most likely to succeed

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Mar 21, 2006

The photo shows Cherie Blair, wife of British PM Tony Blair, offering a journalist a prophylactic at a Planned Parenthood Latex Fest some months ago. If anyone as ditzy as she could be called "staunch," Blair is a staunch advocate of state-administered population control -- and besides, she thinks condoms are cute.

Ms. Blair has recently been named by The Tablet as Number 3 on its list of Britain's most influential lay Catholics. The influence lay Catholics wield is not, in the The Tablet's judgment, influence in the interest of things Catholic.

Then again, the previous editor of The Tablet received -- from the then-nuncio -- a papal knighthood in recognition of his own services to sterility. It's pretty clear that these folks have an excellent idea of the kind of thing careerist ecclesiastics want to hear. Come to think of it, if I held Church doctrine in the same esteem as do they, I'd probably want to give Blair a gong as well. Didn't Wolsey, after all, bag a Golden Rose for Henry VIII? -- that was before Ann Boleyn put Henry on the list of Britain's 10 Most Influential Anglicans.