Mitre-Heads Get Nasty

Three Southern Catholic bishops, led by the Bishop of Atlanta John F. Donoghue (and including the Bishop of Charlotte Peter Jugis and the Bishop of Charleston Robert J. Baker), have issued a draconian declaration that any Catholic politician not toeing the line on the church's doctrine on abortion cannot receive communion until "they publicly recant their views" (the application of thumb-screws was not mentioned, though this comes close enough to auto-da-fe), PLUS "get permission from a bishop before again receiving Communion."

The only politicians singled out, natch! were those in favor of abortion rights. For those of you slow on the uptake, that would mean Democrats. None of those Southern Catholic Republicans who hate abortion but love a good capital murder execution from time to time were even mentioned, yet the bishops' statement implicitly condemned capital punishment too: "We declare that Catholics serving in public life espousing positions contrary to the teaching of the Church on the sanctity and inviolability of human life, especially those running for or elected to public office, are not to be admitted to Holy Communion in any Catholic church within our jurisdiction," the bishops wrote.

"But we're only singling out abortion rights and not capital punishment, because, after all, we're in the friggin SOUTH, and we KNOW how to play politics in the friggin South," the bishops could have (but didn't, so far as we know) add.