"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
Wednesday, July 02, 2003 It all depends on how you define "condemnatory"
O'Malley, like Law, is ''very prolife,'' but unlike Law, ''not in a condemnatory way.'' R. Scott Appleby, Notre Dame theologian, quoted in the Boston Globe.
I have not said for whom I shall vote, but I will tell you for whom I will not vote. I will not vote for any politician who will promote abortion or the culture of death, no matter how appealing the rest of his or her program might be. They are wolves in sheep’s garments, the K.K.K. without the sheets, and sadly enough, they don’t even know it.
If I were ever tempted to vote for simply selfish reasons, tribal allegiances, or economic advantages rather than on the moral direction of the country, I should beat a hasty retreat from the curtain of the polling booth to the curtain of the confessional. Bishop Sean O'Malley, "Election Reflection," originally published in the Fall River diocesan paper, The Anchor (Via Bill Cork)
If Bishop O'Malley continues to speak out this way in Boston, it may shake things up in a historically Catholic, Democratic state in which Catholic positions on important moral issues have effectively been shut out of the political debate, to a significant extent because Lake Street for years surrendered the pulpit, then lost to scandal any compelling moral heft that might have remained.
Speaking of Lake Street, note the opening paragraphs in today's Washington Postarticle:
Speaking to reporters after he was named yesterday as the Roman Catholic archbishop of Boston, Sean Patrick O'Malley said he did not yet know where he would live. But he suggested it probably would not be the baronial mansion inhabited by his predecessor, Cardinal Bernard M. Law.
"Obviously, as a Franciscan brother, I prefer to have the simplest quarters," he said.
That came as an understatement to residents of the Renaissance Apartments in Washington, who remembered the day in 1977 when he moved into two rooms on the first floor of their white brick building at 3060 16th St. NW.
It was then known as the Kenesaw Building, and more than half of its 83 units were vacant. It had no heat in winter, no air-conditioning in summer. What it did have was rats and roaches, drug dealers and fires.
"Padre Sean," as Hispanic residents still call O'Malley, turned one room into a chapel and slept on the floor in the other.
"It was a dangerous place to live, believe me," said Silverio Coy, a lawyer and Hispanic community activist who helped O'Malley organize the tenants to fight eviction, form a cooperative and renovate the building. "He wanted to make a statement that not only was he going to help these people, he was going to share their needs and anxieties every single day."
Bishop O'Malley mentioned at his press conference that he would like to reside in simple quarters by the cathedral, which is in the inner-city, in the heart of the immigrant Catholic population with whom the Spanish-speaking Franciscan monk has made common cause.
It will be worth noting what becomes of the expansive grounds in Brighton that cardinals since O'Connell have called home.
![[SMMMHDH]](http://www.mgilleland.com/music/smmmhdh.png){kind=small}
