A total of 6500 miles and 53 events in 40 cities across 15 states, over the course of three weeks, starting May 29 at Ellis Island in New York and ending on June 18 on Angel Island in San Francisco. Woody Guthrie ought to be the soundtrack.

The official title: “NETWORK Nuns on the Bus: A Drive for Faith, Family, and Citizenship.”

“Nuns on the Bus” road map courtesy of Network

It’s an impressive road trip, by any standards, and a huge step up from the nine-state, 2,700 mile tour across the Midwest and Northeast that first vaulted the Nuns on the Bus, and their charismatic leader, Sister Simone Campbell, into the headlines and onto “The Colbert Report,” e.g.

(“By the way, where’s the outfit?” as Colbert’s faux blowhard said to Campbell. “You burn it at one of those radical wimple-burning parties?” I suspect real blowhards, and others, were applauding!)

In any event, Network, the social justice lobby that Campbell heads, seems ready for the challenge, and perhaps supporters — and protesters — will be ready for them. They’re not coming out of nowhere like last time’s magical mystery tour.

What to watch for: whether, or how many, bishops join on. This time the nuns and the bishops are on the same page on a shared issue, immigration reform. But the nuns are still under Vatican scrutiny. Will they make common cause for “commonsense immigration reform”?

“They don’t have to ride on the bus,” Campbell told me earlier this month. “They can come stand with us at the events.”

Stay tuned. And meanwhile check out the full schedule of their Southern swing.

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Evidence for such overrreactions abound, and a recent example of this persecution myth — related to the Boston Marathon bombing — has now been debunked, and the record deserves to be set straight.

The genesis of this episode was an April 25 column in the Wall Street Journal by Jennifer Graham, who noted in the midst of the turmoil and explosions of that grisly day, Boston police turned away two priests who wanted to minister to victims because they were trying to clear the area to allow emergency medical personnel and to prevent casualties from other possible bombs.

Graham even invoked the image of 8-year-old victim Martin Richard to drive her point home:

“(I)t is a poignant irony that Martin Richard, the 8-year-old boy who died on Boylston Street, was a Catholic who had received his first Communion just last year. As Martin lay dying, priests were only yards away, beyond the police tape, unable to reach him to administer last rites—a sacrament that, to Catholics, bears enormous significance.”

This episode, in Graham’s reading, was evidence of a sad cultural shift against Catholic priests and the welcome that faith once enjoyed. Her column actually didn’t have much evidence of that, and the quotations from priests and others were far more nuanced and balanced when taken together.

But credulous persecution fans of course ran with the story, spreading it across social media and amping it along the way so that, as Phil Lawler put it, clergy were “barred” by police “hostile to priests” in a move that augured a return to the bad old days where “Catholics Need Not Apply” signs were posted everywhere.

At First Things, John M. Grondelski saw “another prejudice at work here: the relentless quest to sanitize anything public of any religious presence.”

Yeah, well. The whole spin of this as evidence of a rampant anti-Christian bias never seemed to square with the more parsimonious explanation that amid a chaotic seen of carnage and panicked people and uncertainty over whether there were more bombs waiting to explode, the authorities at the scene just wanted to get control of the situation, get medical attention to those who could be helped, and wanted to prevent more casualties.

The priests cited in the original WSJ story indicated as much, but now an article in that notorious left-wing rag, the Boston Pilot, a.k.a. the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston, debunks the whole persecution meme that ran wild through certain precincts of the hyper-suspcious right:

“The twist that this story has taken in some places just doesn’t reflect my experience on that day at all,” sad Father Tom Carzon, director of seminarians for the Oblates of the Virgin Mary.

The Pilot said Carzon called them after seeing how his experience was twisted:

Father Carzon said he felt that media reports portraying a conflict between priests and police as a general reality in Boston mischaracterized the situation, and said he understood the police turning people back, including clergy, in light of potential danger closer to the finish line.

“They were trying to keep safe a very unstable, chaotic area. Even the police who were there on the perimeter, they had no idea what was behind them. All they knew was that they needed to clear out the area, and they had no idea how much they themselves were standing in harm’s way,” Father Carzon said.

Carzon noted how the clergy worked with police to allow provision for pastoral care, which seemed quite efficacious.

The article also cited another Oblate, Father John Wykes, who did express a wish to be treated as a first responder but he also praised police:

“I take my hat off to the police for doing such a wonderful and thorough job on that day, and all the next days as well actually, in trying to secure the area and also in terms of this horrible manhunt, which included the horrifying exchange of gunfire and throwing of explosives,” he said.

“I certainly admire their work, but I look forward to working with them as an emergency responder if at all possible,” Father Wykes said.

The article also quote Boston Police Department spokesperson — which none of the other reports did — saying that officers on the scene were ordered to protect bystanders, including priests, and were following an order given at the time to allow no more people into the area because of the potential of additional explosions.

That seems like the obvious answer. But as they say at the tabloids, some stories are too good to check out — best to go with what you prefer to believe.

Hence the furor over “anti-Catholic” officials in Miami trying to close a soup kitchen run by Mother Teresa’s order — or not — or anger over the liberal media conspiracy to “blackout” coverage of the Kermit Gosnell trial — or not — or the scandal of Obama’s Pentagon hunting down Christians in the military to court-martial them if they talk about their faith — or not.

Yes, villains come in handy, and we all like to have ready made bogeymen who can make every complex situation a matter of simple persecution. But crying wolf doesn’t really help the cause, and it diverts attention from cases of genuine oppression and suffering.

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House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. RNS photo by Gage Skidmore/courtesy Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/5446900144/)

This image available for Web publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

Republican congressman Paul Ryan is a leading light in the GOP, especially on budgetary issues, but his Catholic cred has come under intense scrutiny given his somewhat convoluted efforts to square his libertarian credo with church teaching. And now he has gone and said gay adoption is okay!

One churchman who has a strong relationship with Ryan is New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who had previously been archbishop of Milwaukee, where he developed a personal friendship with the Wisconsin congressman.

But I wonder if Ryan has now gone too far even for His Eminence. As Michael Scherer reports in this week’s Time, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough recently engaged in some beer diplomacy with Ryan at a drink at a K Street restaurant to discussion the deficit reduction standoff.

“He’s a Minnesota Irish Catholic guy, and I’m a Wisconsin Irish Catholic guy,” Ryan told Scherer. “It quickly dawned on me that we can work together.”

“I ended up getting some lager I’d never heard of,” Ryan said.

Miller Lite photo courtesy http://www.millerlite.com

“My first pastoral letter’s gonna be a condemnation of light beer and instant mashed potatoes – I hate those two things.”

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Photo Illustration of Mark Sanford courtesy Charleston’s TheDigitel via Flickr (http://flic.kr/p/6SpBxG) *Note: This photo is an altered version of the original.

And there’s plenty of truth to that. Many Dixie evangelicals and Republican bible-thumpers are guilty of taking a “do as I say, not as I do” approach to personal morality, and that gap makes some uneasy. As the WaPo’s conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin put it:

Whether we are becoming a more libertarian or a libertine society is a matter of debate. But the real take-away is that Republicans talk a good game on “family values” but don’t take it all that seriously.

On the other hand, that’s always been the case, and it may not hurt the party that much when it comes to the ballot box. That’s because Southerners, at least, can talk a good game but they are profoundly realistic and pragmatic when it comes to politics.

As Slate’s John Dickerson put it in an excellent post-elex column, residents of the Palmetto State are — gasp — more like the French than they are like the Americans they say they want to be. Hence their affinity for a fellow like Newt Gingrich, who they picked over family man (one family, that is, and one wife) Mitt Romney:

South Carolina conservatives may still say a candidate’s sins matter, but they aren’t voting that way. In fact, if you weren’t privy to the state’s strong social conservative history, you could almost mistake South Carolinians for city folk—people who vote for experience, policy, and political leanings and show a sophisticate’s relativism toward personal moral failings. These days, South Carolinians seem almost Parisian when they enter the voting booth.

Indeed, if you want to find the kind of family values that Southern believers profess, don’t look to the South: those Red States have higher rates of social pathologies like divorce and out-of-wedlock births and such than the Blue States. As the New York Times conservative columnist, Ross Douthat, put it: “If you’re looking for solid marriages, head to Massachusetts, not Alabama.”

Or look to Democratic power couples who have survived infidelities, like the Clintons, the Spitzers, the Weiners, e.g.

But National Review’s Jonah Goldberg suggests those cases show that Democrats put politics above all else, and he insists that “conservatives still care more than liberals about maintaining the old standards.”

Yet the standards are changing, so Sanford’s sin wasn’t so bad, Goldberg writes:

I’m not condoning Sanford’s behavior — at all — but in the parade of horribles we’ve seen from politicians over the last 20 years, Sanford’s behavior is almost quaint. He fell in love with an age-appropriate woman. His formidable wife didn’t run to the stage to gaze admiringly and forgivingly at her disgraced husband to lessen the political damage. She kicked him to the curb and moved on with her life.

And South Carolina voters were right for voting for a Republican rather than a Democrat, even Stephen Colbert’s sister…

Which may be the real lesson here — namely, as Jason Zengerle catalogues at New York Magazine, Sanford was a really good politician. Elizabeth Colbert Busch was very nice and kind of appealing, but she was still a neophyte:

A first-time candidate who was already extremely guarded, once she took the lead, she tried to run out the clock, becoming even more on-message and walled-off. She spent the final weeks of the race surrounded by a coterie of aides (who shooed away reporters) and traveling through the district in a giant bus. Sanford, meanwhile, campaigned like he had nothing to lose. Just consider the two candidates’ schedules today, in the final hours of the race: Sanford made ten campaign stops; Colbert Busch voted and called it a day.

Still, ideals are good to have, standards are there to shoot for. And repentance ought to be real.

So count me with Ross Douthat and Rod Dreher as fans of John Profumo, an exemplar for Americans, from Britain, of all places:

John Profumo was the disgraced British cabinet minister who left public life (in 1963) humiliated by a famous sex scandal, and spent the rest of his life redeeming himself through selfless service to the poor.

And it was some serious service. Rod links to his 2006 obituary in The Telegraph. A taste:

Profumo’s transgression came when the Tories had been in power for 11 years. He was then a promising Secretary of State for War, married to the actress Valerie Hobson, star of the film Kind Hearts and Coronets and one of Britain’s leading actresses of stage and screen in the 1940s and 1950s.

On June 5 1963 he resigned after admitting that he had lied to Parliament about his relationship with Christine Keeler, a call-girl who had been – separately – seeing the Russian naval attaché and spy, Yevgeny Ivanov. The Macmillan government never recovered from the scandal and, for that and other reasons, lost the General Election the following year.

Filled with remorse, Profumo never sought to justify himself or seek public sympathy. Instead, for the next four decades he devoted himself to Toynbee Hall, a charitable settlement at Spitalfields in the East End of London. He began by washing dishes, helping with the playgroup and collecting rents. Later he served with the charity’s council, eventually becoming its chairman and then president – the only other person to have held that office was Clement Attlee.

From his tiny office at Toynbee Hall, Profumo kept up a ceaseless flow of letters to anyone who might be able to speak, give money or do anything to assist the charity in its work of helping the poor and down-and-outs in the East End. Largely through his efforts, Toynbee Hall became a national institution.

Now that’s making something of your mistakes.

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Via Roll Call:

In a town hall meeting with constituents in Wisconsin on Monday, the House Budget Committee chairman said he has changed his mind on the adoption issue, even though his opinions on other aspects of gay rights have remained unchanged. To date, two Republican senators — Rob Portman of Ohio, who had been in the mix for Mitt Romney’s No. 2 spot, and Mark S. Kirk of Illinois — have come out in support of gay marriage.

“Adoption, I’d vote differently these days. That was I think a vote I took in my first term, 1999 or 2000. I do believe that if there are children who are orphans who do not have a loving person or couple, I think if a person wants to love and raise a child they ought to be able to do that. Period,” Ryan said in a video posted by the liberal website Think Progress. “I would vote that way. I do believe marriage is between a man and a woman, we just respectfully disagree on that issue.”

(snip)

In the past, Ryan has opposed almost every equality measure, getting a “0″ on the Human Rights Campaign’s most recent Congressional scorecard. He opposed the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” supported the Defense of Marriage Act and voted against the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Protection Act, which expanded federal hate crime laws to protect the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

In his remarks Monday, Ryan said he has “always supported” civil unions. Though there is no evidence to support that, it’s a clear sign that the politics of the issue have changed and that even the most conservative Republicans need to appear more hospitable to gays and lesbians in order to expand their voting bloc.

This could spell more trouble for the Catholic bishops in their battle on gay rights; they have already been losing their own faithful, and losing political allies like Ryan is tough.

Then again, many would say Ryan’s economic policies were hardly in line with the bishops and Catholic teaching, so there.

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The breadth of the horrific abuse had just been revealed in the Cloyne Report, an investigation the Vatican had not done much to facilitate. On the contrary. And the Cloyne Report, Kenny said in a passionate speech on the floor of Parliament, “excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism, the narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.”

Kenny’s “rant” was “hysterical” and “rabid,” opined Vatican favorite George Weigel, who said Ireland was now officially “the most stridently anti-Catholic country in the Western world.” (Grant Gallicho at dotCommonweal had a thorough write-up here and here also detailed an interesting pushback on Weigel from a fellow conservative Catholic.)

The Vatican recalled its ambassador in protest, stories were quickly churned out detailing the historic break between the Irish church and the Irish state — not to mention the populace and its culture. And a few months later, Kenny’s government announced it was closing its embassy to the Holy See — described as a “huge blow” to the Vatican’s prestige.

Well, the Irish are nothing if not a forgiving people, no? Just last month, Taoiseach Kenny joined Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio for a St. Patrick’s Day Mass in Breezy Point, the largely Irish enclave devastated by Hurricane Sandy. Kenny served as lector.

And now Kenny will get an even bigger stage — as commencement speaker at Boston College, that venerable Jesuit school. He will also receive an honorary doctorate, according to the glowing announcement from BC:

Enda Kenny was elected as Taoiseach (prime minister) in March of 2011, almost nine years after being chosen as leader of Fine Gael, the largest political party in the Dáil Éireann (House of Deputies). Kenny has articulated a vision of Fine Gael as a party of the progressive center, focusing on the rights and responsibilities of all citizens, while also demonstrating his concern for social justice: Earlier this year, he delivered an emotional apology in the Dáil on behalf of the state to the Magdalene Laundry survivors.

No mention of the Catholic Church’s abuse issues, but maybe Kenny has something more to say on those issues. We will find out on May 20.

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Naming this advisory panel of eight cardinals (and one bishop) within a month is pretty speedy action for any administration, and constitutes warp speed for the Vatican. The Associated Press calls it a “bombshell announcement that indicates he (Francis) intends a major shift in how the papacy should function.”

The prelates are an interesting assortment, a team of rivals, to a degree, and they include Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley (who was much discussed as a papabile in last month’s conclave) plus Australian Cardinal George Pell, Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras, Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Bombay.

They are a diverse group, mostly outsiders, but men who also know Rome well and want to make some serious changes. Maradiaga has the title of “coordinator” of the group, for what that’s worth.

Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, president of the Governorate of Vatican City State, is the requisite curial rep, but he is the lone Roman man and it doesn’t seem that he would have many allies on this group if he wants to try to fend off reform.

Here is the statement from the Vatican press office:

The Holy Father Francis, taking up a suggestion that emerged during the General Congregations preceding the Conclave, has established a group of cardinals to advise him in the government of the universal Church and to study a plan for revising the Apostolic Constitution on the Roman Curia, ‘Pastor Bonus’.

The group consists of:

- Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, president of the Governorate of Vatican City State;

- Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, archbishop emeritus of Santiago de Chile, Chile;

- Cardinal Oswald Gracias, archbishop of Bombay, India;

- Cardinal Reinhard Marx, archbishop of Munich and Freising, Germany;

- Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya, archbishop of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo;

- Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley O.F.M. Cap., archbishop of Boston, USA;

- Cardinal George Pell, archbishop of Sydney, Australia;

- Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, S.D.B., archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in the role of coordinator; and

- Bishop Marcello Semeraro of Albano, Italy, in the role of secretary.

The group’s first meeting has been scheduled for 1-3 October 2013. His Holiness is, however, currently in contact with the aforementioned cardinals.

 

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But in this case the odds-on favorite, Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan, did in fact falter. Only problem is that someone apparently forgot to tell the Italian bishops conference, which wins the award for most embarrassing start to a pontificate with this press release, sent to journalists, congratulating Scola on becoming pope:

CONFERENZA EPISCOPALE ITALIANA

Ufficio Nazionale per le comunicazioni sociali

“Gioia e riconoscenza”. Il Segretario Generale esprime i sentimenti dell’intera Chiesa italiana nell’accogliere la notizia dell’elezione del Card. Angelo Scola a Successore di Pietro: “Il mistero della Chiesa – corpo vivo, animato dallo Spirito Santo, che vive realmente della forza di Dio – costituisce per tutti noi la ragione e la passione della vita. Al nuovo Papa, con le ultime parole di Benedetto XVI, la Chiesa italiana promette già da subito incondizionata reverenza ed obbedienza”.

Well, at least they didn’t pick the new non-pope’s name. And why didn’t they just read Andrea Tornielli of La Stampa, who apparently has better contacts inside the conclave than the Italian bishops?

I wonder if this means we have three popes now — one real one, one emeritus, and one pope manque.

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Pope Hilarius I, via Wikipedia Commons

As everyone waits for white smoke – while under umbrellas in the chill of a wet Roman March – thoughts turn to many, many other things…

Such as rumors that New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, a relentless jokester, would take the name Hilarius II if elected – hat tip there to Robert Royal’s “dietrologia.” (And check out the biography of the real Pope Hilarius, who died in 468, from the Catholic Encyclopedia.)

At his Fordham panel on faith and humor last September, with Stephen Colbert and Father Jim Martin, Dolan said he’d actually like to be called Stephen if he were elected, Stephen III.

As our own Caleb Bell reports in his story on papal names, His Eminence is not infallible as the math on previous Stephens doesn’t add up – there have been 9 or 10 — but it’s hard to keep track even for professional historians.

And Colbert? “I’ve always liked Urban. I’d be Urban,” he told Father Martin last month when the Jesuit and chaplain to “the Colbert Report” was on. “Not SUBurban?” Martin shot back. Ouch. Who tells the jokes here, Father?

Martin’s choice should he be elected: “As for me I’d stick with my baptismal name,” he told me. “It’s the name with which God called me into the church, so I’m pretty partial to it.”

Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles, on the other hand, is said to be a good bet to at least consider becoming Innocent XIV. You can spy the irony.

If you’re not too good at math and science, maybe you too could be papabile: Anthony Judge did the research and set up a chart that shows how few of the cardinals in the conclave have degrees in the sciences. It’s mostly theology and philosophy and canon law.

Andrew Sullivan pounces:

“The kind of priesthood that would include that kind of experience would not insist on celibacy. If women and married priests were admitted, the range of skills, backgrounds and experience would definitely help the church convey its message more effectively.”

Tom Jacobs sighs:

“These men—and one of them in particular—will be handing down decisions that spell out ethical rules impacting a variety of fields, including medicine. Wouldn’t it be nice if the group included some voices that could explain the latest scientific understanding of the workings of mind and body?”

Gibson shrugs. I mean, they’re leading the Roman Catholic Church, not IBM. I wonder how many executives as Microsoft or Apple – which does qualify as a religion, or at least a cult – have degrees in theology or philosophy? They should. If you need scientific or math expertise, you can hire it. It’s tough to outsource wisdom and faith.

Quotes of the Day are from Msgr. Charles Scicluna, who worked with Cardinal Ratzinger at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for many years as his point man on sex abuse cases. Scicluna, who was promoted to auxiliary bishop in his home country of Malta last year, has been amazingly outspoken on what the church needs to do to protect children and restore its credibility.

He continues to be outspoken and interesting in a conversation recorded by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera (and translated by a Maltese paper), on why Ratzinger – now Benedict XVI – decided to resign, the first pope in 600 years to do so:

“To me it seems that he wants to give space to a person that can take the situation in hand in a way that he cannot presently ensure for the Church,” Scicluna is heard telling the journalist when asked about the investigations into child sex abuse inside Catholic churches.

When asked whether there were people around Benedict that (he) could not fully trust, Scicluna replies:

“If he goes, these people will also go. Maybe, not being able to decapitate everyone, he chose to go himself… it will be the next pope to handle the matter.”

Scicluna even entertains the prospect that Benedict, formerly his superior in the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, might have “committed a coup d’etat”.

“Yes, he did a revolutionary thing. He anticipated his death,” Scicluna says, referring to the Vatileaks scandal and the involvement of unknown “third parties” in the leak of documents and other claims of blackmail of high-profile bishops.

Just in: The morning’s first ballot must have been inconclusive, as no smoke, white or black, on what would have been the second ballot of this conclave. We will definitely have smoke of some color around noon Rome time, as they burn all the ballots of the two rounds before lunch. If it’s still black at noon, back for ballots in the afternoon.

Oh, and still no Dennis Rodman sighting, least I haven’t seen him. Not sure what color smoke will signal his appearance.

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Yeah, he could have pumped up our Sweet Sistine bracket, but I think baseball is pretty much a religious experience. And pastoral, which is what we all want in a Pope, no?

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