An excellent essay in the UK Guardian by Keith Chappell on next month's meeting between the Irish bishops and Pope Benedict XVI regarding the sex abuse crisis in that country points to a big difference between this pope and the last: a far more robust response to child sex abuse.Many faulted Pope John Paul II, rightly I think, for a slow and insufficiently direct response to the U.S.

Get it?

Taking a page from arrangements in the U.S., U.K, and Australia, Rome is preparing a legal process for Anglicans unhappy over women's ordination and a more permissive approach to homosexuality to enter the Roman Catholic Church--while keeping their Anglicanism intact.

For those who want a more positive spin about the pope's letter of explanation regarding the SSPX than my post (for which I feel I have been unjustly called a know-it-all responsible for all the problems in the church!), you might like former America magazine edtior Jesuit Tom Reese's commentary from Newsweek.

We've all heard it, and maybe even thought it, before: Why doesn't the church sell of all its riches and give the proceeds to the poor?

The Lefebvrite controversy seems to be moving from initial concern over its effects on Catholic-Jewish dialogue to fear among Catholics, especially in Europe, that the Vatican is backing away from the reforms of Vatican II.

The news after the rehabilitation of the Lefebrvites keeps getting worse: The chief rabbinate of Israel has broken off ties with the Vatican, despite Pope Benedict's protestations that he does not share Bishop Richard Williamson's denial of the Holocaust, according to the Jerusalem Post. Healing this new rift will indeed take time.

The rehabilitation of the Lefebvrites, who went into schism after the Second Vatican Council, has drawn a lot of press coverage, especially in Europe, where most of the group's 150,000 members live. As expected, Jewish response has been strong and negative, as reported here by the UK Times, as one of the bishops restored to Rome's good graces is a vociferous denier of the Holocaust.

A leading Italian rabbi has pulled out of an annual Vatican celebration of Judaism, according to the U.K. Times.