Minor Wisdom

Bleeding hearts, unite.

Today’s SojoMail brought this quotation of the week, by Nick Kristof:

Bleeding-heart liberals could accomplish far more if they reached out to build common cause with bleeding-heart conservatives.

Kristof describes some of those bleeding-heart conservatives — evangelicals and Catholics — who are pouring their hearts and souls into fighting AIDS, hunger, and genocide. His conclusion about these conservatives:

We can disagree sharply with their politics, but to mock them underscores our own ignorance and prejudice.

Amazing Grace

So what’s it like inside the Gospel Tent at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival? It’s exactly like this:

Then I must not be a rational person.

Bill Maher, whom I usually like, actually said this:

You can’t be a rational person six days a week … and on one day of the week, go to a building, and think you’re drinking the blood of a two-thousand-year-old space god.

Bad theology there, Bill. Actually the Word is more than 2,000 years old. And though I have a B.A. in theology from a Catholic college, I have no idea what a “space god” is. (Hat tip to God’s Politics.)

Logan

My cousin Katy sent me a link to this video with a Christian message.

Tony Blair joins Catholic church

Former British PM Tony Blair has left the Church of England to become a Roman Catholic. I’m surprised, but apparently those who know him (or who read the Guardian) are not. His public conversion would have been more provocative if it had occurred while he was still PM — I guess he wanted to avoid provocation. (Hat tip to Mirror of Justice.)

Bad timing

Yesterday evening my parish church held a jazz mass. The musicians were terrific. I just hope they weren't offended by these passages in the first reading, from Amos:

Thus says the LORD the God of hosts:
Woe to the complacent in Zion!
...
Improvising to the music of the harp,
like David, they devise their own accompaniment.

Using religion

In a recent op-ed, Paul Waldman makes interesting observations about the presidential candidates’ religious stands — or lack thereof. Here are a few choice quotations:

• Nearly all of the major contenders want to have it both ways on religion: They want credit from religious voters for having a strong faith, but they don't want to talk about what they actually believe.

• Listen to candidates talk about religion  and they seem to be following two rules:

  1) Profess that nothing is more important to you than your religion.

  2) Be as vague as possible about your religion.

• Candidates who tell us how important their faith is to them are hoping that religious Americans will come away with warm feelings about them. But if they aren't willing to discuss just what that faith entails, they're saying they want people to vote for them because of their religion, but they don't want anyone to vote against them because of their religion.

Follow up to last night's thought

Last night, I wrote that love, by its nature, is unconditional. What prompted that entry is this statement by our archbishop:

[I]t is misleading to call God’s love unconditional. God’s love is faithful even when we sin. But there are consequences for sinful behavior!

The archbishop's main point is that we should not shy away from "straightforward moral teaching." I agree. But to this man in the pews, to suggest that God's love has strings attached seems contrary to Scripture. See, e.g., 1 John 4.

The Cardinal's blog

Sean Patrick Cardinal O'Malley, archbishop of Boston, blogs about his trip to Rome, Padre Pio, and other things on his mind. The only thing that could top this would be a blog by the pope.

God's Politics

I'm pleased to add God's Politics to Minor Wisdom's blogroll. It's written by "Jim Wallis and friends." One of his friends, apparently, is Ralph Reed, who is as far right as Jim is far left. This week, Jim and Ralph are writing a point-counterpoint dialogue on how faith affects politics.