UNITED STATES
GetReligion
As I mentioned the other day, the historic Catholic throne in Baltimore has a new archbishop and he also happens to be an emerging leader in America’s increasingly tense debates about religious liberty. Just wait until some of these issues hit the U.S. Supreme Court (and you know that they will).
In addition to the belated coverage in The Baltimore Sun (the newspaper that lands in my front yard), the move to Charm City by Bishop William E. Lori — who leads the U.S. bishops’ new Committee on Religious Liberty — drew the attention of the well-known liberal Catholic blogger David Gibson of Commonweal, who also does news reporting for Religion News Service. His story included a wealth of details that will interest a wide variety of Catholics, including the kinds of details that one expects out of a wire service that focuses on religion news — period. …
OK, so the art up at the top of this post gives this one away. That’s the very conservative Catholic writer Leon J. Podles, author of a fierce, take-no-prisoners tome called “Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church.”
WHILE Podles is known for his orthodoxy on doctrine and social issues, not that there’s anything wrong with that, he also has been praised by many for taking a hard line on how the church should deal with abusive priests.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.