Last week First Things, as the colloquialism earthily says, stepped in it.
The occasion for this unpleasantness was the publication of an essay by Romanus Cessario, O.P., arguing that the church was within its rights when Pope Pius IX abducted Edgardo Mortara, a Jewish child who had been baptized as an infant by his Catholic nanny when it was thought that the boy would die.
The outrage that followed was predictable. Given the nature of the story, there were several places the outrage might have gone. Sadly, the one place it went most consistently is actually the least interesting and easiest to address.
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Jake Meador
Jake Meador is the editor-in-chief of Mere Orthodoxy. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Commonweal, First Things, Books & Culture, National Review, Comment, Books & Culture, and Christianity Today. He is a contributing editor with Plough and a contributing writer at the Dispatch. He lives in his hometown of Lincoln, NE with his wife and four children.
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