Well, folks, intense as these last 10 days have been, if only that was everything on the plate....

Alas, it isn't.

Indeed, there's more to come – some of which you can probably guess, some of which you can't.

As a sampler, the weekend's summit indeed marked a turning point. Before the latest sudden curve from Down Under, this scribe spent some time gathering reactions on what happened in Rome.

The impressions are striking, but not in the way you might think. Among others, that's a pressing thing to get back to – one among many.

On the whole, here's a critical piece of context to keep in mind. At this point, we're just over eight months into the current season of scandal. Yet even so – at least, in the US context – the predecessor experience to this moment bears recalling: by early 2003, between Bernard Law's resignation from Boston and the national ramp-up to war in Iraq, the crisis was largely gone from front pages within a year of its start....

This time, however, the scene is exponentially different: given the radically altered media environment, a more engaged handling from Rome, a global spread – and, above all, the ongoing drip of some 15 civil investigations in Stateside jurisdictions (topped by an already spreading Federal probe), however you look at it, this time is going to make for a much longer, far slower burn.

Even this doesn't count all the aspects at hand. Still, if that's the price of a Church truer to herself – or what she should be, in any number of ways – so be it.

Again, buckle up for a long haul with no shortage of rough stuff. To keep the stories going here, though, this scribe has to stay on top of the bills first – ergo, as ever, these pages only come your way by means of your support:

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