Wingnut Theology
By I’m surprised this quote from Bishop Deal W. Hudson that Josh Marshall IDed hasn’t gotten more play. But it’s an unusually candid admission about the nature of the jihad against pro-choice Catholic Democrats:
“Once you open this door, what’s going to come rolling through it?” asked Deal W. Hudson, editor of the magazine Crisis and a key Catholic ally of the Bush administration. “Pretty soon, no one would be taking Communion.”
Hudson said he believes the denial of Communion should begin, and end, with Kerry. Even better, he said, would be if priests would read letters from the pulpit denouncing the senator from Massachusetts “whenever and wherever he campaigns as a Catholic.”
So, just to be clear, this war on Kerry–reported as real news by serious newspapers–is absolutely nothing but rank partisan hackery. Deviating from Catholic theology is worthy of being denied communion if a)the deviation is from a conservative position, and b)if it’s a Democratic presidential candidate. In all other circumstances, it’s OK.
The good news, as Andrew Sullivan points out, is that this is going to backfire. The one-time-only-war-on-inconsistency is such transparent opportunism it won’t fool anybody. (Except, perhaps, the New York Times.)