iWidow

You’ve heard of NFL Widows, Fantasy Baseball League widows and Consulting Widows, well, I am willing to bet you know more than one iWidow as well. Look for the woman staring wistfully off into space while her husband stares unashamedly as his hand in his lap, she is an iWidow and he is Type A+Man.*

I have read that iPhone use creates actual addictive patterns in the brain.  You send a text or a message and you await a response.  That sort of “ping” back from another person releases a charge of dopamine – a little happy moment in your brain – and your behavior has been reinforced.  Let’s call that iPavlov.   But what the hell, right?  Who cares if the guy is constantly checking the scores or updating his fantasy baseball stats.  Big deal, right?
 
Yes, big deal.  For many reasons.  
 
1) The iPhone is the new Other Woman. The average working man takes his iPhone everywhere.  He does not take his wife with him when he travels for work, he can’t. But even when he is home, he goes on runs, he goes out with friends, he goes shopping or to the movies and he may have to leave the wife at home, but he takes the phone.  And it’s always on, he is always receiving information from it.   Ask any iWidow if she’s ever been “waved off” in favor of a message on his hand-held device. That  app is called the iDntHvTym4U. When she looks at her husband across the room, the average iWidow is thinking, “Gee, that used to be my hand in his hand.”  
 
2) Where we used to wander, now we Mapquest.  “How many times have we used it on family vacations to find a place when we were lost?”  How many of those times would you have found it anyway? How many adventures have you missed by being precise and correct?  He checks the weather and the train schedule, as if knowing them changes them in some way. He will or won’t be at the station before the 7:35.
 3) Where we used to wonder, now we Wikki. We don’t say, “I wonder” anymore because we can Google. If we wonder, then we are asking and if we are asking, well, let me just look that up on the amazing internet which I happen to have surgically implanted on my palm right here… ahah!  There is no more imagining an answer, there is no more debating various suggestions at an answer, there is only The Answer.

 4) Where we used to have conversations, now we chat. I laughed one day to see this man listening to his buddy on the train. The buddy was talking about some frustration at work when the friend glanced down at his iPhone - his “I-Phone” in this case - and exclaimed, “I’ve got bars!” and never looked up at his buddy again.  Bars indeed, bars erected between himself and his now seething buddy.

5) “We” has been reduced to” i.” Type A+ Man and his family are for a walk.  The wife and the kids are talking, the kids are complaining about having to read Milton, about having to run in PE, and about the weather. They are all walking along, they are seeing and feeling and looking and while Type A+ Man is doing those things as well, he is also having another experience: he is getting sensory data that they are not. His experience of right now has more data points in it, his mind is fractured, the memory he takes from these moments will be different than any of his family, he will get home and have had a different afternoon.

It is, I guess, an essential characteristic of high powered type A+ Man that he would like to have access to information all the time.  If a question occurs to him, he wants to know the answer, he wants it now, he opens his palm and his palm tells him.  There is no walking without knowing how far or how fast. “I’m higher than I was” or “I’m warmer than I was” becomes, “We’ve gone up forty feet from the trail head and its ten degrees warmer.”  His senses don’t have bars here, I guess.

Type A+ Man has to know for sure right now and he has to compare to last time. He keeps track of how far and how fast. He has an app for accumulated miles that calculates the times, the distances, tells you how many calories you burned, and the weather. It knows how much vitamin D you absorbed, it keeps a record of pounds per square inch on your right knee since the injury and it has a nifty little chart to show you that, based just on the miles you’ve walked since you loaded the app, you are this much closer to walking all the way to the moon.  And you know what?  It does that automatically just by being on.

Well, now he knows how far he’s come, how fast, how long, how many books he’s read and how many classes he’s taken that might add up to a PhD in literature in which institutions in the United States.  But for your average type A+ iPhone carrying executive, that is just not gonna be enough.  No, he has to share it now.  He has to Twitter and to Facebook, he has to email it to his buddy who is also virtually walking to the moon. And then, after he’s checked the facts, established his prowess, posted and emailed his conclusions and received the comments and return email, he chuckles and shares it with his family.  

Only they don’t laugh.

Because none of this has actually happened. To them. They are still on the walk.

Remember the walk?

The iPhone saves, sorts and compares every little thing he has asks it to and gives him a nifty interface.  And all that time the experience his family was having on the walk? He missed it. And what did his family learn? He brought along his personal ego boost, his handheld affirmation.  His family was simply the jumping off point for a solipsistic tour of cyber credibility that ended with them feeling inadequate and, finally, disconnected. The message is subtle and possibly unintentional: what satisfies the family, what contents them, what they settle for, is just not enough for him.  Their conversation doesn’t hold his attention.  Their experience of the world is too one-dimensional, their world is too easy, he needs more of a challenge.  Not only is he not sharing in their experience, he is not sharing in it because it is inadequate.  How can they help but wonder if they are also inadequate in his sight? The app for that is called iSolation.

*In this article I use flagrantly sexist language, placing the blame squarely on a man holding an iPhone. It goes without saying that the genders of these people are not relevant, only their relationship to one another. Or lack thereof.

If You Need Anything

There is an old joke in my family. When you went to the family farm in Missouri, the grandparents would set you up in a bedroom and then send you up to bed. On your way up the stairs one of them would call after you and say, "If you need anything, you let me know what it is and I'll tell you how to get along without it."
    This line still cracks us all up. Sharing in the joy of that house is one of the great privileges of my life. I am the last of my generation, more than twenty years distant from the first and while a few followed after me in subsequent years, we are growing ever fewer in number.
    My grandparents retired on 90 acres in southwest Missouri to a house which was mostly kitchen. There was a living room with a piano and an organ, there were two recliners in front of the TV in the "TV room" and there was a screened-in porch the size of a small house through which you just passed on your way to somewhere else. Upstairs, there were bedrooms, but they weren't like other bedrooms. They were rooms full of beds. Full as in "you'll have to walk over this bed to get to that one" and "don't let your leg get stuck between the bed frames." My sister and I always shared this one double bed that had a big depression in the middle so that no matter how tightly we clung to the sides with white knuckles, our behinds slid together in sleep and we woke with a start and a whisper of revulsion to grab on to the side and pull away again. I don't know how many hours of our lives were spent wondering which great aunt's or uncle's butt made the abyss in that mattress.
    But the heart of the place, the room you were passing through to and the location the dog would drag you to with his gentle teeth on your arm: that was the kitchen.         
    It was about as large as my living room now. It was white, in theory, though every cabinet door was painted a different bright earthy tone and every door handle was a funny black pounded metal thing. The counter crept all the way around the room from the stove about five feet to the sink under the window and then miles over to the loudest fridge in America. And all along the way there were things. Some of them were things a good suburban girl knew – like a mixer or a can opener. But then there were canning supplies, which looked horribly medical to me. And there were cans of things my cousin Craig convinced me were parts of calf fetuses. They turned out to be pickeled peaches, I think. Anyway, we ate them. One of the best things about that kitchen was the window over the sink. Grandmother had bird feeders outside her kitchen window and when squirrels or crows would come to her feeder, she'd squirt them with her dish rinser. Also grandchildren making too much noise in the yard on Sunday.
But the best part of that kitchen was behind her, under the stairs and frequently stretching out to hold eighteen people. It was the kitchen table. It was the only eating table in the house, there was no dining room. It was a plain wooden table with plain wooden chairs and behind it on the wall was a huge mirror. It was placed there so that Grandma Craig could lean crookedly against the counter with her ankles crossed and drink coffee and see the faces of the people she loved, both those facing her and those facing away. And so that we could see her. Granddad sat at the head and some hapless grandchildren stretched down the table, but Grandma Craig rarely sat for more than a few minutes. Grace, maybe, and "Pass the…" but then she was up and standing at the counter, visible and participating from the altar of our bounty. She was coltish, even in her eighties, with long legs that had a poetic stride and a strong jaw, a quick and gorgeous smile and eyes behind glasses that cried and smiled of their own volition, as if the rest of her face were in the present but her eyes were reliving the past.

Vegetables were not an option in that house, they were a prerequisite. It went without saying that the half acre vegetable garden did the lion's share of provision for guests of the farm, even in fat years. I ate more of everything my kids can't identify than I care to recall. It is all the rage now to hide nutrition from children. There are books and articles and websites about sneaking vegetables and fruits into recalcitrant eaters. I myself give my son a chocolate milkshake in lieu of a meal every day because he only eats things that start with “p” and have been processed at least four times before reaching his face. But in that house, vegetables were not a secret, they were a sacrament.

"Look at that corn," Granddad would say as he passed a huge tray with two dozen ears on it. "Sweet as candy," was the refrain. And you know what? It was. Then he'd pass all the empty cobs to someone's plate and say, "Shayshine, did you eat all that corn! My goodness you're gonna grow big!"

"Those peaches turned out nice," he might say. Or, "Jeanette, did you and Linda eat all those big ripe strawberries and just leave us these little ones? We're gonna need some ice cream to make them worthwhile."

But the main event was tomatoes. Tomatoes in that house were holy ground. They were grown with zen-like care. They were coddled and comforted, they were cultured and cared for, they were prayed over and policed. And they were manna from the wilderness. You could cut them up and put them in a sandwich. You could slice them into a salad. It was theoretically possible to boil, peel and put them in a sauce. But what God intended was for you to eat them here and now.  Like an apple. With salt. Amen.

See, in that house, you could feel God like a presence in the room. He was there on the stairs. He played the organ and read aloud at night. On that particular property He may have smoked a pipe but I know for sure that He sat on the patio with the elders, walked in long, disjointed strides with Grandma Craig out to the Thinkin' Rock. He turned the handle of the ice cream churn like the rest of us. And He was sitting at that table as sure as ever I was. Every grace in that house, no matter how silly it seemed, started out addressing Him, never in a loud voice, He was inches, not miles away, and never without humor or love. He wasn't frightening, He was neighborly, He wasn't theoretical, He was family. And every single time I can ever remember His being addressed in that house – every one – the prayer started with Thank You. They were grateful, they were blessed and they knew it. No morsel of food, no member of the family, no moment in time passed without thanking God. I was always surprised when it ended and we all said Amen, because you half expected a voice nearby to say, "You're welcome."

Now, when it got dark and all the fireflies had been chased and screamed at and Granddad and my father had walked out to the barn and back, leaving a fragrant trail of pipe smoke, then it must be time for bed. There was the parade through the one tiny and inconvenient bathroom. There was the begging for one more morsel before bed, and there was sometimes the quiet, sighing sound of the organ or piano. Then, the little ones were sent up to clamber into their various sleeping arrangements and fall asleep in the terrifyingly absolute darkness. But before you went up to sleep, one or the other of the Grand's would call up after you, "You let me know if you need anything, and I'll tell you how to get along without it."

Maybe this was depression era wit or wisdom, there was certainly much learned in our family from that time, but for me, born thirty years and a hundred lifetimes from the Dust Bowl, there was another message entirely.

I don't know, I can't know, what my Grandparents prayed for. But I know how they taught me to pray. They never seemed to ask for anything to change. They never prayed for release from strife, they never prayed for mercy, they never prayed for a change in the world because God made the world and He knew what He was doing.

No, they prayed for Him to "show them how to get along" in the world. They prayed for Him to show them, to teach them, to touch them in a way that would make them fit for the world He created. If it seemed too hard to them, they never asked Him to make it softer, they asked Him to make them stronger. If it seemed dark, they asked not for light but for vision. If they felt broken or sad or lost, they asked Him to hold them in His hand. If they needed something, they let Him know and He showed them how to get along without it. 

America's Livingroom

Yes, of course the Obama's should have a creche in the East Room. The East Room is American's living room, and just like your living room or mine, what is displayed there says a great deal about the people who live there. In the case of the East Room it says that Americans elect Christian presidents. That is a reliable representation. If we're uncomfortable with that fact, then we had better get busy nominating a Muslim or Jewish Presidential candidate, or an atheist.

The trouble is, that isn't going to happen any time soon. Just the rumor of Islamic leanings brought Obama down in the poles during his election. Before his aisle crossing jig in the Senate, the only thing most Americans knew about Joe Lieberman was his religious affiliation. Grandiose language and litigation to the contrary, American's are Christian, they vote for Christians and they put Christians in the White House. So there is no call to act all shocked and shaken when we wake up in December to find a creche in the East Room. That's America's living room, we put it there.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm grateful. If I brought my mother back from the grave today nineteen years after she passed away, and said, "Mom, there is an African American in the White House, gays can marry in Iowa and white males of Irish Catholic extraction can get into Chicago's best public high schools"... she'd keel over dead again. I am grateful indeed for all these blessings. But I worked for them, I prayed for them and most importantly, I voted for them. If you don't want a creche in the East Room, then don't vote for a candidate who owns one.

Look, I don't think we need to have a Christian president, I have no preference one way or another about his faith, his race, or his gender. I like brains, brains and liberal social policy. If my party - or any party- nominates a candidate who spouts my agenda with reasonable credibility, appears to be surrounded by brilliant people and appears to understand them when they talk, then I will absolutely go out and vote for her.

For now, I've got a great man in a good place and a promising future rising with the sunrise... over a creche. Big deal.

A Star in the East Room?

Over the course of the last few months writing this blog, I have written about the separation of church and state more than any other topic. The separation of powers is the defining characteristic of American Democracy, it indisputably makes our government strong, fair and resilient. And it is a gigantic pain the tush. Here’s a classic example. “Should the Obama’s have a crèche in the East Room this holiday season?” The White House is exactly that little piece of real estate where church and state collide: it is a federally funded, nationally registered publically held piece of property. It is also someone’s home.

When we ask if the President should put a nativity scene in one of its rooms, our concern is, “Will it make America look Christian?” No, it will make the Obama’s look Christian; it will make America look like what it is: a country governed by the people, and for the people. We didn’t write our laws to oppress people, we wrote them to safely set them free – to worship, to speak, and to print their opinions, for starters.

It would be un-American, not to mention profoundly unkind, to tell the people who live in publically funded residences that they can’t put up a religious representation that accurately reflects their beliefs. The East Room has been used for diplomatic purposes, for weddings and for funerals. It is a place that reflects the realities of American and in fact human life: struggle, joy and sorrow.

Our Constitution guarantees us a right to practice religion freely within limits. With its notorious reindeer ruling, our Supreme Court has maintained that tasteful and fair representations of religious belief may be present on public grounds (Lynch v. Donnelly, 1983). We fought a vicious war to defend a Jewish family’s right to place a menorah in their window. Christian scripture tells us to stand up and be counted as Christians. What does the presence of a crèche scene in the East Room say about America? That we’re not afraid to be ourselves and to let our brethren be themselves as well. I’m comfortable with that message.

Minarets Don’t Frighten People. People Frighten People

A representative of the “rightist” Swiss political party that sponsored a ban on building new minarets in Switzerland recently said that the ban was motivated by a fear that Islamic fundamentalists had “the political will to take power.” He need not have worried, by passing this legislation, he handed that power over to them.

Switzerland has long had a reputation for tolerance, and for refuge for the persecuted of other nations. Radical Islam now evidently dictates Swiss public policy. And it is a policy of fear. Curbing the religious expression of just one faith does not say, “We abhor the violent extremism of a minority of the faith.” Rather it says, “We will let our fear drive us to curbing freedom of religious expression.”

The Swiss want to curb extremism in their midst but they have gone about it in exactly the wrong way. A recent study of violent extremism in the United States found that "Apocalyptic aggression is fueled by right-wing pundits who demonize scapegoated groups and individuals in our society, implying that it is urgent to stop them from wrecking the nation."

It is not by suppressing religious expression, buy by engaging it that extremism and radicalism is suppressed. Diversity is normative. The more varied we are, the less likely it is that any one extreme group or view point can dominate the public stage. The more communal our experience, the less extreme we tend to be. Religion and religious expression has a prominent place in that dialog.

Nor is the politics of fear a new story. In 2006, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said, “The idea of a society where no visible public signs of religion would be seen- no crosses around necks, no sidelocks, turbans or veils - is a politically dangerous one.” A country’s government should not work as a “licensing authority” nor should it presume to dictate “public morality.” He argued that a government should not be the sole arbiter of a society’s identity.

That fact of the matter is that minarets don’t frighten people. People frighten people. If minarets are dangerous because they are used by fundamentalist Islam to perpetrate violence, then the Swiss had better take the crosses down from the church towers, lest we are reminded of the Klu Klux Klan. But that's extremist talk. The vast majority of Swiss Muslims are not fundamentalists: they don’t “adhere to the codes of dress and conduct” of fundamentalist Islam and they are mixed into the Swiss population as seamlessly as any other group. At least until now.

The iWidow and the Herion Addict

Have you ever looked around a restaurant and seen an iWidow? Look for the woman staring wistfully off into space while her husband stares unashamedly as his hand in his lap? She is an iWidow and he is Type A+Man. While this story has a modern spin, the fact of the matter is, its an old story. And I'll warn you now, there's no resolve at the end.

I have read that iPhone use creates actual addictive patterns in the brain. You send a text or a message and you await a response. That sort of “ping” back from another person releases a charge of dopamine – a little happy moment in your brain – and your behavior has been reinforced. Let’s call that iPavlov. But what the hell, right? Who cares if the guy is constantly checking the scores or updating his fantasy baseball stats. Big deal, right?

Yes, big deal. For many reasons.

The iPhone is the new Other Woman. The average working man takes his iPhone everywhere. He does not take his wife with him when he travels for work, he can’t. But even when he is home, he goes on runs, he goes out with friends, he goes shopping or to the movies and he may have to leave the wife at home, but he takes the phone. And it’s always on, he is always receiving information from it. Ask any iWidow if she’s ever been “waved off” in favor of a message on his hand-held device. That app is called the iDntHvTym4U. When she looks at her husband across the room, the average iWidow is thinking, “Gee, that used to be my hand in his hand.”

Where we used to wander, now we Mapquest. “How many times have we used it on family vacations to find a place when we were lost?” How many of those times would you have found it anyway? How many adventures have you missed by being precise and correct? He checks the weather and the train schedule, as if knowing them changes them in some way. He will or won’t be at the station before the 7:35.

Where we used to wonder, now we Wikki. We don’t say, “I wonder” anymore because we can Google. If we wonder, then we are asking and if we are asking, well, let me just look that up on the amazing internet which I happen to have surgically implanted on my palm right here… ahah! There is no more imagining an answer, there is no more debating various suggestions at an answer, there is only The Answer.

Where we used to have conversations, now we chat. I laughed one day to see this man listening to his buddy on the train. The buddy was talking about some frustration at work when the friend glanced down at his iPhone - his “I-Phone” in this case - and exclaimed, “I’ve got bars!” and never looked up at his buddy again. Bars indeed, bars erected between himself and his now seething buddy.

"We” has been reduced to” i.” Type A+ Man and his family are for a walk. The wife and the kids are talking, the kids are complaining about having to read Milton, about having to run in PE, and about the weather. They are all walking along, they are seeing and feeling and looking and while Type A+ Man is doing those things as well, he is also having another experience: he is getting sensory data that they are not. His experience of right now has more data points in it, his mind is fractured, the memory he takes from these moments will be different than any of his family, he will get home and have had a different afternoon. He is thinking, "I'll just do this one thing, answer this one email. I can do both things without anyone noticing." Well, he's wrong.

It is, I guess, an essential characteristic of high powered type A+ Man that he would like to have access to information all the time. If a question occurs to him, he wants to know the answer, he wants it now, he opens his palm and his palm tells him. There is no walking without knowing how far or how fast. “I’m higher than I was” or “I’m warmer than I was” becomes, “We’ve gone up forty feet from the trail head and its ten degrees warmer.” His senses don’t have bars here, I guess.

Type A+ Man has to know for sure right now and he has to compare to last time. He keeps track of how far and how fast. He has an app for accumulated miles that calculates the times, the distances, tells you how many calories you burned, and the weather. It knows how much vitamin D you absorbed, it keeps a record of pounds per square inch on your right knee since the injury and it has a nifty little chart to show you that, based just on the miles you’ve walked since you loaded the app, you are this much closer to walking all the way to the moon. And you know what? It does that automatically just by being on.

Well, now he knows how far he’s come, how fast, how long, how many books he’s read and how many classes he’s taken that might add up to a PhD in literature in which institutions in the United States. But for your average type A+ iPhone carrying executive, that is just not gonna be enough. No, he has to share it now. He has to Twitter and to Facebook, he has to email it to his buddy who is also virtually walking to the moon. And then, after he’s checked the facts, established his prowess, posted and emailed his conclusions and received the comments and return email, he chuckles and shares it with his family.

Only they don’t laugh.

Because none of this has actually happened. To them. They are still on the walk.

Remember the walk?

The iPhone saves, sorts and compares every little thing he has asks it to and gives him a nifty interface. And all that time the experience his family was having on the walk? He missed it. And what did his family learn? He brought along his personal ego boost, his handheld affirmation. His family was simply the jumping off point for a solipsistic tour of cyber credibility that ended with them feeling inadequate and, finally, disconnected. The message is subtle and possibly unintentional: what satisfies the family, what contents them, what they settle for, is just not enough for him. Their conversation doesn’t hold his attention. Their experience of the world is too one-dimensional, their world is too easy, he needs more of a challenge. Not only is he not sharing in their experience, he is not sharing in it because it is inadequate. How can they help but wonder if they are also inadequate in his sight? The app for that is called iSolation.

And iSolation leads into dangerous territory: we can easily go from "my only friends are virtual" to "I have no friends." Feelings of isolation are always among the list of characteristics in the case of a suicide... or of a Fort Hood type shooting. Isolation need not be imposed from the outside, we can choose it ourselves, we can opt into it.

There is much that is wonderful about this new handheld technology. It is indeed delightful to have a phone/radio/television/DVDplayer/Camera/Personal Computer/GPS at your fingertips. It enables us to use our time SO much more efficiently: we get work done faster, we respond sooner, we know now and we are through finished and done. But then what?

We have to be able to go from interface to face-to-face. We have to look up. This is different from "look it up:" we don't "Google it" we "make eye contact with it;" we don't "chat" with IM language, we chat, as in over coffee; we don't use a browser, we browse a bookshelf. Society requires socializing, if you doubt me, ask yourself why emoticons were invented: we can't communicate without facial expression.

This is the age old quandary of who to feel sorry for: for the family that experiences the absent/present member, or for the person who voluntarily isolates himself with an addiction he can't see and can't control. It's cool, its in, you're so lame if you don't, but its not heroin, its not crack. In an odd way, it is a more honest representation of the fact: it is your pilot. Ask yourself, when did you surrender the wheel?

Entering the Fold through the Lobby.

U.S. Catholic bishops are defending their direct involvement in congressional deliberations over health-care reform, saying that church leaders have a duty to raise moral concerns on any issue, including abortion rights and health care for the poor. Do you agree? What role should religious leaders have -- or not have -- in government policymaking?

It is horrifying to see the Catholic Church attempting to influence the outcome of legislation being formulated in Democratic government. Not because it violates the separation of Church and State, but because it reduces the church to a special interest group. The Catholic Church represents hope to its members, faith in the goodness and rightness of God's creation and the power to bring about that Kingdom through action. Lobbyists obviate the representative structure of our Democratic system to privilege a special interest for which the voters could not get sufficiently excited to vote. The Church says, "You can, indeed you must be proactive in making the change you seek to see in the world." The Lobbyists tell us, "Elect whoever you want, we can change their minds once they get here." By lobbying congress on behalf of their concerns, U.S. Catholic Bishops have said, "pay no attention to the actions of Catholic voters, we are the voice of the Church." They have demonstrated a lack of faith in the Democratic system, in the transformative power of faith, and in their congregations.

The Church has the power to work the system for change, it always has had, and on a scale that any lobbyist would kill for. Where a lobbyist can influence one legislator on one vote on one issue, the Church empowers its masses to make Christian choices with every step they take, every dime they spend and with every vote they cast on every issue and in every election.Where the Church is able to effect a groundswell of public action that transforms the face of politics and policy to reflect the constituents' beliefs...that is both a Christian and a Democratic dream. And a lobbyist's nightmare.

Catholic voters, in theory, know what to do. They know where the Church stands on issues of abortion and end-of-life counseling. In theory they have heard the Church's position from the lips of their Priests, they see evidence of it in their scripture, and they cleave to it as the foundation for their decision making. In theory they have voted into office representatives who will speak for them in this as well as all other issues. But even if they don't, in theory it won't matter because the template that guides these Catholics will keep them from needing abortion services and have a position on end-of-life care.

But the fact that there are Catholic Bishops lobbying the Congress over this bill tells us that theory is not proving out in practice. Possibly, Catholic voters didn't get out in big enough numbers to elect representatives who will reflect their beliefs. Possibly they didn't vote for people who reflect their beliefs. Possibly they aren't involved enough in church to know what position to vote for in the first place. In any case, the Catholic church has failed in its calling: its has not brought the faithful into the fold, it has not motivated them to live and vote to bring about the Kingdom, and it has not created in them a moral code that makes the health care reform debate irrelevant to them. That is the problem. The solution is not to by-pass the people. The solution is not to impose the moral code from the top down. Jesus did not throw in with Rome in order to change the ills of the society he preached to.

Where Jesus saw corruption, he preached righteousness. Where he saw iniquity, he preached justice. But he had faith in the Gospel and int he power of his flock to effect the change not by obviating the law but by fulfilling it. Therefore, I say to the well meaning but errant Bishops on Capital Hill: go back to your churches, back to your Scripture and back to your congregations because they are the Church. "Very truly I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit." (John 10:1)