A new blogger with wise things to say

Robert Waldrop of the Oklahoma City Catholic Worker and the Access to Catholic Social Justice Teaching website has a blog now, Bob's Blog ---- and he's got wise words in his first post from yesterday:

Speaking of Governor Frank Keating, any doubts I had about whether the bishops were corrupt or not went right out the window when they picked him, a politician who has never passed up a chance to grind the face of the poor into the dust, as the head of their new lay review panel. So I wasn't surprised when he popped up, promoting himself to apostolic nuncio, and announcing New Doctrine: Catholics who are mad at their bishops should not go to mass, they should go to another diocese and they should also stop giving money to the church.

Right, Oklahoma City Catholics are supposed to drive to Texas or Kansas or Arkansas to go to mass? And sure, while the President says we all have to do more to help the poor, the Republican Governor of Oklahoma calls upon Oklahoma Catholics to do less, to punish the poor because of our beef with the bishop. And to think that Call to Action wants to put laymen like Keating in charge of the hierarchy. May all the saints preserve us from the folly of our own leaders!

Fortunately, even though our religious leaders have been corrupted by greed and gluttony, the Church remains the Church, the mystical bride of Christ, a sure and certain guide in a time of trouble. Yes, we have bishops and archbishops and even cardinals who are cafeteria Catholics and who advocate the murder of the poor as a necessary adjunct to US foreign policy. But we as lay Catholics are not responsible for their sins, we have our own, and we can deal with theirs with our own prayers and especially, our own acts of reparation. The bishop's foolishness and wickedness calls for a response from the Catholic laity. We must do even more works of mercy, justice, peace, and environmental stewardship to heal the damages they have caused.

"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around." - Orthodoxy, 1908
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