"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
Quick, somebody send the Vatican this week's edition of Weekly World News.
Christopher Johnson at Midwest Conservative Journal weighs in on the Holy See's latest conciliatory outreach to the Butcher of Baghdad. Respecting the Vatican's opposition on just-war grounds to US action "would be infinitely easier," he writes, "were I not confronted with the image of a papal envoy listening politely while a mass-murderer declared what the Vicar of Christ's responsibilities before God ought to be.
THE VATICAN AND THE THUGS: The Roman Catholic hierarchy is now in full spin behind Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. It was truly sickening to see Tariq Aziz, the instrument of one of the most murderous regimes on earth, using the shrine of St Francis for a photo-op. It's even more sickening to read the comments of Cardinal Etchegaray, informing the world that Saddam Hussein had been relieved by Friday's report to the United Nations by the chief weapons inspectors. "He [Saddam Hussein] is doing everything to avoid war," the Cardinal told Italian television, according to French news agency AFP.
I know these aren't matters of faith and doctrine to which all Catholics are supposed to assent. But after the child-abuse scandals, we now have to deal with a Catholic hierarchy that is actively supporting genocidal dictators and their malevolent agendas. When the world needs moral clarity, the Vatican gives us the spin from Baghdad. It really is 1933 again, isn't it?
![[SMMMHDH]](http://www.mgilleland.com/music/smmmhdh.png){kind=small}
Quick, somebody send the Vatican this week's edition of Weekly World News.
