Is Richard McBrien Now Admitting he's a Non-Believer?

The column opens with a reference to Archbishop Timothy Dolan’s visit to St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y., as a dramatic expression of his commitment to increasing the number of vocations to the priesthood.

The Journal writer acknowledges what is evident to anyone who takes a look, namely, that "Vocations are way down.” But then he adds: "To make matters worse, influential dissenters within the church are heavily invested in the archbishop’s failure.”

Who are these Catholic Rush Limbaughs? The writer provides no names. President Richard Nixon used to refer to the "some who say” crowd, but without ever identifying any of them. They served instead as rhetorical foils whose only function was to sharpen the point that the President wanted to make.

I, for one, do not know of a single "dissenter” (again, unnamed and undefined) who is "heavily invested in the [next] archbishop’s failure.” And I, for one, hope just the opposite happens, namely, that Archbishop Dolan has an extraordinarily successful tenure as the pastoral leader of the most prominent archdiocese in all of the United States.