By Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture - The second encouraging sign from the USCCB meeting was the address by Archbishop Timothy Broglio, the president of the bishops’ conference, in which he fairly openly challenged the negative views of the American Church recently expressed by Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the papal nuncio to the US. Countering the notion (which seems to be popular in Rome) that the American Church is backward, the archbishop called attention to the lively faith of the American people and “the many synodal realities that already exist in the Church in the United States.”