The Holy State of Iowa spent yesterday
ablither and
ablather about the human suffering of one year ago when ICE busted a few hundred illegals for being illegally hired by a big-time entrepreneur in the kosher meat racket. He's a real jerky sort, but that's another story. (You can learn more than you want to know by googling
Postville Raid.)
The lead hand-wringer seemed to be a Prince of the Church, who thusly spake:
"As proclaimers of God's word, it is our duty to sound a call for justice. It is our privilege to welcome the stranger," Archbishop Jerome Hanus told a packed interfaith service at St. Bridget's Catholic Church. "It is our challenge to bring good news to the poor. This, my friends, is our time. This is our moment. This is our year of favor."
It happens that I have some fairly personal experience with a couple-three bishops. One of the salient facts is that, all by their pious selves, each scarfs enough deep red and luxuriously marbled protein a day to keep two or three third-world families alive. So one assumes Archbishop Hanus is already routinely exercising his privilege to welcome the stranger. I picture him joyfully sharing his personal table with the sad victims of The Great Federal Raid . In fact, I'll just betcha that day and night he strides the back streets and alleys of Postville and Dubuque, filling his limousine several times a day with poor and downtrodden strangers, taking them to his heart, his personal table, his spare bedrooms. Surely his private actions are Christ-like as his windy archbishophorical rhetoric.
Important Note #1: We have nothing all all against religion in general or any of the sane denominations, do we? But we can all identify pretentious, self-serving, self-righteous, hypocritical bullshit, can't we?
Important Note #2: Despite being ledeth into temptation, I was very careful to avoid the dropped-letter typo as I pecked out Jerry's name.