Michael Gallagher

If we can believe the N.Y. Times—and if we can’t believe the N.Y. Times, whom can we believe?—the American Catholic bishops meeting in Baltimore last month led to professions of confusion about what course to follow in the wake of the recent synod in Rome devoted to the family.  Most of the bishops had expected a declaration that the family was a Good Thing, only this time with heightened emphasis backed up by still more pious boiler plate to that effect.  This they, the overwhelming number of them appointed by John Paul II and Benedict XVI, felt was just the ticket to counter all the alarming things that Francis had been saying relative to the Church’s attitude towards homosexuals.

Then there were two ironically juxtaposed pictures, one right above the other, that, given my macabre sense of humor, I found amusing in a chilling sort of…