Newt Gingrich may be demonstrably smarter than Rick Perry, but who isn’t? Nonetheless he complements what he has with a nasty combination of saying stupid things and stubbornness that is a wonder to behold.

This is not right. You are not alone. This must change. With these three phrases, the mighty are brought down and the lowly lifted up.

On this Thanksgiving Weekend, I am thankful for all who stand up to bullies.

Today saw the astounding spectacle of alleged pedophile Jerry Sandusky going on national television, while under indictment, and proclaiming his innocence to Bob Costas while acknowledging that he sometimes showered with young boys and that was probably inappropriate.

The Penn State situation has allowed anti-gay bigots to take another whack at the “gays-are-child molesters” piñata (see Alvin’s post about the deranged, homo-obsessed fringe bigot Peter LaBarbera, “Scapegoating gay men for the Penn State tragedy“); however, when you hear hate-filled, fact-free garbage that has nothing to do with this scandal being heaped on LGBT parents on the public airwaves, something has to be done.

Institutions faced with allegations of criminal misconduct like the rape of children have a choice. The president of Penn State, following the model used by the bishops of the Roman Catholic church, backed his athletic director and VP for finance unconditionally when they were indicted. But the Board of Trustees took a different path, demanding openness to wherever the investigations by prosecutors takes them. That kind of institutional loyalty will, in the long run, help Penn State come to grips with what has happened in their midst — much more so than attempts to cover up, make excuses, and otherwise keep silent.

I’ve been a campus pastor, and my heart goes out to the campus pastors at Penn State. But one of them has a much tougher assignment than the others: Father Matthew Laffey. The Roman Catholic church in Philadelphia is facing a remarkably similar criminal indictment of Monsignor William Lynn, the former assistant to the former Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua. Lynn faces trial next March on charges that he protected priests he knew to be pedophiles, with the knowledge and support of his boss, the Cardinal. It doesn’t help matters for Father Matthew that Penn State’s Catholic campus ministry is in the middle of constructing the Suzanne Pohland Paterno Catholic Student Faith Center. (That’s Mrs. JoPa.)

Good luck with all that, Father Matthew.

You are never going to be able to get rid of all sick people ever. These people find kids to victimize like that is their job. So absent a science fiction vaccine that wipes out whatever wiring flaw in people’s minds as makes them do this, what you have to have is an oversight structure with its eyes on the prize. The prize isn’t the football coach’s reputation, or the university president’s, or the football team’s, or the town’s. The prize isn’t keeping everybody quiet so that nobody at Sports Illustrated has to write anything awkward. The prize isn’t letting Joe Paterno retire quietly as a legend because legacy and winning and blah blah blah.

Roman Catholic Bishop Robert Finn has been indicted on charges of failing to report child abuse by one on his priests.

I’m a Lutheran pastor, and I’ve taught clergy and lay leaders in a variety of denominations — including Roman Catholics — about child abuse and the need to file a report when you have reason to believe that abuse has taken place. When a bishop or any other church official fails to report suspicions of abuse, that’s a crime.

It’s about time a bishop faced a judge for failing to report allegations of child abuse.

No, let me restate that. It’s *well past time* for a bishop to be indicted for trying to sweep things under the ecclesiastical carpet and pretend there’s no problem here. Even so, this indictment is better late than never.

This past week, Pope Benedict XVI named Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput to succeed Cardinal Justin Rigali as head of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. While this is an in-house decision of the Roman Catholic church, it will have major implications far beyond Philly, and reaches deeply into the broader political discussions in the US and beyond. Chaput is a leading conservative voice on church and state, and a strong defender of the church in general, and he’s stepping into the biggest church vs. state battle going on right now outside of Ireland.

Naming Chaput to head up the Philadelphia Archdiocese put one of Benedict’s most articulate and powerful voices front and center in those battles, and also changes the secular political calculus for 2012 in Pennsylvania and beyond.

Proposed $47 million cuts in the program of nutrition for Women, Infants and Children will make it that more difficult for pregnant women and small children, literally, to survive. These cuts are extended by Pentagon spending increases.

On Monday evening, Irish television station RTE One revealed the existence of a 1997 Vatican letter to the Bishops of Ireland, forcing them to back down from mandating that bishops report abusive priests to the secular authorities. The letter came with a threat attached, that if the bishops took action against a priest and the priest appealed to Rome, Rome would back the priest and the bishop would end up with a black eye.

The saddest part of the whole thing? This threat worked.