Professor Bainbridge takes a look and reminds us of what the "million-plus for each plaintiff" really means.

Rick Garnett notices mixes signals in the NYTimes about such things. That is, running an article righteously condemning the Archdiocese, in the same edition as a review of a novel which presents an largely uncondemning account of a priest’s relationship with a teen boy.

Then, over in the book-review section, I read this glowing review (one of many the book has received) of Andrew O’Hagan’s "Be Near Me," a sensitive and sympathetic portrayal (I’m told) of a depressed, middle-aged priest, who misses his glory days as a university aesthete and who gets intimately involved with a working-class, not-so-innocent 15-year-old boy.  After the priest is caught, we are told by the reviewer, he falls victim to the town’s "anarchic spite", its "brief spasm of righteousness", and we are (apparently) left wondering "[s]o why are two people alone, in a rectory, murmuring over a nice potage, finally not enough?"