Weekly Summary: 4/4/26
The week in review, from the perspective of a veteran Catholic journalist
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Holy Week is an appropriate time for silence, don’t you think? My work tapered off as we approached the Triduum. Let me wish all my readers the blessings of the glorious Easter season. I’ll be back in action Monday!
Articles
The Vatican very quietly announced this week that World Children’s Day, scheduled for September 25-27, has been cancelled. The announcement noted the spiritual formation of children appropriately takes place in the home, not in international mass meetings. I voiced my hope that some of the other special “days” that have crept onto the Vatican calendar might be given the same critical scrutiny. Where is it written—in the New Testament, or the Catechism of the Catholic Church, or the Code of Canon Law—that the Roman Pontiff must attend World Youth Day? Where is it written that there must be a World Youth Day?
This week on the Home Front, I discussed two important legal cases that could discourage government censorship— IF they survive a change in the political climate. Leila called attention to the death of Kermit Gosnell, which— like his appalling exploitation of women in a sleazy abortion mill— passed unnoticed by the major media.
Notes
Costco has announced special discounts for IVF treatments. That’s cause for dismay, but before thinking about boycotts, bear in mind that you’re already subsidizing IVF with your tax dollars. It’s popular and it’s profitable; to date those considerations have swamped the moral questions.
Archbishop Peña Parra, the sustituto— the powerful prelate who has controlled the flow of paperwork at the Vatican since 2018— has been given a new assignment. It’s not a promotion— more of a sideways move. Given his questionable track record, I ask: Why not a demotion?
Leila repeated my observation that the latest translation of a book by the great Idea Friederike Görres is something like a combination of Chesterton and Pascal. Unique, concise, and remarkably quotable.
A Pew Research survey of American attitudes on moral issues (porn, abortion, assisted suicide, the death penalty) made for depressing reading. But most depressing of all was the overwhelming support for artificial human reproduction (which opens the way to marketing children).
It wasn’t just a “return to tradition” when Pope Leo washed the feet of 12 priests on Holy Thursday. There’s a rich symbolism to that gesture, which most reporters missed.
President Trump’s speech on Iran troubled me. In particular, the threat to “bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong,” was completely incompatible with the Christian tradition governing just war.
