On the Square Today

Leroy Huizenga on the evangelical family :

Take a look at your family photos going back to your grandparents and great-grandparents, if you happen to have them. I have a nice one of my late father’s family when he was a little boy of three, circa 1939, taken on the family farm in North Dakota. A serious, hardscrabble Friesian family stares back at me: eight siblings; one father; no mother, as she had recently passed. Ten. I look at photos of my family of origin: Mom, dad, me, sister. Four. A photo of my own family: Me, my wife, son, daughter. Currently four. A photo of my sister and her husband. Two. Photos of friends: Many singles, many childless couples.

Also today, Sebastian White, O.P. on the Vatican’s doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious :

Many people have been upset by the Vatican’s doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR). Understandably enough, most people haven’t actually read the assessment (after all, ecclesiastical documents tend not to be page-turners). Judging only from most media reports, we’d have to conclude that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is gathering sticks for the first auto-da-fè in centuries. Unfortunately, the actual content of Vatican documents and pronouncements is often quite different from what is assumed, reported, and judged. The doctrinal assessment of the LCWR, carried out in charitable, pastoral (dare I say paternal?) concern, is no exception.