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Whispers in the Loggia

All Eyes on the DocketToday

It's become a November Meeting tradition: whenever the bench isn't sitting, chances are you'll find Bishop John McRaith of Owensboro just by the door outside, puffing quietly away on his trusty pipe.

Head of western Kentucky's rural, 50,000-member diocese since 1982, just days after the New York Times highlighted the Owensboro church for its integration of foreign clergy into the ranks McRaith's resignation was accepted on Monday -- 11 months before he reaches the canonical retirement age of 75 -- with the bishop citing his health:

"I do not have a life-threatening illness, but my doctors have advised me to slow down, and I concluded that my resignation was in the best interest of the diocese," McRaith said in a statement....

The diocese consists of 32 mostly rural counties in Western Kentucky, with 79 parishes, three high schools, two middle schools and 13 elementary schools.

The diocese lists 20,370 Catholic households and 50 active diocesan priests...

In Dublin, "Atonement" Now... "Shock" -- and Bono -- on the "Horizon"Today

If a priest spends nine days marching across his country to call for the resignation of a bishop over his mishandling of abuse cases, seeking the backing of its top prelate in the latter's cathedral at his journey's end, what's a primate to do?

For many of us, instinct, ecclesiology and experience would say he'd ignore the cleric, stand with the confrere -- and head for a bunker... but for Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, the answer was to embrace and praise Fr Michael Mernagh before the cameras as the survivor-advocate's nine-day "Atonement Walk" reached its finish yesterday in the Dublin Pro.

Put mildly, this isn't so much re-throwing John Magee under the bus as repeatedly running over the body.

Martin said [of Mernagh]: “He’s a man of principle. I respect anybody like that. I appreciate very much his gesture, but it’s his day and it’s a credit to him.”...

Fr Mernagh said he thanked God for the privilege of walking with so many victims and was blessed with fine weather and the support of many people.

“I realise one thing though I’m ending this part of my journey, our journey to give justice and to make atonement is only beginning.

“I have called, as I’ve called in the past, on the priests and bishops for a new heart of atonement. We must recognise that we are all at fault to allow this horrific history of clerical child abuse to go on. We need to come out of our denial, all of us, and ensure that this never happens again.”

He also reiterated his call to Bishop John Magee to resign his position. “For the sake of his own clergy and his people, he has admitted he has been at fault. It is logical for him to step aside on all accounts.”

Fr Mernagh was given a standing ovation inside the Pro-Cathedral.

This afternoon, the Irish government announced a full state inquiry into the history of abuse cases in the Cloyne diocese by the same panel currently wrapping up its investigation into the Dublin church.

With the Dublin Report slated for release around month's end, the archbishop has spent recent days preparing the ground for its impact, telling reporters that "people will be shocked" at the inquest's findings.

No stranger to the epochal, Martin -- host of the next International Eucharistic Congress in 2011 -- has likewise denied the widespread buzz that he's headed back to the Curia to take up the presidency of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, where he served for 15 years, ending up as the dicastery's #2 before being tapped as the Holy See's observer to the UN offices at Geneva in 2001.

The current Justice Czar, Cardinal Renato Martino, turned 75 in November 2007.

* * *

Of course, it was as secretary of Iustitia et Pax that the native Dubliner sealed his place in the Pantheon of legend by conducting the most memorable papal audience of recent decades -- the one he began with the words, "Holy Father, this is Mr Bono, he is a rock singer"...

...and for Karol Wojtyla and Paul Hewson both, love at first sight was had.

On a much brighter religious note from the Isle, the 15th U2 album -- No Line on the Horizon -- will roll out late next month.

In joyful anticipation, let the Great One sing a new song...

Neuhaus at the GateToday

NRO posts a rending update to the below....

His friends and family are keeping vigil and he was administered last rites shortly after midnight. Fr. George Rutler, who gave him the Catholic Sacrament, says that “he is not expected to live long” and suggests “that it is appropriate that prayers be offered for a holy death.”...

Fr. Neuhaus might say, if he could right now,

what he's already written:

We are born to die. Not that death is the purpose of our being born, but we are born toward death, and in each of our lives the work of dying is already underway. The work of dying well is, in largest part, the work of living well. Most of us are at ease in discussing what makes for a good life, but we typically become tongue-tied and nervous when the discussion turns to a good death. As children of a culture radically, even religiously, devoted to youth and health, many find it incomprehensible, indeed offensive, that the word "good" should in any way be associated with death. Death, it is thought, is an unmitigated evil, the very antithesis of all that is good.

Death is to be warded off by exercise, by healthy habits, by medical advances. What cannot be halted can be delayed, and what cannot forever be de

For the SickToday

As folks keep asking after him, the latest update on Fr Andrew Greeley says the Chi-town cleric who gave the world Blackie Ryan is "doing much better" and, while still hospitalized, is "receiving intensive therapy and showing improvement."

On a side-note, the Good Samaritans -- a California couple in town for a wedding -- who rushed to Greeley's aid after his "freak fall" from a taxi in early November didn't know who they had helped until they Googled him.

Meanwhile, prayers would likewise be much-appreciated for Fr Richard John Neuhaus -- the celebrated convert, commentator and life-force behind First Things, the "ecumenical journal" he founded in 1990.

Last week, a dispatch circulated among Neuhaus' friends said that he had been admitted to Manhattan's Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center with a "serious cancer," its treatment made more difficult after the cleric "was taken dangerously ill" over Christmas "with what seems to be a systemic infection that has left him very weak."

"The long-term prognosis for this particular cancer is not good," said the note from FT editor Joseph Bottum, "but it is not hopeless, either, and there is a possibility that it will respond to the recomm

Roll Out the Fiddle... and Surpass the StarsYesterday

Its observance might be transferred to Sunday in much of the global church... but lest it slipped any minds, today is the Twelfth Day of Christmas -- the Epiphany (also known as "Three Kings Day," Theophany, Orthodox Christmas Eve, etc.).

(To this day, though, try explaining the "Sunday between the 2nd and the 8th" bit to Italian folk and they'll look at you like you're from another planet.)

Whatever one calls it, as promised by his MC in late Advent, the Pope donned a classic-style "Roman" or "fiddle-back" chasuble for this morning's liturgy in St Peter's. And that's not all; come Sunday's feast of the Baptism of the Lord, B16 will once again celebrate the traditional Sistine Chapel Mass (featuring the baptism of infants) using the venue's antique fixed altar and ergo, in the ad orientem stance -- or, as it's ofte