Ten Things that Caught My Eye Today (July 30, 2018)

1. I linked to this over the weekend — the Albany bishop’s statement in the McCarrick scandal hits on the layers and depths of the betrayal.

And this plea from a mother and lawyer captures in small way where the conversation needs to be.

Johns Hopkins psychiatrist Paul McHugh is interviewed by Sohrab Ahmari:

Even now, the veteran psychiatrist warns, there is a risk that the Church will lose sight of the moral dimension by viewing the crisis through a primarily a medical or legal or financial lens. “The Catholic Church in relation to this problem, whatever the causes, was not dealing with this in a Catholic way.” The Church, in other words, has lost sight of sin and how to expiate it. Priests who sit in the confessional know the process: admission of fault, an earnest commitment not to fall again, then penance.

“They haven’t done enough penance—moral penance,” McHugh said. “We should have a day a year when everyone from the Pope down shows penance for this. If we have a yearly march for pro-life and whatnot, we also have to have a day of ‘God have mercy’” over the abuse crisis. And the Church, which knows the dynamic of sin and its expiation all too well, must remain vigilant. If it happened at one point, and there was insufficient disclosure and penance, the abuse might return.

We should have been regularly praying all along.

2. A reminder about how to live.

3. An overview of an overwhelmed Maine foster-care system. 

4. Dr. Grazie Christie in the Philadelphia Inquirer: Faith-based foster care should not be abandoned

5. U.S. Ambassador for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback predicts and “Iron Curtain” moment ahead for religious liberty

6. Jeff Sessions launches a religious freedom task force.

7. Melissa Langsam Braunstein on the Federalist: Lawyer’s 7 Miscarriages Lead To The Infertility Memoir Everyone Needs To Read

8. I’ve seen the yoga room at the San Francisco airport, but not the sweater vest vending machine.

9.

10. Say “thank you”: a journal article on how we undervalue the impact of gratitude.

PLUS:

Thoughts on the McCarrick scandal and the Humanae Vitae anniversary. And on mothers leading the way.

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