America. . . God mend thine every flaw.

A few months ago when Cardinal Maida instituted a traditional Roman Rite Mass in his Archdiocese of Detroit, it was the Reverend Thomas Reese, S.J. who pontificated that "[i]t would be counterproductive if too many people turn this into a marketing strategy to fill churches. The idea behind allowing this mass was that it could help older people in the later stages of their lives. The hope is that this mass eventually will fade away."

And now, as my friend Gary observed yesterday, it appears to be the Reverend Thomas Reese, S.J. who is fading away.

[For the time being, anyway. A political observation of William Buckley's is transferable to the ecclesiastical realm: The left retrieves its wounded. It is only the disgraced of the right who remain disgraced.]