Right now, there appears to be a rather huge void, pracically a black hole, in the GOP’s membership. Maybe we should recruit and try to take it over?! ;~)

At least that’s how I understood some of what I absorbed in Boston, and in some reading that I’ve done.

Considering this news from D.C., are they throwing this over the side?

Are they trying to torpedo the health bill over abortion?

Hello?

But, growing up in Boston, you kind of imbibe a lot of Catholic ambience. Plus, I have quite a few lifelong Catholic friends from those days.

I’m not a member of the club though, and do have a hard time listening to this church lecturing on sex, given the revelations over the last several years.

Looks like they’re taking the gloves off in this country.

The Popes of recent days have been more concerned with preserving the glories of the faith than seriously contemplating the Church’s duty in the world — John Paul II because he was subjected in his youth to the tender mercies of a rival organization that had no redeeming features whatsoever — and the current Holy Father, Benedict, because he seems to be by nature something of a tight-ass. The world which his own God created is too messy for him, it seems, and he appears to view his Papacy as a sort of Holy Prussian Bueaucracy — Ordnung muss sein, and all that.

Still, John XXIII didn’t pass from the scene all that long ago, and I don’t think that anyone can doubt that he represented something equally genuine in the higher reaches of the Catholic hierarchy, and in the Church in general — people who yield to the impulse to be shepherds rather than godfathers or accounting clerks, and are willing to concern themselves more with elevating people’s lives here on Earth than riding herd over the abstraction of their immortal souls.

Seen in this light, Ora pro nobis becomes quite a different plea, one which applies in our time as much to religious organizations as it does to secular ones. Being human institutions, after all, they have more in common than anyone has ever been willing to admit.

If you didn’t catch it, check out this article today at the Daily Beast (http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-10/was-a-wwii-classic-too-gay/full/)on some not too distant meddling by the Catholics on what can be published that I hadn’t been aware of:

“…The National Organization for Decent Literature (NODL), a Catholic group formed in Chicago, first targeted magazines and then paperbacks. NODL objected to “the lascivious type of literature which threatens the moral, social and National life of our country.” In 1947, NODL recommended that church members visit retailers every two weeks armed with a list of “harmful” titles. If they found books on the list, they informed the manager. The result? Widespread intimidation and boycott of booksellers. From Here to Eternity was blacklisted by the NODL in 1954. The religious group stated publicly its belief that certain books on its list—including works by William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, my father, and other prominent authors—were too advanced for youthful readers and should be kept out of their hands.

In 1956, the prosecuting attorney in Port Huron, Michigan, ordered booksellers and distributors to stop displaying and selling all books on the NODL blacklist, citing erotic passages. The ban on NODL books was lifted after the paperback publisher of From Here to Eternity joined with other publishers to obtain a federal district court injunction against the prosecution….”