The AP is reporting that an announcement from the White House is coming soon on a “compromise” with the Catholic bishops over the requirement to provide insurance that covers contraception.

I’ve got an idea of how that announcement will end . . .

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.

On December 30, Governor Beshear announced that he was rejecting the merger to protect taxpayer property. “University Hospital is a public asset with an important public mission,” the governor said. If the merger were to take place, “the public would have only indirect and minority influence,” he said.

In response to the filing on Friday of Washington’s civil marriage equality bill, the Washington State Catholic Conference issued a statement in opposition called “Marriage and the Common Good“.

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.

Daniel Avila, a lawyer for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, has resigned over a column he wrote ascribing same-sex attraction to Satan. Church Lady jokes aside, Avila’s resignation reveals a great deal about the USCCB’s efforts to get religious exemptions to various federal regulations on health care and providing social services with federal money.

Avila’s apology seems more aimed at his former employers at the USCCB than to LGBTs, which says a great deal about the political priorities and goals of the USCCB.

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.

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.

Another Roman Catholic bishop — Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix — has revoked the right of a hospital to call itself Catholic over a dispute as to whether a life-saving procedure that results in the end of a pregnancy can ever be acceptable.

Thankfully, the professionals of St. Joseph’s Hospital stood up to the bishop. But this won’t be the last time a hospital is threatened by the hierarchy of the Catholic church, and that should worry everyone, regardless of your beliefs.