In the headlong rush into sexual political fights:
It’s too bad U.S. bishops are spending so much political and cultural capital on the religious liberty fight which is now becoming bogged down over contraception. Too bad because while they are engaged in what I suspect will be a losing battle in a rhetorical war, the voice they are raising, rare these days in Washington, against a real war is getting lost in the cultural haze.
AsU.S. Senators have essentially now begun taking orders directly from AIPAC and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—in a manner that would no doubt generate outrage in Israel were such frank interference attempted by the Obama administration—and as media reports continue to “soften” the American public in preparation for an “inevitable” confrontation with Iran, U.S. bishops have finally stepped into the fray raising a hand of warning.
In aMarch 2 letter from Bishop Richard E. Pates of Des Moines, chair of the U.S.C.C.B. Committee on International Justice and Peace, to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the bishops noted their concern over “an alarming escalation in rhetoric and tensions,” including Iran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz to commercial traffic and speculation on the possible use of force against Iran, including an Israeli pre-emptive strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.
That link goes to the US Catholic magazine’s blog, btw, not to some crazy hippie site. Here’sanother entry:
Did you know, for example, that the bishops arepresenting President Obama with a petition to change our country’s policy on nuclear weapons?
The USCCB’s website currently has a petition titled “President Obama, move us closer to a world free of nuclear weapons.” Says the petition: “In the 21st century, nuclear weapons are a global security liability, not an asset. You must act now to reduce the nuclear danger and the role of nuclear weapons.”
Why isn’t this beingpreached from the pulpit?
Um, because wer’e too busy talking about sexy things like gay sex and birth control and who has the right to have the holy sacrament of humping where and for how many cookies? I can’t fault, entirely, the bishops for the relentless focus our national media has on boning, but I can fault them for not realizing that the minute they open their celibate traps about sex that’s all anybody’s going to talk about. After all, it’s only been like 40 years of this now.
I know Holy Mother Church thinks in millennia, and I know being media-savvy isn’t exactly their strong suit, but you’d really think they would have figured this out by now. That they’re acting like they haven’t means they’re either criminally dim or deliberately so, and either way it’s bad news for anybody who’d like anything done that doesn’t involve policing where people put their penises.
When it comes right down to it the Church has made a deliberate choice that sexual intercourse is going to be the hill they want to die on. And absent some massive backlash on the part of the faithful, dying is exactly what they’re going to do.
A.