Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, is blogging. And he’s blogging about Congressman Kennedy:

All we ask is that it be just that — universal — meaning that it includes the helpless baby in the womb, the immigrant, and grandma in a hospice, and that it protects a healthcare provider’s right to follow his/her own conscience.
The Catholic community in the United States hardly needs to be lectured to about just healthcare. We’ve been energetically into it for centuries. And we bishops have been advocating for universal healthcare for a long, long time.
This is what the President says he wants; this is what we bishops say we want.

(Do I read too much into that there? Is he calling out his fellow bishops a wee bit here — and the bureacracy that does their legislative negotations — as well as the president? He may not be an authentic New Yorker, but he wears our realistic skepticism like a comfortable miter — all while leaving open some room for subsidiarity to flourish in the policy arena.)

Dolan then agrees with Rhode Island’s Bishop Tobin: “Mr. Kennedy owes us an apology.”

(For a look at Patrick Kennedy’s National Right to Life Committee vote tally, click here. For the first post in this NRO thread, click here.)