Weekly Summary 6/13/26

The week in review, from the perspective of a veteran Catholic journalist

For much of this past week I was wrestling with a “big” piece, longer than my usual fare, and in a way more ambitious. Along the way, though, I paused to post some quick thoughts.

Articles

My own “big” piece is a thought that I’ve been developing for quite a long time: A lot of the problems at the Vatican could be eased, if not eliminated, by one simple but important administrative change. Since the curial reform of Pope Paul VI, the Secretariat of State has been a super-dicastery, coordinating and directing the affairs of all other Vatican offices. It shouldn’t be. By its very nature, the Secretariat of State focuses on the here and now; there’s a constant temptation to overlook the hereafter.

• I made my case in two parts that appeared first on the CatholicCulture site. They’re now combined into a single longer essay here: My one-step proposal for Vatican reform.

• For the Home Front podcast this week, Leila and I discussed that proposal for Vatican reform. Then we turned to her own “big” piece for the week, in which she observes that even if the SSPX somehow disappeared overnight, the problem that traditionalists cite— the “state of necessity” in the Church— would remain.

Notes

During his visit to Spain, Pope Leo repeated his complaint that the just-war tradition is “outdated.” So I repeated my point: that if we discard the just-war tradition, we have no standards for judging the morality of international conflicts. And if we do think about those moral issues, guess what? We’re thinking about justice in warfare!

The US State Department has announced $240 million in funding for Catholic Relief Services, to be used for humanitarian aid in “crisis-response” situations. That sounds wonderful at first. But I worry: Is it “charity” when Uncle Sam pays the bills? And remember: He who pays the piper calls the tunes.

Leila’s short essay, noting that “Synodality is not a mark of the Church,” deserved notice. This is where she first made the point that the SSPX could disappear, and the problem would remain.

The US bishops’ conference approved some changes in the “Dallas Charter” governing the handling of abuse cases. But the bishops rejected proposals to broaden the policy so that it would cover abuse of vulnerable adults and episcopal negligence. Do you know anything about the bishop who chaired the committee drafting the new policies— and keeping the lid on?

And while we can all rejoice at the surge in adult converts who entered the Catholic Church at Easter, a new Pew Research study confirms that for every young adult coming in, eight cradle Catholics are leaving. The trend is positive— don’t dismiss that— but we have a long way to go.