The increasingly agitated, increasingly bishop-led anti-abortion crowd in the Catholic church gets a firm pop from the always mannerly Peter Steinfels in his NYT column today. Noting the 1-4 ratio of those joining and those leaving the church in America today, he concludes:

Under normal circumstances, it is hard to imagine any institution’s
leadership contemplating that kind of gain-loss ratio with equanimity.
But for Bishop Finn and a growing number of other Catholic leaders,
these are not normal circumstances. “We are at war,” they say; and the
road to overturning Roe v. Wade first requires overturning Notre Dame.

It’s been 35 years since Roe v. Wade. Despite the propaganda, Barack Obama is no more pro-choice than other Democratic presidents since then. It could be  So why are Finn, Burke, and Company now in such a lather? Next column, Peter.