CARDINAL CORMAC MURPHY-O'CONNOR, in the discussion with ++Williams said:  “One of the good things that's happened lately, in the context of the election, is that Christian leaders have been able to say things that have had a political impact. And when people say you shouldn't interfere with 

politics we say it's a perfectly legitimate thing to say, it's not party political.  I think more of it would be good.”

 


 

While we might agree with the good Cardinal’s sentiments, we have to face the fact that saying “perfectly legitimate” things regarding the political scene will hardly bring the already factious Christian world together.

 

In the early 1970’s at an American Episcopal Church Synod in Knoxville (predecessor to Deus) I was accused by a delegate to the synod of taking a “liberal” position by asking that the Synod send an encyclical to the Churches regarding sanctity of life.  Our little communion, as far as I am aware, was the first non-RC communion to take such a stance on the abortion issue.  

 

Things certainly change.  Anyone proposing such a statement today would be applauded by at least half of the country as a moral Republican, and by others as a right-wing fundamentalist.

 

Strangely, the arch-conservative who protested my bringing up a vote on the abortion issue in the 1970‘s, today, because of his protest would be labeled as an (gasp, shudder) immoral, godless Democrat!  If he thought of that, it would keep him up nights.

 

Of course the good bishop is right.  If one reads the Bible aloud in Church, inevitably political statements are going to be read.  With or without comment, those readings will be construed by some as partisan political statements.  Passions occasionally are so strong that regardless of one’s stance whether left, right, centrist or uninvolved, he will be wounded in the fray by friends, foes and members of his own household.

 

Even he who tried to leave the City and climb the Seven Story Mountain found that in his meditations the world was always with him.

 

As I think on these things, the only joy I find is the thought that the ideologues on both extremes must be disconcerted by the incontrovertible fact that politics make for very strange bedfellows:  George H. Bush and Bill Clinton traveling together.  

 

Come to think of it, that thought is disconcerting to me.  Those two traveling together will inevitably lead to some conspiracy theorist saying, “See, what did I tell you? THEY IS ALL IN IT TOGETHER!”

 

Oh well.  Don’t “go figger.”  It makes your head hurt.

 

Charles+

 

 

 

 

 


"chasrscott@..." <chasrscott@...> wrote:
Fr. Mark+

Thank you. The press conference had several items of interest.



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