If you're wondering why I've taken such a political bent lately, it's because my bishops have, for as long as the expression has been current in the American idiom, always encouraged me to "speak truth to power."

There are none so powerful as the coalition of the wealthy who now feel they have carte blanche to regulate our lives to an absurd level, using their control over the law and the media not only to treat us like something sub-human in need of custodial care, but to tell us why such treatment is a good thing.

Thus tyrants have always presented themselves.

Now I appreciate that when bishops started telling us to "speak truth to power", they meant it only to Republicans when they are in the White House or serve as the majority in either the Senate or House or Representatives.  I recall a great man of the church intoning the wonderful prayers of the baptismal liturgy one Sunday, especially the verse about respecting "the dignity of every human being", and then stating in the sacristy as we were de-vesting after the service how he would gladly kill then-President Reagan.  To anyone outside of the church, that would seem incongruous.  To those of us who have been serving in the church for a number of decades, this is normal. 

A couple of years ago, all you needed to do to reduce a roomful of clergy to a stuttering rage was to say, "Sarah Palin".  Then all of their sanctimony disintegrated rather quickly.  Again, if this is how lay people wish to manifest the Gospel, that's their business.  Clergy are and should be held to a different standard, as we are the ones charged with illuminating how Gospel values are to work.

Prayers, like words, mean something.  God has given us tremendous freedom to choose love and community over hatred and division.  While I do not expect politicians or media, sequestered in a bubble reinforced by their affluence and race, to be anything other than addicted to controlling the people on the outside of that bubble, while exploiting suspicion and fear as its fuel, as a Christian I feel called upon to address these issues in a way that some may find pungent, but a few may realize as an extension of what God has called us to do.