…if you’re following such things:
As expected, Cardinal George of Chicago was just elected president of the USCCB.
(It is a system that is almost pro-forma. The vice president is usually expected to become the president, and Cardinal George was the vice president.)
(Jason Berry’s LATimes op-ed from Sunday questioning the Cardinal’s commitment to cleaning up the problem of clergy sexual abuse.)
The first vote for vice president didn’t produce the required majority. So now we have a run-off between Archbishop Dolan of Milwaukee and Bishop Kicanas of Tucson…
And the winner is Bishop Kicanas.
Election of committee chairs is following…
(USCCB committees…aka busy work to take bishops away from their dioceses…)
In one of the more closely watched committee elections, the choice for chair of the Committee on Canonical Affairs (as in issues affected by Canon Law.) The candidates were Burke of St. Louis and Paprocki of Chicago. Parocki just won. A couple of days ago, Ed Peters took a look at both.
John Allen continues to report. Today, in addition to news, he runs an interview with Archbishop Chaput. This was interesting:

What do you think of the draft of Faithful Citizenship?

I think it’s much better than it was. I think it’s too long. I really admire the patience that the various committees showed in working on it, and everyone’s trying to accommodate the other side. I think it’s really a good document that way, but it’s too long. I think the real question is how you interpret the part of the document, which flows from Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter to us when we met in Denver. It’s this: what is a ‘proportionate reason’ [to vote for a pro-choice candidate]? That’s part of Catholic theology, those are the facts. We can’t just dismiss that. But, what does that mean? I wish we could flesh that out better with some examples, and some clearer guidance. I think people can use that as an excuse.
What do you think it means?
As you know, I have written a book [on faith and politics], and in it I write that it means a reason we could confidently explain to the Lord Jesus and the victims of abortion when we meet them at the end of our lives, and we will meet them. I think there are legitimate reasons you could vote in favor of someone who wouldn’t be where the church is on abortion, but it would have to be a reason that you could confidently explain to Jesus and the victims of abortion when you meet them at the Judgment. That’s the only criterion. It can’t be that we favor a particular party, or that we’re hostile to the war, or so on.