New Levels of Irrelevance achieved by Catholic Priest

This was in the NY Times Today:

"The Roman Catholic bishop of Colorado Springs has issued a pastoral letter saying that American Catholics should not receive communion if they vote for politicians who defy church teaching by supporting abortion rights, same-sex marriage, euthanasia or stem-cell research.

Several bishops in the United States have warned that they will deny communion to Catholic politicians who fail to stand with the church, but Bishop Michael J. Sheridan of Colorado Springs is believed to be the first to say he will extend the ban to Catholic voters."

The extremity of the element of the preposterous in this news ranks right up there with the assertion by one organization back in the sixties that animals needed clothing due to the obscene visibility of their private parts. That, of course, was a spoof. One wishes that today's news will be revealed as more of the same. That suddenly Mr. Sheridan will unfrock and Abbie Hoffman will jump out with "gotcha." The fact of Abbie Hoffman's death detracts not a whit from this wishful thinking.

But no, Sheridan is serious.

There is some question, however, as to whether Catholic priests should be allowed to be serious about anything.

And there are many reasons why.

First of all, there is the not unreasonable view that the Catholic church is, in a short list of descriptive terms which should be considered inclusive: irrelevant, useless, outmoded, dated, pigheaded, downright wrong, spiritually bankrupt, and actually totally incompetent at it's main imperative (or what should be it's main imperative), to impart to it's followers any viable means of achieving a nearer behavioral proximity to the will of God or, more ideally, an actual experience of connection to the divine.

It's not hard to think of the Catholic church as simply a large institution that purports to have some sort of divine mission, but that is actually a dried shell of a two-thousand year old religious awakening that it has hardly kept alive, or even awake.

There's a good chance that all of those sacraments that they are so pumped about are by now meaningless ceremonies enjoyed by people who simply want to think that they are doing something Godly, but who are really just waving incense around, sprinkling water, and munching crackers, without the least sense that the divine is all around them, not just on Sundays, not just in the communion wafers, not just in the sanctuary, i.e. - that the divine essence of Christ is an all-pervading force that is in every speck of creation.

The fact is that the cars that they drove to church are likely to be as divine as the body of Christ that they get from the priest.

So, it is against this background of total disregard for the divine in every ounce of creation, and a clinging to the alleged divinity of a few little sacraments delivered by a fraternity of priests with a fairly large percentage of the sexually confused that we receive this news of voter advice.

In other words, it may be that witholding communion is of no more significance than a candy wrapper blowing across Main Street in Brighton, Iowa. Maybe we could get the wrapper for littering, or jaywalking, but it's no big deal, guys, really.

So, despite the aforestated almost total potential irrelevance of the entire Catholic church syndrome, some guy in Colorado thanks it's a big deal to deny some thing that they do from some people who may want to do it.

Seems like a new level of stupid to me.

First of all, the priest, guy, whatever, Mikey, whoever he is, is lucky that he has any Catholics that would even care.

And then (the nerve), to tell them that they shouldn't vote for some guy because the guy doesn't agree with one of the dictates of the church regarding abortion.

Excuse me, don't they mention that little separation of church and state idea in seminary anymore? And isn't that the problem that we're having with those nice Al Qaeda people, that they want a religiously restricted government?

And, while we're on the subject, along with the new (apparent) 11th commandment regarding abortion (evidently Moses just ran out of tablet space), what about old number six (clearly on the stones), i.e. - thou shalt not kill?

Here you have Kerry on the pro-choice side, and Bush on the no-choice side, and according to Mikey here, you can't go to confession if you vote for Kerry. So, putting the complete potential irrelevance of M. and the church he claims to represent aside for a few sentences, let's look at the glaring contradictions on the other side.

If you were George Bush, you might say that there should be no birth control, that there should be no abortion, but that when your extra kids grow up, we will send them out to kill and be killed.

Old number six is looking pretty dissed there.

So, who can you vote for?

The lesser of two weasels, I say.

Unfortunately politicians still have to weasel around and try to be as many things as they can be to as many people as possible.

It's just George betting that there are more ignorant people living in fear and selfish with their money versus Kerry betting that Americans are so sick of being reviled and mistrusted throughout the world that they'll even trust a Democrat not to mess up their trust funds, just to get the cretins off the top of the pile and off their TV's.

Face it, if you are a good Catholic, you probably can't vote for anybody.

But you might rot in hell (if you can find it) at least for a little while for voting for the guy who had the idea of getting us into Iraq, even if it wasn't his idea in the first place.

We've lost a lot of potential Americans due to abortion, it's true. But as Joe Meidlinger says, we've lost quite a few Iraqis this year, in addition to the rising numbers of Americans that we've wasted on this cruel, stupid, and useless venture. Probably the figures are about equal.

Oh, and by the way, I hear that the soul doesn't enter the body until about the 5th month.

So.....

Your abortion issue may be lessened a bit by that, I'd say.

And if you want to stop abortion, why don't you teach people to treasure sexual union as a divine union of amazing spiritual connection? And show them that the male and female cannot achieve total sexual experience without the deep commitment that two lovers can make to each other; that gives the woman the emotional security she needs while the man gains the psychological approval and stability he needs.

But then, if priests are celibates (do the young boys just not count?), what would they know?

It appears that Mikey the priest out there in Colorado Springs may not only be propagating a completely irrelevant institution, which does, however, have a sort of quaint, ceremonial charm, but that he is completely ignorant of the solution for the problem that he thinks he can solve simply by mentioning a rule.

Abortion will not stop to get more votes.

You need to dig deeper than that, Mikey. Even I know that. And I do have several cutting remarks regarding this, the apparent Gordian knot of American politics (one of several that every candidate must attempt to unravel). I've already mentioned one (did you notice?) And if I have more salient perspectives than you do, what are you doing as the priest?

I say, get a real job. Maybe sacking groceries, where you will do some real service for people. Not confusing the issues and mixing your religion and politics, in a sort of musty brew of irrelevance and incompetence.

On the other hand, the extremity of the preposterous in today's news out of Colorado Springs is somehow oddly refreshing. I do think that it would have been better placed, however, in the News of the Wierd.

I can say these things because I'm not running for office. Other than that little U.S presidency thing:

http://www.americancandidate.com/candidate_homepage.php?id=53

Best,

-Paul