praeteritio

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Apr 12, 2004

An old joke tells about the football player who gets four Fs and a D on his report card. When he shows it to his coach, the coach says, “Your problem is you’re putting all your effort into one subject.”

In my newly polished post-Easter optimism, I will forbear to draw any connection between this anecdote and the recent performance of the Catholic episcopacy, particularly in matters of liturgy, catechetics, sexual scandal, and the role of dissenting Catholics in political life.

I won’t mention the case of Archbishop O’Malley, who announced he was personally opposed to pro-abort pols' receiving communion and personally opposed to his priests’ defiance of the Holy See’s norms on liturgical footwashing, whence the same weekend saw Boston’s gender-bending clergy rout the opposition and John Kerry walk off with a Certificate of Good Standing in his pocket.

I shall pass over in silence the failure of the bishops to kneecap their mascot, Bishop Thomas “Roadkill” O’Brien, who appears to regard manslaughter as a fussy, pedantic kind of offense -- like littering or homosexual rape -- and believes himself entitled to carfare and lunch money in serving his sentence.

Far be it from me to ask what became of the “new and serious” seminary visitation, or how much Rembert Weakland has paid back of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee’s $450,000 to which he helped himself to pay for … ah … education in celibacy.

No, all these considerations should be tactfully left unspoken. All I want to know is -- it being the season of hope -- what subject would the bishops earn a D in?