From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

A federal jury on Thursday acquitted the former chief financial officer of the Cleveland Catholic Diocese of skimming $784,000 from the church through an elaborate kickback scheme.

The jury did, however, convict Joseph Smith of lesser charges for failing to pay taxes on $171,000. Prosecutors claimed the money was proceeds from the scheme, while Smith said the income was legitimate compensation.

Remember this case? The diocese said that Smith stole the money. The defendant said he came upon the money legally, from some of the many off-book accounts that the diocese was using to throw money in all different directions.

The (presumably impartial) jury, after studying the facts-- which were complicated-- found that the guy cheated on taxes, but did NOT find that he got the money illegally.

So does the jury decision vindicate the stand taken by the diocese, or weaken it?

In a statement Thursday, the diocese said it accepts the jury's decision, "but it remains the Diocese's position that no one knew of or approved the payments to Smith by Anton Zgoznik's firm."

As I was saying...

When burglars broke into the residence of Archbishop John Nienstedt and stole irreplaceable ecclesiastical treasures, police first commented on how well the crime had been planned. The burglars seemed to know just where to go, police observed, and how to break through extra-thick window glass without attracting attention.

But after consulting with archdiocesan officials, police spokesmen changed their story. There is no indication that this was the work of professionals, let alone an inside job, police now maintain. "It's more than likely our regular, run-of-the-mill thief."

Sure. You bet. The sort of "run-of-the-mill" thief who consults ecclesiastical calendars, and knows when the archbishop and his staff will be traveling to Rome. The sort of "run-of-the-mill" thief who takes an interest in pectoral crosses and pallium pins-- and, what's more, knows where they are kept.

The Washington Times is following up on the story of the teenage foster child who obtained an abortion in Virginia with help from staff at Commonwealth Catholic Charities of Richmond.

The Roman Catholic bishop of Richmond was told that a diocesan charity planned to help a teenage foster child get an abortion in January and did not try to prevent the procedure.

"It is very awkward, it is very embarrassing," a spokesman for Bishop Francis DiLorenzo told the Times. "A human life was taken."

Wrong. It's awkward and embarrassing when you spill soup on a clean shirt. When a human life is taken-- deliberately, with help from an office of Catholic Charities-- it's more than that. It's a scandal.

In his own public statement on the matter, Bishop DiLorenzo says:

There are many questions people have — why did it happen? Were there no checks and controls concerning hiring practices? Was there no on-going education and formation in Catholic Christian morality concerning pro-life issues and social justice questions? There are also questions about why this situation was not revealed sooner. These are some of the questions which need to be answered by the board, the administration and the staff of Commonwealth Catholic Charities.

Wrong again. Your Excellency, those questions need to be answered by YOU.

The Common Ground Initiative has honored Bishop Gerald Kicanas with this year's Cardinal Bernardin Award. The award citation praised Bishop Kicanas as "a champion of dialogue on contentious issues," with a special mention of "his pastoral concern regarding the abuse crisis."

Right. Since the time when he was a seminary rector in Chicago, clearing the way for the ordination of a student who was hit with three separate charges of sexual misconduct during his seminary days, Bishop Kicanas has demonstrated pastoral concern of a sort you don't see every day. ("I was more concerned about his drinking.")

Sure, a few mistakes were made along the way. A few children were molested; a few priests were jailed; a few hundred millions were paid off from diocesan treasuries. But Bishop Kicanas handled those "contentious issues" admirably, too. Did we mention that the Tucson diocese has emerged from bankruptcy?

The Common Ground Initiative thinks that Bishop Kicanas is following the pastoral example set by the late Cardinal Bernardin. And the funny thing is, they may be right.

Get this. Some University of Chicago faculty smell heresy in the air. They're having none of it:

Few names are more associated with the University of Chicago than Milton Friedman's.

But that's exactly the problem, say some faculty who want to put the brakes on a plan to name a new research center after the Nobel Prize-winning economist.

In a letter to U. of C. President Robert Zimmer, 101 professors -- about 8 percent of the university's full-time faculty -- said they feared that having a center named after the conservative, free-market economist could "reinforce among the public a perception that the university's faculty lacks intellectual and ideological diversity."

Harvard's Harvey Mansfield sardonically remarked, "Diversity means a fellow Leftist in a skirt." It takes a numbingly partisan humorlessness to maintain that suppression of Milton Friedman's name on a building would enhance the university's reputation for openness. Yet Friedman himself would admit that the obtuseness of the Liberal Inquisition, combined with its unlovely fondness for compulsion, must serve its adversaries' interests in the long run.

As the World Youth Day in Sydney approaches, Melburnian Barney Zwartz suggests the Catholic Church, of which he is not a member, should rid herself of embarrassing inessentials, such as her teaching authority. THEN she'd be a big hit with young people, such as Cher and Barney Zwartz.

Disenchantment over such issues as contraception, the place of women, authoritarianism and the sexual abuse crisis have left millions still believing in Jesus but not the church.

Now it is time to try a touch of democracy. Some relatively simple reforms would not affect the church's core teaching of hope and salvation, which are non-negotiable. But how the church operates as an institution should always be open to self-examination.

"Politics affords few greater pleasures," says Mark Steyn, "than offering one's opponents some friendly but hopefully lethal piece of advice." In the same spirit, Zwartz would have the Catholic Church become another liberal congregationalist federation, cheerfully contracepting itself into oblivion. Barney's point has weight: you can't be disenchanted with a church nobody can find.

In Virginia, a teenage girl cannot ordinarily obtain a legal abortion without parental consent. But the 16-year-old immigrant's parents could not be found, so employees at a non-profit agency signed the consent form and arranged transportation to the abortion clinic. They must have felt frustrated as they did so, since they had earlier arranged for the girl to obtain a contraceptive device.

What was this non-profit agency? Commonwealth Catholic Charities.

The Washington Timeshas the story, which broke first in The Wanderer.

Federal government officials-- who subcontract with Catholic Charities to care for immigrants, not to abort their children-- were outraged. A panel of Catholic bishops, after investigating the incident, has said that it "a most regrettable stain on the record of excellence" of Catholic Charities and its affiliates. The problem, the bishops concluded, was that some staff members "were not sufficiently aware of church teaching and policy." There are two possibilities here. One is that staff members at Commonwealth Catholic Charities were familiar with Church teaching regarding procured abortion, and chose to ignore it. The other is that those staff members were so profoundly stupid that they were unaware of the Catholic opposition to abortion, and so ethically insensitive that they could not grasp the natural-law argument against the killing of the innocent unborn. Neither possibility leaves room for optimism about the ability of these same staff members to compile a "record of excellence" in the provision of charitable services.

The UK media are reporting that two gay priests (Anglican) were married last month in England, provoking the predictable journalistic flutter, and a call from the African episcopacy that the Archbishop of Canterbury take steps. As with the last dozen final and fatal wounds to the Anglican communion, the present stunt is surprising only for its tardiness, and the senior churchmen asked to comment are clearly annoyed at being distracted from the cricket match with New Zealand in order to come up with a plausible formula of anxiety (this just in: they're viewing the development with concern, and England are 304 for 4).

The controverted ceremony itself was a Monty Python riff on Archbishop Cranmer. If you think about it, it could hardly be anything else.

Mr Dudley opened the service by saying: "Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God to join these men in a holy covenant of love and fidelity. Such a covenant shows us the mystery of the union between God and God's people and between Christ and the Church."

So, in this "mystery," does the man represent Christ while the man takes the place of the Church -- or is it the other way around?

What do you call a Texan who thinks that the Vatican is more important than Texas?

Ordinarily, you call him a Texan Catholic.

That's what is striking about this passage from a Reuters account of today's meeting between Pope Benedict and President Bush. Marveling at the beauty of the Vatican gardens, the leader of the world's sole superpower asked about the tiny city-state:

Bush asked: "How big is it?" A Vatican aide responded: "Not quite as big as Texas." Bush then said: "Yes but more important ... this is spectacular."

OK, that got my attention.

Some reporters seem to be carried away by the prospect of a presidential conversion. If they really understood what it means to be an American Evangelical Protestant, they wouldn't have expected Bush to kneel down, on an impulsive, at a Marian shrine.

But then again, reporters in Rome might not appreciate how much it takes for a red-blooded Texan to admit that anything is bigger, better, or more important than Texas.

And now we return to the case of Father Robert Whipkey, the Denver priest whose efforts to avoid excessive perspiration by jogging in the nude last June drew a harsh reaction from local law-enforcement officials. We later learned that Whipkey's behavior on this occasion conformed to a previous pattern, which his defenders evidently regarded as benign.

Not so a jury of his peers, who yesterday found Father Whipkey guilty of indecent exposure. Which is odd, because his lawyer offered such a strong defense:

Steinberg said it’s not illegal in Colorado to walk down the street nude unless you know you’re going to expose yourself to someone.

Now I actually haven't read the Colorado statute, but I'm going to take Mr. Steinberg's word for it. The remaining questions, then, are:

1. When you walk down a street, are you aware that people could see you?
2. If you're not aware that people could see you ("I'm invisible!"), are you qualified for parish ministry?

Thousands of "leading Roman Catholics," says the UK Telegraph, are petitioning the Church to allow women and married men into the priesthood. How's that for thinking outside the box?

"We believe that the Holy Spirit may be telling us that we are not sufficiently open to the emergence of new forms of relevant ministries."

Right. Imagine how the life of the Church in the first world would be transformed if the petition were to succeed: instead of the typical monthly guitar Mass congregation consisting of the same two dozen 75-year-old liberals, you'd have a monthly guitar Mass congregation that included three or four 65-year-old liberals as well. Renewal!

It remains open to the judgment of the authorities in the church in order to offer assurance that a translation remains truly faithful to the original inspired text of the Bible.

What ultramontanist made that claim? Why, Milwaukee auxiliary Bishop Richard Sklba, that's who. And why does Sklba invoke "authorities in the church" (he means Church) to safeguard the scriptures? Because there are too many non-union exegetes out there:

There are times when I receive local announcements of forthcoming conferences in the archdiocese, each listing the speakers invited to expound various biblical themes associated with the topic and directed to the targeted audience of that gathering. The names of the presenters are completely new and unknown to me, even though I can claim familiarity with most of the Catholic biblical scholars and teachers of the country. I wonder what background the speakers might have, and how competent they might be to speak out of the Catholic tradition.

A closer look at the bios reveals that the speakers may indeed be converts from some other Christian tradition. Subsequent reports after the conference suggest that the presenters haven't always fully absorbed the Catholic approach to the Scriptures at all. I even hear tell of speakers who exhort their (male) audience to reclaim headship of the house over their wives, and I am troubled by such messages because those interpretations often arise out of a literalistic approach to the New Testament and its teachings.

Literalistic how? Do these fundamentalists attempt to attach their decapitated wives' cervical vertebrae and carotid arteries to their own because St. Paul said (Ephesians 5:23) the husband is the head of the wife?

Whatever the merits of the case for reclaiming male headship, it's hard to see what further light biblical studies could shed on the subject. The dispute concerns not the biblical witness but the pastoral theology that applies it to contemporary circumstances. Yet the puzzling aspect is Sklba's appeal to ecclesial authority. Flash back to the bishops' meeting twelve years ago, when he was campaigning for an inclusive language lectionary and whistling a different tune:

Sklba said the Vatican's intervention to override lectionary translations developed by U.S. Catholic scripture scholars and adopted by U.S. bishops in 1991 represented "a serious affront to our Catholic scholarly community" and "a human relations problem ... of major proportions. Criteria were approved by this body, and suddenly the rules changed," he said.

What -- no deference to the " authorities in the church"? No ecclesial assurance that our translations be "truly faithful to the original inspired text"? A less trusting soul than Uncle Di would underscore the coincidence in Sklba's championing the fashion of the hour against tradition, both when invoking authority and when opposing it. But what's important to keep in mind is the chief message of his "Herald of Hope" column, which is the motto of his guild: YOU can't understand the Bible.