AMY WELBORN TALKS SENSE. (IN OTHER NEWS, WATER WET.) Excerpts from her post about Kerry and the Eucharist:

Teachable moments continue to pile up.

The first teachable moment is already aging–what is the Eucharist, what does it mean, what do we “say” when we approach Jesus in Eucharist?

No one seems to understand this. At all.

The second teachable moment regards the varying aspects of Catholic teaching. The problem with this is that without nuance, any effort immediately gets boiled down to a checklist. “How far can you go?” becomes the theme. It also becomes an essentially pointless exercise when the discussion turns its back on Point 1 up there. Ignore the core of faith–which is the life and commitment of a disciple of Jesus–and all you’ve got to fall back on are tests of institutional loyalty, as conceived in 21st century soundbytes.

The third teachable moment regards this whole Santorum business, which is not going to go away. In my mind, Rick Santorum really needs to speak to this himself, and fairly quickly.

And as I’ve said before, I think the whole thing could be well on its way to being fixed if we could get over the illusion that We Are All Good Catholics Now, and all of that implies.

Are we pharisees or publicans?–that is the question.

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