The Chicago Tribune, no Catholic basher–despite what the Sun-Times would have you believe–goes right up to the threshold, seeming to pose the question without giving an answer in an editorial today, “Confessions and Consequences”:

The cardinal should insist that his disclosures lead by example. He doesn’t wield power over the U.S. bishops, but the job does give him a national bully pulpit. We hope he urges the bishops to disclose their failures of leadership that let this crisis metastasize. Where careers need to end, so be it.