As I opened your story, I had just been reading stories about that Roman Catholic bishop in Massachusetts who is trying to strong-arm a Jesuit middle school to stop flying Black Lives Matter flags and Pride flags.

He can't force them, because the school is independent of his diocese despite being within its borders, so he's threatening their status as "Catholic," the same tactic Brebeuf Academy resisted successfully a couple years ago in a different diocese.

In any case, as I read your story I couldn't help but think that this bishop must be in the same sort of bubble you are describing. I mean, the general press that he's getting puts him in such a horrible light. Hell, the Catholic press he's getting is pretty bad, other than from extreme right wing sources like Church Militant.

I have to wonder what kind of bubble the bishop lives in to not understand how shocked people are. I mean the Pride flag is one thing, but when he talks about support for the police (which he says BLM opposes) in the same breath as the values of the Catholic Church, isn't someone around to tell him how many people find that conflation unacceptably authorization and even anti-Christian?

Evidently not. He's probably sitting in an office surrounded and buffered by the same sort of yes men a mega-church pastor would be.

The phenomena are a bit different given the Catholic Church is rapidly shrinking in the U.S. (except ironically among immigrant populations who mostly resonate with the BLM message and support police reform) while mega churches often continue to grow.

But if mega-church pastors remain insulated and isolated, I wonder how long their churches will continue to grow.