The Good and the Bad in Catholic America

I read a rather depressing piece by Joseph Bottum in the October edition of First Things called "When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano: Catholic Culture in America". It is an immensely long but immensely detailed account of what happened to Catholic Culture in the US over the last four decades or so. Not happy reading. There is "light at the end of the tunnel", but you have to have real faith to discern it. Perhaps this is why our brothers like Fr Fenton are going to the Orthodox Church rather than the Catholic Church (however, I rather think this is simply because we know about the horrors in the Catholic Church, and the horrors in the Orthodox Church are rather better concealed--although the scandals in the Church of Greece and the Church of Jerusalem would be a good place to start one's investigations).

Then I read this piece in Time Magazine: Today's Nun Has A Veil--And A Blog and felt so much better.