There’s no substitute for local news. Today’s ProJo has a picture of conservative leader Chris Young baring his tonsils and lower abdomen in the cause of hollering loud enough to shut down another health care forum. He says he’s anti-abortion, but he was just as loud and rude to Congressman Langevin at the Town Hall in Warwick. He could avoid future sartorial disasters by coming to accept that he needs to go up a few sizes. Well, maybe his clothes shrunk in the wash. It happens.
Today’s Journal also has profiles of Rhode Island Catholics who were denied Communion.
Jim Davey was raised Catholic in Rhode Island and has attended Mass throughout his 74 years. But 20 of those years stand out as the time he and his wife denied themselves the sacrament of Communion because after having two children, they were using birth control.
There’s a happy ending when Mrs. Davey begs forgiveness in the confessional and is absolved by a priest.
This is the church that wants to shape the secular laws to fit its own moral code. This is the church that enjoys a comfortable relationship with secular politics. There’s a deference to claims of ‘faith’. I once watched Chris Young at a statehouse hearing on marriage equality search through a Bible for several minutes, while scores of people both pro and con waited to testify. Waited standing up for hours.
If Young were some unknown riffling through a sociology text he probably would have been told to get to the point.
Anyway, who will record these magic moments if not our one remaining statewide newspaper? The Journal, long may it wave.
December 1, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Pat Crowley is on a tear to get more people to cancel their subscriptions to the journal. I cancelled mine long ago, but I hope the Journal hangs electronically and perhaps someday buys up all the hard-working little blogs and pays them a decent ha-pence for their mighty toil at the keyboard and in the community. But I’m not holding my breath.
December 1, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Yeah, but if the Journal goes down, who will we steal from?
December 1, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Agreed. We all still need a rag to rag on.
December 2, 2009 at 12:49 am
Funny. I also stopped long ago, but I do go online and read about something someone said was in the paper and it doesn’t always have the photo that it did in the paper. My vote is to roll them into balls and put them in your shoes – them keep them in shape and absorb any smells.
December 2, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Chirs Young a conservative leader? Funny, I thought that was a D next to his name on the ballots.
December 2, 2009 at 9:30 pm
I first met Chris Young outside the East Side Market. He was soliciting signatures for a run for office. I recall the paper being yellow, I thought he was a Republican.
I had just been canvassing for Rhoda Perry, so feeling softhearted, and on the principle that anyone can run, I signed.
Good point, fromheretothere, that Young runs on the Democratic ticket. That was news to me. I’m glad I was prudent. Note that I did not say Young was a member of any party, because I didn’t know what planet he had landed from.
Perhaps he is from beyond the Blue Dog Democrats, somewhere in the ultraviolet range.
December 3, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Young is far from Blue Dog – far to the left on fiscal issues. He is radical on abortion, but as the only stated “platform” of the Blue Dogs is fiscal conservatism, Young is as far from Blue Dog as possible. His “plan” for the nation and RI has been to tax citizens to death and inflate social programs to the max.
December 3, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Good for you for sorting out the signal from the noise. His behavior in public makes it hard to know what he is trying to do.