Two important pieces in the National Post this morning.

Peggy Noonan's piece The Catholic Church's Catastrophe:  The press and the pope deserve credit for confronting catastrophe, reprinted from the Wall Street Journal, and Fr. Raymond de Souza's piece The Pope and the press are important reads for all people of good will.  I was actually glad of my limited access to the press during Holy Week while we were in Rome...but we could understand the gist of it in each morning's Corriere della Serra.  

Noonan ends her piece thus:

There are three great groups of victims in this story. The first and most obvious, the children who were abused, who trusted, were preyed upon and bear the burden through life. The second group is the good priests and good nuns, the great leaders of the church in the day to day, who save the poor, teach the immigrant, and, literally, save lives. They have been stigmatized when they deserve to be lionized. And the third group is the Catholics in the pews—the heroic Catholics of America and now Europe, the hardy souls who in spite of what has been done to their church are still there, still making parish life possible, who hold high the flag, their faith unshaken. No one thanks those Catholics, sees their heroism, respects their patience and fidelity. The world thinks they're stupid. They are not stupid, and with their prayers they keep the world going, and the old church too.

I certainly don't feel heroic, but I'm sure that many think I'm, if not stupid, deluded.  

So be it.