http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-miles27apr27,0,7484116.story

"The Unholy Alliance Against the Filibuster"

Pope Ratzinger was the one who pushed the argument during the 2004 US Presidential elections to deny communion to anyone not willing to criminalize abortion. This resulted in the disapproval of Kerry in some corridors of the Catholic church. President Bush provided the talking point of the "culture of life"-- that in matters that are in doubt to always fault to the side of life especially as applied to Terry Shiavo but not to the mentally retarded on Texas's death row or to the assault weapons ban's deleterious health affects on law enforcement or the general public; or even to the thousands of children killed, injured, emotionally scarred in the assault on Iraq. Where was this "culture of life" in those cases or in our morally bankrupt choice not to help fight the campaign of genocide in Sudan? Papal condemnation of the Iraq war was registered but Ratzinger feels there is more moral weight to the abortion issue of those yet unborn than to those already born but being killed through political wars. Now this man, in an unholy alliance with the Bush Administration's religious extremism, is the Papacy's Pope.

And I wondered why mainstream Christians were so silent, so demure on current moral issues that they seemed to defer to the Fundamentalist's agenda. Wonder no more. Convenient and politically expedient issues like abortion put the mainstream Christian in lock step w/ authoritarian Fascists of our current government. Killing unborn fetuses--no good. Killing fully formed children in an invasion of a sovereign nation--tolerable. Talk about moral anomie. The center just fell out. The horizon is no longer visible. We are a nation adrift in madness and moral failings.