and upstage in the ministry of Jesus, the Vatican AND the hyper-Protestant megachurches all have a lot to apologize for inasmuch as their material amenities attendant to their station clearly abandon the tenets of Jesus' imperatives to feed the hungry and clothe the naked.

The sex scandal headlines grab everyone's outrage and attention, but the larger issue is whether a given entity -- powerful and wealthy and tax-sheltered in both cases of Catholic and Protestant -- should be the arbiters of moral conduct when there remain hungry people all over the globe.

I acknowledge and praise the charity arms of various denominations' ministries but all we keep hearing about is top-down proclamations and political meddling.

John Kerry threatened by archbishops over his pro-choice ideology. And the nutbag Protestants advancing on the public schools like a pestilence.

The anonymous third-shift Catholic charity nurse who lives in a working class neighborhood in Indianapolis or Omaha or Macon is quite a damn bit closer to the Kingdom than an entire pile of archbishops or any of the smarmy, fat-wallet ego-driven hyper-Protestant fundie televangelists.