Over on Touchstone’s blog, senior editor David Mills, an orthodox Catholic, does a splendid job of putting into perspective the absurd comments from the Romanian Catholic archbishop, which I blogged on earlier, and outrageous remarks made by Archbishop Renato Martino of the Vatican yesterday, in which (among other risible statements) he compared President Bush to Pharaoh, one of the archvillains of the Bible.
Writes Mills: “This is what I think the various bishops, archbishops, and cardinals, with all their windy statements about ‘peace,’ are doing to the average Catholic. (And other religious leaders are doing to their people.) They are teaching him to ignore them, even when they speak the word of the Lord.
“By speaking as they have done, they have made it harder for their sons to listen to them with the trust and confidence sons ought to have for their fathers. And so they are partly responsible when the sons do what the fathers tell them not to.”