A Cry in the Dark!

ACS of Upper Canada Catholic has the story:

Warren Kinsella is an enigma: a Catholic, family man who happens to be a Liberal Party insider and occasional political assassin. Unlike most other conservatives, though, I happen to have a soft spot for him, especially when he writes about his kids or his Dad. Yesterday he penned a rather interesting missive on hypocrisy and politics that unfortunately is way off the mark (you’ll need to scroll to April 23; Kinsella eschews permalinks):

In politics, with which I am sometimes familiar, the dynamic is always the same. […] You wing it. You spin. You masticate and prevaricate. You hope and pray that your "projections" - fiscal, social, governmental, what-have-you-al - are right. It's not lying, per se. It's telling the truth that you hope is true, but that may not be. That's the little patch of real estate where politicians always get in trouble, of course. […] It's not dishonesty, per se. It's pretending. It's everyone being a hypocrite.

Sitting in church, I am reminded of that political trusim every once in a while. Look! There's the scary-angry parent who literally punched a wall at the community centre, in front of a bunch of little kids, when their misbehaving kid was asked to leave. There's the one who tells other parents not to let their kids play with the kids whose mother they hate. There's the guy who uses big words to hide the fact that he is a sexist bully, and that he never actually completed a university degree. There's one who terminated a pregnancy because she wanted a different gender than the one she was getting. There's one (or two) with a shady past, and who isn't permitted to set foot in the United States as a consequence, but who formulates elaborate stories to cover it all up. There's the ones who monkey around on the side, then march to a pew with unsuspecting spouse and children every Sunday morning. It's the same in your place of worship, I'll bet. Same everywhere. What's my point?

My point is that the rhetoric about the separation of church and state is overblown. Precisely the same kinds of people fill the church pews and the leather-lined legislature seats, with the only difference being that the latter get more ink than the former. But both exhibit symptoms of the same virus, which is rank, stomach-churning hypocrisy.

What? Don't worry. I'll be better when the sun returns, and hope with it.

Kinsella makes a valid observation, but it does not paint the full picture. Sinners, like those he describes, belong in church. They become hypocrites only when they refuse to acknowledge their own sins and failings, or succumb to pride by spending their time numbering the sins of others instead of taking a good, hard look in the mirror.

Kinsella sounds like a man that's scandalized by evil. He attributes church-going to public relations, rather than the flawed participation in communion to which we're all invited.

He may be right that many of these flawed people persist in their sins. Such is the nature of addiction to evil that it's not easy to let go. In fact, it's impossible without the Grace of God.

May Mr. Kinsella come to the understanding that God's Mercy trumps our "hypocrisy"--or evil of anykind--every time!