Item 1: At last night's State of the Union address, two nuns from the Catholic Little Sisters of the Poor were in attendance, at the invitation of smug prevaricator House Speaker Paul "Lyin'" Ryan, who wanted the sisters there as a prop for Rethuglican proposals to eliminate women's reproductive rights, in particular contraceptive care. Perhaps the nuns are clueless about the Affordable Care Act's opt-out provision for religious organizations, but almost certainly they knew and nevertheless wanted to align their order with the increasingly authoritarian Republican / New Confederate / Stupid / Shooters party. So as not to be "cafeteria Catholics," sisters, here's what you've also signed on to: drastic cuts in assistance to low income families; policies that effectively deny the vote to eligible citizens based on their race, age or economic status; ownership of the gun safety agenda by the NRA; and, religious bigots among the "Christian" right, some of whom have referred to your Church in the past as the "whore of Babylon," and so much more nasty stuff. Pope Francis is taking you off of his Christmas card list.
Item 2: Some Catholic weapons-wankers in Dallas, TX are opposing their Bishop's dictate that the Church's diocese will not allow guns in their churches. (C'mon now, you know Jesus was packing a 9mm at the last supper, right?) Bishop Kevin Farrell has written that:
“It is absurd that terrorists, criminals, and mentally unbalanced people can freely and openly buy weapons not intended for sport, but designed to kill people. Writers of the Second Amendment envisioned smooth bore muskets and not semi-automatic and automatic weapons of war.”That set off a shitstorm among the wingers, one of whom said, apparently without any self-awareness:
“Why doesn’t he just call us a bunch of mouth-breathing inbred hicks and be done with it?”Note to Bishop Farrell: Call them that and be done with it.
