Crosses to Bear, Ballots to bless....

Yesterday, it was reported in the Boston Globe that Archbishop O'Malley called our culture "a hostile alien environment" for American Catholics.
Yowza!
No beating around the bush with this boy-o is there?
There is a sturdy myth among liberals, first enunciated by Sinclair Lewis that the Catholic Church is a less puritanical institution than is generally suspected.
Similarly among educated Catholics there is persistent and irrational belief that priest who come out of the individual orders are a little more reasonable and rational than the usual diocesan hangers-on.
O'Malley for example is a Franciscan Friar who did not come up through the ranks of the Boston dioceses...but thanks to this recent hyperbolic effusion he has blown to hell that ridiculous myth of sectarian reasonability.
I don't even know why I subscribed to this legendary notion, the worst, most dogmatic ideologue at the teensy Catholic college I attended was my ethics professor, a full time Franciscan Friar.
So seems that the Archbishop in addition to shoring up his fast shrinking dioceses has decided to become a Catholic cultural warrior a'la Pat Buchanan.
Hence the crazed cult-like hyperbole and hysterics.
It would seem then that Archbishop O'Malley is playing to GOP oriented catholic cultural conservatives who want to impose their secular rightical chic agenda on the R.C.C.
That is what it comes down to in my humble opinion.
It is not revealed religion penetrating politics, it is a debased strain of modern politics that is manipulating religious institutions.
So what remains is, a mind numbing debate from within and without the church as to whether or not the Archbishop will refuse John Kerry communion on the grounds of his apostasy regarding abortion etc.
If this happens, then count on it like his corrupt and egomaniacal predecessor Bernard Cardinal Law, O'Malley will have lined himself up good and early with the wowser wing of the GOP.
So the question comes down to this, shall the Boston dioceses police the conscience of liberal catholics on behalf of the GOP's entirely secular agenda?
Are we, practicing Catholics and non practicing alike, subordinated to the holy see or the RNC?
Has the RNC somehow joined the congregation for the propagation of the faith?
It must have or else why would O'Malley be taking what amounts to orders from Ed Gillespie?
On the other hand, I don't see Archbishop O'Malley cabling the ranking Roman Catholic prelate in Toronto asking him to refuse communion to former governor Cellucci on grounds that his pro-death penalty stance placed him outside the catholic community.
And you damn well won't see O'Malley doing anything like that either.
Cause' Pope Ed wouldn't like it.