Links for 04/08/16 | National Catholic Reporter

Links for 04/08/16 | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: Ed Morrissey's plan, which neo-conservatice Berkowitz propounds, may be good for finding a candidate for the next election cylcle, but not for this one.  Of course, the GOP may no longer exist in four years.  The conservative party in America has died several times before and the current incarnation is so locked in anti-Obama racism that it needs some time to deprogram itself.



Let me address Meghan Clark's points in order. 1. Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel actually are myth, not history, and as long Catholic doctrine treats them as fact rather than story, it will come up with the wrong answer.2. 1 Cor 13, probably all of the Catholic marriages ending in divorce used that passage - and in my case the person who left the marriage was the one who insisted on it.  We need to spend more time on what love is and is not and how to chose to keep it - for it is a choice.  3. Divorced couples often are quite involved with their families of origin - as they provide shelter when the marriage fails.  Of course, it is undertstood that you leave your in-laws behind, which is hardly transformed.  Accepting the reality of divorce and remarriage would actually make it easier to keep contact with some of my in-laws, who were good frieds.  4. Francis makes progress with his work on discernment - but he just can't go beyond the applying of the rules to letting couples decide what the rules are for themselves.  The joke is, they do it anyway.  Of course, the rules do need to be changed - there are good guys and bad guys in divorce whose right to remarry or forgive should be treated differently, as does the very nature of understanding the limits of Church authority in the real world.  5.  Mercy must include the concept that the rules must be merciful.  If they are not, then the rules are wrong.  Sadly, that conclusion was not made.



Bernie Sanders should absolutely go Rome (hopefully on a charter so he can sleep during the flights).  While he is in it to win it - he wants to win it for the cause, not for himself (unlike at least three of his opponents).  This kind of conference is all about the cause.  You don't pass up this kind of opportunity - or the opportunity to finally have a major presidential candidate speak the Catholic truth about economics.  I know the right to lifer's will have a fit - but they have always been a confidence game with no chance of winning anything but elections.  That this will play well with Catholic liberals in New York is only a bonus.