Komen for the Cure says that there’s nothing personal about cutting off funds to Planned Parenthood. It’s just business, you know, and since they’re under investigation, we can’t get caught up in that.

That’s funny, because I’ve been reading of investigations — and even admissions — of financial irregularities in several dioceses of the Roman Catholic Church. Given that Komen sends grant money to Catholic institutions like Georgetown University, it makes me wonder if GU will be losing their money next.

Unless GU and other Catholic institutions are losing their funds too, this “it’s just our policy” line is Komen blowing smoke, and that makes me sick.

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.

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.

We live in a culture that is more comfortable asking rape victims “why did you let yourself get raped?” than asking their attackers “why did you rape?” After a Toronto cop’s remark seemed to put the responsibility for rape on how a victim dressed, it lit a fuse of anger that has spread around the globe.

Slutwalk. “Because We’ve Had Enough”

It’s coming to Kansas City today, and maybe to your city next.

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.

This Friday 134 million American lemmings with credit cards will clog roads, parking lots, and cash registers, scurrying and reaching and inching along together to take hold of dead stuff. Then they’ll all reverse course, dragging the dead objects with them. This Friday 134 million American lemmings with credit cards will clog roads, parking lots, and cash registers, scurrying and reaching and inching along together to take hold of dead stuff. Then they’ll all reverse course, dragging the dead objects with them. Most of the objects they’ll burn lots of carbon to acquire travelled to America in huge ships burning lots of carbon (and toxic bunker fuel): manufacturing these objects burnt more carbon.

How else can we spend this Friday?

How did 43% of America’s population end up doing synchronized Anthropocene fire dances on a dangeously warming planet?

The usual suspects: Freud’s nephew and the Philadelphia Police Department.