Brown - Catholicism's Crucible

Judie Brown gets it about as right as can be sorted out.

The president has, in many ways, manipulated Catholics, Catholic institutions and, by extension, the Church and many of her American bishops. He has been obviously testing the Catholic waters to see just how far he can push his boat into their stream. Clearly, he must be pleased.

Obama is not new at this game, but he has created the perfect storm for sorting out the challenge and identifying the real, underlying cause for this catastrophe within the Catholic Church. After all, 52 percent of Catholic voters supported Obama. After that it's been downhill, or pretty much that way until Notre Dame happened. Now perhaps the tide will turn.

But let's be clear. The problem is not Obama. Rather it has to do with the identity of a Catholic institution or a Catholic person. The problem is literally a conflict of the most enormous proportions that the church hasn’t seen in decades. The problem is the classic struggle between Christ's Church and the devil himself.

The Notre Dame controversy is simply a microcosmic example of what one writer called the Catholic civil war ...

Read all of Ms. Brown's Notre Dame: Catholism’s Crucible