Round 3 of updates to “the mandate”; Round 3 of responses to the update. Religion News Service has the most straightforward rundown, while NCR offers the usual in-depth coverage. USCCB spokeswoman Mercy Sister Mary Ann Walsh gets the award for strangest reaction when she expressed surprise that “such important information would be announced late Friday of St. Patrick’s Day weekend and as we prepare for the Fourth Sunday of Lent.”
Color commentary: What the heck? Here’s mud in your eye. Since when is there any such thing as “St Patrick’s Day weekend,” and what kind of prep does one have to do for the Fourth Sunday of Lent? Steam the pink vestments?
Moving on: Commonweal has two nice commentaries on the constitutionality of the mandate and the new definition of “corporation” the bishops have introduced in their response to the mandate.
Two more stories on the Barbara Johnson controversy, one from the Washington Post that traces the histories of both priest and communicant, and another from an Episcopal priest who tells of her entirely different experience at her mother’s Catholic funeral, also covered in a blog today by Scott Alessi.
Finally, the legal move by the dioceses of St. Louis and Kansas City against the Survivors’ Network of Those Abused by Priests is getting more traction as a news story; Religion Dispatches has an interview with David Clohessy. The USCCB better get in front of this one–all the reporting is that the “U.S. bishops” have a new strategy against SNAP, rather than just the two bishops in Missouri.
