"What Does It Mean, Really, to Be a Catholic?"

Reading Bishop Thomas Tobin's letter to Rep. Patrick Kennedy, I couldn't help but call to mind this comment posted a few years ago by Dale Price on Amy Welborn's old blog in regard to a column by another member of the American episcopate:

Holy Deus Lo Volt, Batman!

Usually I need coffee reading a bishop's column. This is like eating the beans straight from the bag.

To see a bishop publicly rebuke a Catholic elected official in his diocese who blathers that it's no big deal that he disagrees with the Church about abortion is, to say the least, a breath of fresh air. All the more so now that one of his congressional colleagues has floated the idea that the Catholic Church should be stripped of its tax-exempt status.

Here's hoping there will be more shepherds like Bishop Tobin who will lovingly yet firmly tell the pro-choice elected officials in their dioceses that they need to go to Canossa.