By Darrick Taylor, Crisis Magazine - I mention these considerations because recent events bring them to mind—in particular, for American Catholics, two recent appointments that have left many shaking their heads. I refer to the recent appointment of Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego to the see of Washington, D.C., and the appointment of Sister Simona Brambilla to be prefect of the Dicastery for Religious in the Vatican. Both are noteworthy for the same familiar, depressing, and entirely predictable reasons... There is no defense for the appointment of McElroy, a protégé of the pedophile and criminal Theodore McCarrick, who knew of his mentor’s abuse of seminarians but kept silent.