I acknowledge being a strident optimist. I don’t know how cynics get by in life and don’t especially want to know. That said, I’m increasingly cynical about the current administration and its apologists.

Remember when we progressives were against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan? Remember when we thought the refutation of the rule of law under the Bush Administration was tantamount to if not an outright war crime? Remember when the Abu Ghraib photos first appeared in The New Yorker  and how shocked we were?

Cut to election night and the throngs in Grant Park and the tears and the cheering and the not having to wait for three days or three months to find out who was going to be the next president. Even if you weren’t a big fan of Barack Obama (I was a stalwart Hillary Clinton supporter, but voted for Obama in the general), you had to feel relief.

The enthusiasm and yes, hope, of that night is long gone. Now we are sitting right where we were a year ago, two years ago, five years ago, eight years ago—listening to excuses for things that are inexcusable, listening to the Democrats explain yet again why they have no spine (not all of them, but certainly well more than a quorum), listening to a President explain how a troop surge (what else do you call 35,000 more troops to Afghanistan?) will “finish the job,” listening to what we found loathesome under George W. Bush and making excuses for why it is okay under Barack H. Obama.

It’s not okay. It’s so not okay. Anyone who twists their integrity and logic around to excuse these inexcusable crimes—war, torture, recision of the rule of law, indefinite detenti0n—is simply lying:  to themselves, to the country, to the world.

This is not change. This is the status quo we have been listening to for nearly a decade. It’s what we spent years defending against under Bush.

I voted for change. I didn’t expect all the change that was promised. But I did expect some modicum of difference. I did expect that I would be able to discern at least a subtle if not tectonic shift in the political status quo. But instead I have been seeing a Democrat in Republican clothing where a progressive was supposed to have been elected. And almost everything I read in the left-leaning blogosphere keeps saying it’s all the Republicans’ fault.

How? Since they’re not in power, I mean?  

I have come to disbelieve that this President wants change. He keeps saying change is hard. But how would he know? He hasn’t effected any. Listening to this mantra of Obama’s that change is hard just sounds so very…Bush.

I don’t want another president deluded by his own power into believing that he  is the answer. Obama isn’t the answer in Afghanistan. You can ask “how many Afghanis does it take to change a lightbulb?” again and again but the answer will be the same–the Afghanis have to really want to change the lightbulb and move from the darkness of the Middle Ages into the present. 35,000 more American troops will not force that change. Cannot force that change. We need to leave. We need to let these people fail or rise on their own. We can’t give them a pill to end corruption, we can’t change their deep desire to entrust their futures to war lords and corruption and repressive religious theocratic dictatorships. We can’t force democracy. We can’t even force it in our own Congress.

I feel we are back to the shell-game politics of the Bush Administration: look over here! No–look over here! First it was health care reform, then a jobs summit, now Afghanistan. No one is saying these aren’t all pressing issues. They are. Nevertheless, it seems as if there is just an endless stop/start routine between the President and the Democrats in Congress that stymies any and all actual progress.

It’s depressing. It’s not hopeful. And it’s definitely not the change most of us who voted for Obama were expecting. Stasis is not change. Someone as smart as Obama has to know that. And if he doesn’t, someone smart who is close to him should tell him. Before it’s too late and his one-term presidency is sealed.—VAB

Tobin was incensed when Kennedy told reporters that he had been banned from taking communion. He said Kennedy had “started this fight.” Because the Church has no transparency and everything icky–like pedophile priests or barring believers from communion–is a secret.

It’s difficult to imagine how, with all the actual issues the Church should be dealing with—not the least of which would be caring for parishioners who are out of work and losing their homes due to the recession—that Patrick Kennedy’s adherence to the law–because Roe v. Wade  is the law–would be paramount vis a vis his Catholicism.

More than half of Americans support Roe v. Wade. One in four Americans is a Catholic. So there are, by extrapolation, millions of American Catholics who support Roe v. Wade. Is the Church going to begin grilling parishioners at the communion rail and then walk past them with the transubstantiated Host, snubbing them before God?

One of the basic tenets of Catholicism is that each of us considers whether or not she/he is in a state of grace before receiving communion. During the Mass, we say an act of contrition, we state that we are not worthy to receive the Body and Blood of Christ and we ask for God’s mercy to heal our souls. Written into the sacrament of the Eucharist itself is the intention to allow confirmed members of the Church to repent their sins and receive God’s love as evoked through communion.

I can honestly say I have never once thought in the 36 years since the law was passed that my support of Roe v. Wade should keep me from the communion rail. I have, however, agonized over feelings of anger towards others–especially the hierarchy of the Church itself–and wondered if those should keep me from receiving communion.

What do pedophile priests think when they go to take communion? Do they think that perhaps they have, in committing myriad mortal sins, violated their pact with God and thus should refrain from partaking of the sacrament? Or do they just go blithely to the communion rail or worse, consecrate the sacrament themselves?

Tobin, like other politicized members of the Church hierarchy, has drawn a line in the ecclessiastical sand. He has said that the Church has a hand in what the State decides. But there is a separation of Church and State in America and he is violating that most sacred tenet of the Constitution.

When the Church has cleaned house of pedophiles and child-molesters, then perhaps it can take on lawmakers who are upholding the law. But at present, it would seem that the Church has a lot of  internal work to do before it decides who should and should not receive communion. I would like to know Tobin’s feelings about pedophile priests and whether he has personally banned them from receiving communion or if he has forgiven their sins.

Perhaps pedophile priests feel no shame nor sin attaches to their actions and thus feel they can march to the communion rail without self-recrimination. But for those of us in the pews of a Sunday, the thing that has most strained our relationship with our Church is the insinuation of the Church into secular affairs.

Jesus said, let him who is without sin cast the first stone. Tobin must feel he’s above reproach. Yet I doubt that in all of Rhode Island there isn’t one pedophile priest receiving communion or that Patrick Kennedy is the only Catholic in the state who supports Roe v. Wade.  Tobin and other members of the Church hierarchy have a lot of forgiveness to beg from those abused by the Church itself before they start withholding the evocation of God’s love from members of his flock.—VAB