the rix mix

March 1 is Emergency Start of Spring Day. Every few years Jersey has a winter so cold, so snowy, so dreary, so long, that's it's necessary to call an arbitrary end to it at the earliest possible time that can't be considered irrational. Which is March 1. Winter can linger the entire month, but all the while its grip is slipping, like a morning after while you're sipping a Bloody Mary. Crocuses pop as soon as they can. Blooming Dogwoods are marching northward. Tulips bulbs breathe. Sparrows sound cheerier & chirp earlier. Robins dash across greening lawns. The Sun will not be stopped. We didn't have a terrible winter. But if you need it, say this is the beginning of spring anyway.

Extraordinary Statement of Principles signed by Fifty-Five Catholic Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Extraordinary because this nation has gone so out of whack that Catholic legislators find it necessary to remind us that their "Living Catholic tradition ... promotes the common good, expresses a consistent moral framework for life and highlights the need to provide a collective safety net to those individuals in society who are most in need." No one in Jersey needed to be reminded of this in the later Sixties, when the smiling face of John XXIII was displayed in many a Catholic home (often next to a photo of John F. Kennedy) & Catholics were on the frontlines of every worthwhile fight. They were "committed to making real the basic principles that are at the heart of Catholic social teaching." They sold me, a protestant kid from a Republican family, on most of those principles. So if we have come to a time & place where those principles must be loudly & proudly reaffirmed by the laity in Congress - & we surely have - I'm here to approve & applaud.

So the protestant right wing extremist mullahs at the Family Research Council trot out Tom McClusky, their resident Roman Catholic mouthpiece/collaborator, to express an opinion too stupid to repeat even in my blog. Not only would Cattolico superiore Dorothy Day be appalled by McClusky's words, I suspect Cardinal John O'Connor & Pope John Paul II might not be pleased either.