Prophecy at the Hilton

I made my way to the capitalist Hilton, a couple of blocks from the White House. The U.S. Catholic bishops were holding their annual meeting, and this afternoon there would be a press conference on their (first-draft) pastoral letter on the U.S. economy—Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee presiding.

It was a familiar sight: five black-suited bishops on the dais; a faithful media flock, numbering perhaps a hundred; a forest of camera-sprouting tripods; cables taped to capitalist carpets; plastic labels and megawatt studio brightness for all combatants; free coffee and press kits; and in a quiet corner of the room, scrutinizing the proceedings, the foxy little figure of the Reverend J. Bryan Hehir, prime mover of last year’s “peace” pastoral, and one of the leading leftists in the bishops’ pastoral-writing bureaucracy.

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Tom Bethell

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I made my way to the capitalist Hilton, a couple of blocks from the White House. The U.S. Catholic bishops were holding their annual meeting, and this afternoon there would be a press conference on their (first-draft) pastoral letter on the U.S. economy—Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee presiding.

It was a familiar sight: five black-suited bishops on the dais; a faithful media flock, numbering perhaps a hundred; a forest of camera-sprouting tripods; cables taped to capitalist carpets; plastic labels and megawatt studio brightness for all combatants; free coffee and press kits; and in a quiet corner of the room, scrutinizing the proceedings, the foxy little figure of the Reverend J. Bryan Hehir, prime mover of last year’s “peace” pastoral, and one of the leading leftists in the bishops’ pastoral-writing bureaucracy.