Zmirak argues that life for Gosnell "undermines our respect for justice"

I think he is correct. His article is sure to cause Mark Shea to go off the deep end. Excerpt:

Pope John Paul II made history when he issued Evangelium Vitae, then revised the Church’s Catechism to match it, and suggested that the only proper use of capital punishment is in societal self-defense, in cases where even modern prisons could not safely contain a killer. The reason, according to the revised Catechism, is that bloodless means "better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person" (CCC 2267). Some scholars such as Jeffrey Mirus have suggested that we see here a development of doctrine. Others, including Cardinal Avery Dulles, have disagreed.

Since John Paul II's teaching appears at such variance with previous, equally authoritative statements, it cannot be said to be binding in conscience on Catholics. In terms of authority, an encyclical that teaches something new might be seen as roughly analogous to a district court’s decision; until the Supreme Court (the extraordinary Magisterium—exercised in an ecumenical council or ex cathedra) weighs in, the question remains unsettled. (By contrast, Humanae Vitae reaffirmed millennia of previous teaching—had it approved contraception, the situation would be akin to that of Evangelium Vitae on this point.)

writing interestingly about good people

Alan Jacobs: "One of the first things I ever heard about Jane Austen—I can't remember the source, perhaps a teacher—was that she achieved the remarkable feat of writing interestingly about good people. This she does, but she writes about really bad ones too."

Rod Dreher excerpts M. Jordan Lichens

but then ruins it by remembering some Walker Percy!

"execution should be frightening and violent"

Peter Hitchens, writing in support of hanging at his blog:

If man has no soul, and this is the only life we have, and there is no eternity nor any divine justice, then the only arguments for the death penalty are utilitarian ones. In an age of unbelief, I tend to concentrate on the utilitarian ones. But even those lead me to the view that the act of execution, while not being actively cruel or involving mental or physical torture, should be frightening and violent, rather than pseudo-medical. I would be cowardly if I did not say this. I do not enjoy saying it, or thinking it. But those who wish to have anything to do with standing between the populace and evil must sometimes face directly the unpleasant duties that may fall on them. The main reason for the abolition of the death penalty is the squeamishness of politicians, who enjoy office but do not like all the duties which power loads on to their (often rather narrow) shoulders. Far easier to them to leave the matter to some trembling constable with a gun in a dark street, who can be disavowed if it all goes wrong later.

Excerpt from Richard Wilbur's "Castles and Distances":

Some cast their crowns away
And went to live in the distance. There was nothing seemed
Remotely strange to them, their innocence
Shone in the special features of the prey
They would not harm. The dread expense
Of golden times they dreamed 

Was that their kingdoms fell
The deeper into tyranny, the more they stole
Through Ardens out to Eden isles apart,
Seeking a shore, or shelter of some spell
Where harmlessly the hidden heart
Might hold creation whole. 

When to his solitude
The world became as island mists, then Prospero,
Pardoning all, and pardoned, yet aware
The full forgiveness cannot come, renewed
His reign, bidding the boat prepare
From mysteries to go 

Toward masteries less sheer,
And Duke again, did rights and mercies, risking wrong,
Found advocates and enemies, and found
His bounded empire good, where he could hear
Below his walls the baying hound
And the loud hunting-song.

who rules the "dictatorship of relativism"?

Pope Francis:

But there is another form of poverty! It is the spiritual poverty of our time, which afflicts the so-called richer countries particularly seriously. It is what my much-loved predecessor, Benedict XVI, called the "tyranny of relativism," which makes everyone his own criterion and endangers the coexistence of peoples. And that brings me to a second reason for my name. Francis of Assisi tells us we should work to build peace. But there is no true peace without truth! There cannot be true peace if everyone is his own criterion, if everyone can always claim exclusively his own rights, without at the same time caring for the good of others, of everyone, on the basis of the nature that unites every human being on this earth.

Kyle Cupp objects:

Maybe a lot of people outside my small circles admit to thinking of themselves as their own criterion or would do so if pressed, but this would surprise me. I observe the occasional relativistic argument, but these almost always presuppose an objective principle. When some of my friends defend an "anything goes" approach to national security, they're being relativistic, but within defined objective limits. They hold national security as an absolute good.

Cupp makes the mistake of assuming that man qua individual is capable of exercising what Benedict and Francis call the tyranny or dictatorship of relativism. He reads the "dictatorship or relativism" as a description of an actual philosophical method that is consciously practiced and, therefore, reads the homily and address as critiques of individuals qua choosers and arguers. If that were the case, you would only need to kick out at a few seemingly relativistic arguments or choices to eventually stub your toe on something "objective" and "thus" refute the popes.

But for the Benedict and Francis it is in the building of the dictatorship, not its exercise, that man participates as he attempts, in Ratzinger's words, to "cope with modern times." The Christian in the modern age, for example, is "tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine." He is subject to this dictatorship almost by the very fact that he lives in modern times. His non-experience of a stable criterion outside of himself is, writ large and across generations, the building up of the dictatorship. Benedict XVI emphasized this basic passivity a month after the original homily:

Today, a particularly insidious obstacle to the task of educating is the massive presence in our society and culture of that relativism which, recognizing nothing as definitive, leaves as the ultimate criterion only the self with its desires. And under the semblance of freedom it becomes a prison for each one, for it separates people from one another, locking each person into his or her own "ego."

Francis clearly echoes this language when he says that the tyranny "makes everyone his own criterion." Something else, not in each case a man, is doing the making. The historical transition from what Ratzinger calls man's "clear faith" to his subjection to the "dictatorship of relativism" is something like the transition from Charles Taylor's "porous self" to the "buffered self":

Almost everyone can agree that one of the big differences between us and our ancestors of five hundred years ago is that they lived in an "enchanted" world, and we do not; at the very least, we live in a much less "enchanted" world. We might think of this as our having "lost" a number of beliefs and the practices which they made possible. But more, the enchanted world was one in which these forces could cross a porous boundary and shape our lives, psychic and physical. One of the big differences between us and them is that we live with a much firmer sense of the boundary between self and other. We are "buffered" selves. We have changed.

So what does it "look like" when we, like Cupp, look around at our friends and at what their arguments actually do? I suggested to Cupp elsewhere that it is possible to take Sen. Rob Portman's "conversion to the cause of gay marriage" (and the GOP's deafening silence thereon) as a vivid example of the dictatorship in action. That may not be the best example because it sounds like an accusation of "bad faith" against either Portman or advocates of same-sex "marriage." But, again, I've been trying to emphasize the passive aspect of the idea. The rise of (certain kinds of) empathy as morally authoritative in the American public square and the constant recourse to "right side of history" rhetoric are perhaps more manageable examples. But in the end they're all bad examples because the point is that the "dictatorship or relativism" is more like an event or a doom than a choice.

The idea did not come to Ratzinger in 2005 and he did not first describe it as a "dictatorship of relativism." Look at this excerpt from his Introduction to Christianity.

For more examples, see Benedict on Europe's neglect of its spiritual heritage:

Unless we embrace our own heritage of the sacred, we will not only deny the identity of Europe. We will also fail in providing a service to others to which they are entitled. To the other cultures of the world, there is something deeply alien about the absolute secularism that is developing in the West. They are convinced that a world without God has no future. Multiculturalism itself thus demands that we return once again to ourselves.

Or Stanley Hauerwas on America's faith:

America is the exemplification of what I call the project of modernity. That project is the attempt to produce a people that believes it should have no story except the story it chose when it had no story. That is what Americans mean by freedom. 

The problem with that story is its central paradox: you did not choose the story that you should have no story except the story you chose when you had no story. Americans, however, are unable to acknowledge that they have been fated to be "free", which makes them all the more adamant that they have a right to choose the god that underwrites their "freedom." 

A people so constituted will ask questions such as "Why does a good god let bad things happen to good people?" It is as if the Psalms never existed. The story that you should have no story except the story you chose when you had no story produces a people who say: "I believe that Jesus is Lord – but that is just my personal opinion."

anno domini

The Gospel for the Third Sunday of Lent (Year A Scrutinies) tells the story of Jesus' encounter with a Samaritan woman at "Jacob's well" as he passes with his disciples through Samaria on his way back to Galilee where his messianic activity had begun. In a 2011 sermon, Fr. Robert Barron (of Word on Fire) said that "we are all meant to identify with this woman in this archetypal encounter with Jesus, we are all in her place, we are all being drawn into the power of what Jesus offers." Benedict XVI, too, has called our attention to the interpretive task of identification:

One must read and meditate on it personally, identifying oneself with that woman who, one day like so many other days, went to draw water from the well and found Jesus there, sitting next to it, "tired from the journey" in the midday heat . . . she represents the existential dissatisfaction of one who [has not, until now, found] what he seeks.

The difficulty of this particular task of identification has to do with the delimitation of that place in which, according to Fr. Barron, we can be said to dwell along with the Samaritan woman, namely, the place from which "we are all being drawn into the power of what Jesus offers." For Barron and Benedict this "being drawn," along with the experience of an "existential dissatisfaction" that bespeaks a restless heart (implicitly desiring God), makes manifest the indwelling and unifying imago dei as the genuinely archetypal site of the encounter with Jesus and, thereby, of the "true worship of the Father in Spirit and truth."

Yet there is a kind of Old Testament residue in the Samaritan woman's conversion that is difficult for us to identify with. On the same path that generations of Samaritans have taken before her, the woman finds Jesus resting at Jacob's (Israel's) well within sight of Mount Gerizim where they have their temple. If the Samaritans "worship what [they] do not understand," at least they walk where Jacob walked and draw water out of the rock of the promised land (and that without needing the staff with which Moses struck the Nile). Fr. Barron jokes that a woman with five husbands has been "looking for love in all the wrong places," but the great stumbling block for Samaritan and Jew alike is that, once Jesus appears, they are somehow in the right place and the wrong place at the same time! How can this tired prophet offer more than that "permanent possession" which was given by God to Jacob? Would Samaritan and Jew alike not be justified in wondering whether the Lord was in their midst or not (cf. Exodus 17:7)?

The strangeness of the Christian's approach to Jesus, on the other hand, seems to be a matter of time rather than place. We can identify with the Samaritan woman insofar as our "existential dissatisfaction" occurs after Christ has already appeared and offered us a living water. In his 2008 General Audience on St. Paul's eschatology, Benedict XVI describes the historical situation in which Christians find themselves:

[after the Resurrection] the last things have already begun and, in a certain sense, are already present . . . As believers, we are already with the Lord in our lifetime; our future, eternal life, has already begun.

Elsewhere Ratzinger has written that "the turning point . . . of time is already here, though it does not coincide with the end of world history." How is it possible, then, that it is still necessary for us to be "drawn" to the Lord in anno domini nostri Iesu Christi? It is as if the paradigmatic question of the believer has become not "where are you staying?" (cf. John 1:38) but "how are you staying?" and "how can I stay with you?"

I'll close with another excerpt from Benedict on Paul's eschatology:

Another element in the Pauline teaching on eschatology is the universality of the call to faith which unites Jews and Gentiles . . . as a sign and an anticipation of the future reality. For this reason we can say that we are already seated in Heaven with Jesus Christ, but to reveal the riches of grace in the centuries to come (Eph 2: 6f.), the after becomes a before, in order to show the state of incipient fulfilment in which we live. This makes bearable the sufferings of the present time which, in any case, cannot be compared to the future glory (cf. Rm 8: 18). We walk by faith, not by sight, and even if we might rather leave the body to live with the Lord, what definitively matters, whether we are dwelling in the body or are far from it, is that we be pleasing to him (cf. 2 Cor 5: 7-9).

And one from Jose Granados' Communio article on the Ascension:

What is the role of the Ascension in the history of this bond between the flesh and the divine? The body of Christ, already glorified, is now bound to the rest of creation in a new way. This mystery communicates to the cosmos the state of the glorified flesh of Jesus, insofar as it places the definitive goal toward which all of creation is tending in the Father himself. A new horizon is thus opened within creation: all created being is already in heaven, because all things are now moving toward the very heart of God. On the basis of the Ascension, therefore, the body acquires a new language; the body’s capacity for proclaiming God is raised to a new level. This is the language of the sacraments, in which material creation expresses a more fulfilled relation with the transcendent.

Peter Hitchens on All the King's Men

Peter Hitchens, writing at his Daily Mail blog:

Then I opened the book, and I did not stop reading it till morning. The phone call never did come through. That was, what?, 22 or 23 years ago, and I have in a way, been reading it ever since. I am not sure how many times I have read and re-read it. I sometimes think I know it by heart, but I never do. Each time I read it I find something else. My head is full of pictures – the big car thundering dangerously through the night, the sad houses it visits, the rending descriptions of country solitude and loneliness, of sad, failed parents - and the simply superb brief evocation of how individuals can be left behind by a close relative who achieves greatness, and who is both still present physically in the lives of those close to him, but also gone forever.

Unz's periodical and book online archive

Ron Unz recently mentioned his archive website:

As many may know, I have spent most of the last decade or more producing a content-archiving website that provides convenient, readable access to over 500,000 print articles from the 19th and 20th centuries, together with hundreds of thousands of books.

If you didn't know it existed, have a look.

recinto

From The Moynihan Report of 2/27/13:

The word "recinto" is a bit strange and hard to translate. It means "enclosure," "paddock," "pen," "surrounding wall." A "recinto" is therefore a closed-in area, an area quite defined, an area created to enclose things and keep them safe.

So he is saying he is staying within the area established and closed in by St. Peter . . .

This space, this yard, this "recinto" where Benedict will remain, is not simply a physical space, the former nun's convent in Vatican City, in the gardens.

It is actually a spiritual space in the structure of the Church herself, a place "near Peter," a space in which an emeritus Pope, even if "hidden from the world," continues to live and have a role, like one more link in the chain of apostolic succession.

One might almost say it like this: (1) the new Pope, who will be elected in two or three or four weeks time, will be linked to all previous Popes who have died, and this is shown by the many tombs of Popes found in St. Peter's Basilica, and by St. Peter's tomb (which is directly under the high altar, and directly under the massive cupola of Michelangelo); but (2) the new Pope will also be linked to one previous Pope who has not physically died, but has, in a sense, been buried "to the world," and yet lives "in prayer," in a convent near the basilica, though "dead to the world."

visitors "from a morally superior civilization"

Angelo Codevilla, writing at Forbes:

The ever-growing U.S. government has an edgy social, ethical, and political character. It is distasteful to a majority of persons who vote Republican and to independent voters, as well as to perhaps one fifth of those who vote Democrat. The Republican leadership's kinship with the socio-political class that runs modern government is deep. Country class Americans have but to glance at the Media to hear themselves insulted from on high as greedy, racist, violent, ignorant extremists. Yet far has it been from the Republican leadership to defend them. Whenever possible, the Republican Establishment has chosen candidates for office – especially the Presidency – who have ignored, soft-pedaled or given mere lip service to their voters' identities and concerns.

And this is precisely why The American Conservative, for all it's "outsider" pretension, foreign policy dissent, and vestigial publication of decent traditionalist/Buchananite/FPR fare, is fundamentally an organ of "the socio-political class that runs modern government." But they'll keep pretending that dissenting commenters are hewing to "the conservative movement" and that they're boldly resisting.

What an article!

Discussion at Postmodern Conservative.

the "larger process" of history

In the midst of an excellent article on the "arrogance of universal democracy," Leon Hadar takes a shot at Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" thesis:

In a way, one could argue that Francis Fukuyama's vision of "The End of History" made some historical sense if you assume that the two-hundred-year-long violent civil war that had engulfed the West between the French Revolution (1789) and the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) has ended and that much of the changes in the political and economic systems in North America and Europe are occurring in the margins, and in a peaceful way.

But Fukuyama can always fall back on that "larger process at work" component of his thesis, that is, his contention that history reveals the "triumph of the Western idea . . . in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism." Even if it is true that certain societies have been able to resist the encroachment of "consumerist Western culture" or to retain an old-world dictator (or, to use Hadar's example, a caste-system), it is still not the case that there are "modern" (in Pinker's sense) politico-philosophical alternatives to liberal democracy in the consciousness of man. Universal liberal democracy has exhausted the consciousness of man with respect to political order, just as globalization has exhausted his consciousness of both his home and his relation to "the other." Man is still the subject of the "larger process" even if certain groups of men haven't gotten the memo. That doesn't make "the West's most prominent intellectuals" any less arrogant, and it certainly doesn't mean that traditionalists and reactionaries (and of course Hadar isn't either) should (with Dreherian "prudence") refuse to defend "family, tribe, tradition and religion" against their arrogance or throw in their lot with the Fabian universalists; but it does mean that, in a very important sense, the Pinkers of the world are not wrong, even when their application of Fukuyama's thesis seems ridiculous:

But Pinker's decline-of-violence thesis reflects a more ambitious exercise: The professor aims to develop a grand theory, one that assumes that "we" or "humanity" or "our species" have all become part of "modernity," defined as the sense that the old foundations of societies—family, tribe, tradition and religion—are being eroded by the forces of individualism, cosmopolitanism, reason and science. 

In Pinker's view, a global civilizing process is creating a new culture. This new way, which is more secular, more democratic, more commercial, more "feminized," is becoming dominant worldwide, and explains why our civilization has become more conducive to peaceful coexistence. Forget the bloodbaths of the twentieth century, including two world wars, civil wars and genocides, Pinker argues. We are entering into the era of the New Peace, where violence against the "Other" national, ethnic, and religious groups, against women, children and even animals, will become a taboo. History has indeed ended and we're all turning into one big, happy civilization.

Fukuyama thought that transhumanism represented the only serious threat to his thesis (of course I don't remember where he said exactly that). In 2004, he warned of the "Promethean desire" to liberate the self from "human essence" and (even the end of) history:

The first victim of transhumanism might be equality. The U.S. Declaration of Independence says that "all men are created equal," and the most serious political fights in the history of the United States have been over who qualifies as fully human. Women and blacks did not make the cut in 1776 when Thomas Jefferson penned the declaration. Slowly and painfully, advanced societies have realized that simply being human entitles a person to political and legal equality. In effect, we have drawn a red line around the human being and said that it is sacrosanct.

Underlying this idea of the equality of rights is the belief that we all possess a human essence that dwarfs manifest differences in skin color, beauty, and even intelligence. This essence, and the view that individuals therefore have inherent value, is at the heart of political liberalism. But modifying that essence is the core of the transhumanist project. If we start transforming ourselves into something superior, what rights will these enhanced creatures claim, and what rights will they possess when compared to those left behind? If some move ahead, can anyone afford not to follow? These questions are troubling enough within rich, developed societies. Add in the implications for citizens of the world's poorest countries -- for whom biotechnology's marvels likely will be out of reach -- and the threat to the idea of equality becomes even more menacing.

Transhumanism's advocates think they understand what constitutes a good human being, and they are happy to leave behind the limited, mortal, natural beings they see around them in favor of something better. But do they really comprehend ultimate human goods?

For a window into the typical transhumanist notion of the good and beautiful, see Steve Sailer's recent post on William Pereira, the architect who designed UC Irvine (the setting for Planet of the Apes) and, as Sailer puts it, "much of Southern California" according to the aesthetic of a "brutalist sci-fi nightmare."

the debate "must deal with homosexuality after all"

Hans Boersma, writing at First Things:

Treating homosexual activity as a private matter (and some people now treat group sexual activity this way as well) shapes our society's mores. Acceptance of sex in contexts that do not allow for comprehensive union will end up shaping the way many of us handle sexuality, with detrimental consequences for our general ability to raise strong families. As a society, therefore, we have an interest in restraining sexual activity outside (conjugal) marriage.

By rigorously sticking to the point that the gay marriage debate is primarily about marriage itself, the authors present a powerful argument that deserves a wide hearing. But many will remain unconvinced. This is not because the argument isn't cogent or well presented. It is because many today are simply no longer convinced that marriage is, in fact, about comprehensive union.

In a culture driven by pleasure and emotional fulfillment, all sorts of other options seem equally viable. As long as our society doesn't recognize the inherent value of the common good at which proper sexual activity aims—namely, new life—but instead focuses on individual fulfillment, it is hard to imagine that opposition to gay marriage will win the day. Perhaps, therefore, the gay marriage debate isn't just about marriage, but must also deal with homosexuality after all.

"there is nothing conservative about . . ."

John Médaille comments on Jon Huntsman's "Marriage Equality Is a Conservative Cause" article at The American Conservative:

This article would have been more appropriate in some neocon journal. It is somewhat jarring to have it in the same issue as one with an article on David Schindler, the philosopher of love. It seems that conservatism, even at The American Conservative, is still searching for what, precisely, it should conserve. Apparently, marriage isn't one of those things.

How does McCarthy publish something like this with a straight face:

Today we have an opportunity to do more: conservatives should start to lead again and push their states to join the nine others that allow all their citizens to marry. I’ve been married for 29 years. My marriage has been the greatest joy of my life. There is nothing conservative about denying other Americans the ability to forge that same relationship with the person they love.

Shouldn't the constant recourse to "right side of history" rhetoric in the comments section be giving our intrepid not-too-Catholic editor pause? It's almost enough to turn one into a mainstream K-Lo-style conservative. The reduction of Larison to a foreign policy wonk, Bacevich's all-too-familiar concessions to irreversibility, and McCarthy's faux-outsiderish "modernism" have made TAC almost unreadable. The sanctimony is obnoxious. More Jacobs, Antle, Beer, Dougherty, and Buchanan; less McCarthy, Bacevich, Huntsman, Bloom, McConnell.

Dreher again offers his newly-trademarked concession to the TAC -- and right side of history -- line:

Though I am fine with the position being stated at TAC — I support expanding the conversation on the Right, not keeping it restricted — I think that Huntsman's view is not at all conservative, except in a limited, but important, sense: at this point, it's probably prudent.

[...]

Politics is the art of the possible, Bismarck said. If those who still want to man the barricades against same-sex marriage can make a case for why succeeding is still possible, I wish they would. Seriously, I'm eager to hear it. But if not, then I wish they would grant that Huntsman probably has the politics for the GOP right on this issue. I don't like it, but I’d rather deal with the world as it is.

And, as is his wont, Dreher reserves his most vehement objections for Joe Carter, who criticizes TAC's tendency to re-articulate conservatism wherever it most offends culturally liberal sensibilities:

Why should we fight for any conservative issues at all? We seem to have been losing the economic argument for 70+ years. We seemed to have been losing the abortion argument (until recently). Why don't we just adopt TAC's position that anything can be a "conservative" position (except, of course, being pro-war). Why don't we just give up and all become liberals since we're likely to lose anyway?

[Note from Rod: Leaving aside your snide remark about "TAC's position" (it's not TAC's; it's Jon Huntsman's), you're completely avoiding my question. If you want to fight a losing battle on this issue, you're going to have to make a case for why the rest of us should join you. You don't even have a majority of your own people -- born-again Evangelicals, I mean -- under the age of 36 on your side. Hey, I wish they were! How do you propose to change their minds? Give me a strategy, not just insults. -- RD]

Joe's mistake, of course, was not to criticize TAC; rather, it was to question the "street cred" of Dreher's pet surrender on same-sex "marriage."

Jeremy Beer on David Schindler

Jeremy Beer's TAC article on Communio editor David Schindler is now available online:

Schindler's argument is multifaceted, but as his son David C. Schindler draws it out in Being Holy in the World, on one level it goes like this: by asking Christians to "bracket" their metaphysical commitments for purposes of public order, liberalism essentially asks them to accept a different metaphysics—indeed, a different theology. Christianity does not present itself as just one pre-critical commitment among others, but as the matrix or "paradigm" of rationality itself. One either rejects that claim, and is therefore not a Christian, or one accepts it as a Christian as the basis for reflection and understanding. There can be no middle, "bracketing" way.

For the Christian, the only adequate notion of reality is one that grows out of a Trinitarian understanding of the logos. The Trinitarian life of God means that love, as we have seen, is at the heart of the structure and meaning of being. But we do not really receive that logos as a logos unless we see that it grounds and transforms our understanding of everything. It is the furthest thing possible from a truth claim that might safely be bracketed from public discussion. Thus, "bracketing" one's Christian commitments from one's thinking at any time, as liberalism demands, is to be not only false to Christianity, but to be false to reality.

American Catholic bishops and the GOP

A certain Richard M. is doing yeoman's work (beginning here) on the political perspectives of American Catholic bishops in the comments section of Rod Dreher's most recent "Catholic Moment" post. Worth reading if you're into that sort of thing:

Until the last decade or so, your typical U.S. bishop almost certainly voted for Democrats across the board. He could more readily be found at a soup kitchen or immigrant center than an abortion clinic. And the typical USCCB statement was far, far more likely to be about nuclear weapons or poverty than it was about abortion. I know; I had to catalog every single statement for a database not long ago.

If anything, it strikes me that, save for a few exceptions, even today your typical bishop is *desperate* not to be too identified with the GOP. They will try to find ways to balance their statements. But when the leadership of one party seems bound and determined to pick fights with it over high priority issues – as has happened with not just the HHS Mandate but also abortion and same-sex marriage and adoption concerns – the bishops have been placed in a tough position. It gets harder and harder to trot out that “Seamless Garment” that Cardinal Bernardin made so famous.