-get-along believer. Only those who are intentional in the practice of their faith, and who do so in community, will stand a chance of making it.
He wasn’t talking only about Catholics. He was talking about all of us. Just going to church on Sunday, and thinking the “right” Christian thoughts, won’t be enough. Not even close.
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We are all climbing a mountain together in this life.
I say “climbing a mountain” because the poet Dante, in his Divine Comedy, portrayed the Christian life on this earth as a pilgrimage up a mountain. We move upward only by the power of the Holy Spirit, and by receiving the Lord’s mercy, and by showing that mercy to fellow pilgrims. Nobody else can walk for you, though. You have to walk yourself.

2. Fr. Roger Landry:

Light…is a great sanitizer. Just as the revelations of the thousands of cases of clerical sexual abuse of minors in 2002 was not the problem, but the abuse itself that had remained hidden for decades was, so the disclosures against Archbishop McCarrick and others in recent weeks, although nauseating and infuriating, are a necessary part of the healing process. The truth is needed in order to set the Church free of these sacrileges, which devastate individual victims and wound the whole Church.
Since this second wave of scandals has hit, I’ve received hundreds of phone calls and emails from friends and reporters. The internet has exploded with fair questions that deserve answers. The faith of many in the Church as a holy, rather than corrupt, institution has been shaken. People don’t know what to think about their bishops or priests. They legitimately ask how such depraved misconduct could go on so long. I’d like to attempt a candid response to some of their many questions.
How should we respond to this?
First, by reparation, because God is the most offended of all.
Second, by demanding to get to the bottom of it, which is part of a firm purpose of amendment and will help to prevent its recurrence.
Third, by focusing on living the faith. Jesus told the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds (Matthew 13:24-30) to teach us that our fundamental focus should never be on rooting out the weeds, but rather on the growth of the wheat. Every crisis in the Church is a crisis of saints, and God will respond to infidelity with many graces of fidelity to help bring the Church back to the holiness in earthen vessels that he wants to characterize it.
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Why didn’t people who suffered or knew of the abuse say anything? For the reasons that victims often don’t: They don’t think people will believe them, or, worse, they think those to whom they report the information will be part of the same corruption.
Many have wondered, in particular, why the multiple seminarians whom Archbishop McCarrick pressured to share his bed didn’t say anything. The reason, I believe, is that they didn’t know to whom to go; they didn’t trust that those authorities wouldn’t protect the predator, since, after all, they had made him a bishop; and they feared that McCarrick, if he found out, would be able to blackball them from following their priestly vocation. Instead, they put down their heads, focused on their training, and tried to remedy the evil by getting ordained and serving God and his people as God desires and they deserve.
To eradicate sexual abuse among the clergy, a known, trustworthy, effective, accountable reporting system is a must, and at present, it doesn’t exist.
Is there hope that the situation will get better? Yes. In many ways, it already has, because of various reforms in the last few decades. But there are issues that must be confronted candidly. There is a strain in the Church that basically has no problem with sexual immorality among the faithful or clergy, who want to reduce this crisis to one of the “abuse of power.” This strain, in general, wants to use this second phase of this crisis like they did the first one, to pretend that “chaste celibacy” is the problem, as if allowing priests to have wives will eliminate the problem of same-sex molestation of post-pubescent boys or same-sex sexual infidelity.
Chastity, however, isn’t the problem; unchastity is. Abuse of power isn’t the main issue, but, rather, the sexual abuse that that power was used to commit and keep hushed. That’s why we need more than revised “codes of conduct” that state the obvious; the Ten Commandments, and the Church’s moral theology, are pretty clear, after all.
Fidelity is the only adequate response to infidelity, and holiness to sin and corruption. Just as there should be no room in the priesthood or episcopacy for those who would harm the young, so there should be no room for those who are determined to live corrupt double lives.
God always seeks to draw good out of evil, and throughout Church history, he has shown this time and again. Where sin abounds, grace abounds even more. Now is the time to cooperate — and cooperate fully — with his cleansing fire.

3. An open letter from young Catholics (including our Alexandra DeSanctis).

4. Veteran Catholic journalist Russell Shaw on more lay involvement in the appointment of bishops

5. Chaldean Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil to Elise Harris on Crux:

“For me it is not just to survive…to survive means drink and eat and that’s it, but for me, how to think in the future? How to help Christians to think ahead and give them hope that they would have a good job, a good hospital, a good university, to have a good school for your kids, that’s the way it should be.”
Doing this, he said, would also allow Christians to make a meaningful impact on society, because the schools and hospitals “are not meant just for Christians, they are also meant for Muslims, so this would also boost the dialogue of life. That’s needed in this situation.”
Though he is uncertain whether the bridges built through projects such as the hospital would really make a dent in restoring the trust that has been lost, Warda said “there is no other way than to try.”
“I’m not saying we will be successful, but I have to try. In the future if anyone ever tells me about projects or initiatives to help bridge communities, I’ll go for it. Because there is no other way. To stand, and to separate and to isolate yourself, to enclose yourself, this would not really be the way Jesus wants us,” he said, adding that to be a Christian is also shown in how you act toward those around you.

6. From Kansas: Keeping Families Together As Mothers Undergo Recovery: A New Approach to Drug Dependency

7. Working on combatting homelessness in Denver

8. Deseret News: Why people of faith are speaking up about paid family leave

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