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CR: What do people need to know that perhaps they do not understand? Monsignor Hartnett: It varies from place to place. I think there are people who are disengaged from the process who believe everything is OK in their school, so nothing is going to happen. I think there are people who are in parishes, who believe, ‘We’re not associated with Catholic schools, and so nothing is going to happen.’ I think there are people who are involved in Catholic schools now who are assuming the worst will happen. What I’m saying is, it’s going to affect everybody in some way. For some people, it’s going to mean we’re going to ask them to step up a little bit. For others, it means we’re going to ask them to be more attentive. For others, it’s going to be asking them to be more open to a different experience, perhaps a new experience. I think people are not thinking that way. They’re thinking, ‘It’s the same old, same old. Some are going to close and some are going to remain open and we’re just going to go on like we always have before.’

George Weigel (CR, Oct. 22) takes the Nobel Committee to task for its prize for peace to Barack Obama by attributing to it the belief that “conflict is born of misunderstanding rather than a clash of interests; thus diplomacy is a therapeutic exercise in which soothing words make for peace.” He couples that with the claim that the committee ignores the value of “structures by which conflict is resolved politically.” Both statements are clearly hyperbole, but they allow Weigel a launching pad for his own beliefs in confronting our enemies.

To needlessly insert (CR, Oct. 15) the words “both Catholic” when referring to Governor Martin O’Malley and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, both well known advocates of abortion, is to profane the meaning of the word Catholic.

I too am seriously concerned by the mandate of the Holy See to investigate women religious in America. This has no relationship to the priest’s Apostolic Visitation of 2005. My understanding is the priests’ Visitation was precipitated by the serious concerns around the sexual abuse scandal and the diminished numbers in the seminaries.In no way are women religious in the same position. My own experience of several different communities from 1958 to the present day is of women who minister lovingly and tirelessly for the good of all they meet. This investigation is an insult to all those who have helped my family and me. I don’t see how any positive results could occur, other than helping me to reflect on how lucky I have been to be touched by American religious women.

Anne Arundel County police arrested James Allan Thomas for stealing from a poor box at St. Mary in Annapolis Oct. 16. Thomas, who had previously been banned from church property, was charged with theft, destruction of property and trespassing. Video surveillance showed Thomas opening the poor box and removing cash, according to a police statement.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee looked in the mirror, saw the president of the United States, and awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama. One is tempted to vary Rainer Maria Rilke (“Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other”) and suggest that this was the meeting of two narcissisms. But that, as Richard Nixon might have said, would be wrong. The Nobel Committee is sufficiently enamored of its own moral superiority to ascribe its self-regarding virtues to any nominee it wishes.