Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Midday Briefing

A Happy Wednesday to one and all... and to everyone down in San Antonio for the USCCB's Spring Plenary, Happy Meeting.

Before anything else, apologies for the slow posting -- as it is every year 'round this time behind the page, it's high season for graduations/weddings/movings/etc. among family and friends... throw in a stomach bug for your narrator, to boot, and it all tends to halt the pipeline. But now, the rev-up can begin again.

This post will evolve with some catch-up links, but let's turn our attention first of all to Stateside Catholicism's "Hispanic seat," where the June Meeting is now underway... and, for the first time, being live-Twittered by the Mothership's media staff, who're likewise blogging as able amid the "blistering" heat.

The old joke among the bench -- well, much of it -- is that time spent in conference meetings cuts down on a bishop's stay in Purgatory, so the summer sessions tend to see a significantly lesser turnout than the traditional mid-November "big top" in Baltimore. Yet while most absentees usually choose to stay home and tie up loose ends before the summer slowdown or attend an extra high-school graduation or two, one of the conference's more prominent figures was kept back on doctor's orders: a day after his 65th birthday, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn underwent a quadruple heart bypass operation yesterday, which he wrote about in his last weekly column before going under the knife at a local hospital.

Fresh off a heated scrap with the New York press over its coverage of his fierce opposition to a proposed state "window" suspending the statute of limitations in sex-abuse suits, the head of the 1.7 million-member church in Gotham's cross-river boroughs is expected back on the job in six to ten weeks.

SVILUPPO: Catch-up links here.

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