Pope Francis watches a performance during a meeting with young people and Synod Fathers in Paul VI Hall on 6 October 2018. (TIZIANA FABI/AFP via Getty Images)   Wherein Adam A.J. DeVille offers a modest proposal It’s a good thing I’m already a Freudian, for perhaps the most valuable lesson I learned from him is

My church and my country, and a community I value, have been implicated in hiding a mass grave of abused children. An unmarked mass grave of 215 indigenous children has been discovered under a residential school in British Columbia run by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. This has haunted me as a Catholic, as a

"It is not, in fact, a major advance that Francis has undertaken by appointing a token woman to this pseudo-synod," says Adam A.J. DeVille. "If the Church is ever to be serious about overcoming the present ills, she must ensure that every council of governance in the Church should enjoy broad and equal participation of persons in every state of life: men and women working with their parish clergy and religious, all of them having the same voice and vote under episcopal presidency."

For years, as reports about McCarrick mounted, the Church operated under a system of episcopal promotion that is still in place today.

After thirty years of such reports, the idea that the Church has any credibility left to protect is absurd.