“This is something the Christian fellowship really needs to get through its hide. I had a preacher friend of mine who told me recently, ‘Clarence, we have just got to lay low on all these things and let it blow over—and then you can afford to take a stand on it.’ I said, ‘Reverend, do you feel that way about all sin in general? Are you gonna wait ’til sin just blows over, and then you’re gonna to hop up and say, “I’m agin it!”
—Clarence Jordan
When the U.S. killing of the Arab people of the Middle East that began on March 20, AD 2003 is declared officially over by the U.S., the bishops will come out of hiding, bedecked in full canonical regalia, arriving like trained bears on unicycles in the arena of public discourse, bumptiously dispensing tidal waves of moral wisdom regarding the evils of war and proclaiming “war never again.” But until that day in the distant future the order of the day for everyday for every U.S. bishop is “lay low, give implied moral consent to the government’s murder operation by silence and wait until it all blows over.” In the mean-time it is misery galore for the victims of the U.S. Episcopacy’s silence.
-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
