Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wants Catholic priests to preach her version of immigration reform. Immigration reform as she sees it, after all, is simply "how we live out the gospel" (small "g" mine).

In the Speaker's world, churches should stand by on moral and political matters until they receive the proper hermeneutical guidance from Washington as to what they can legally preach so as not to jeopardize their tax-exempt status. Apparently, as long as the message (or communication or whatever they call those things, as the Speaker noted) conforms to Washington's preferred ideology, churches will get a pass.

Because, as we all know, the churches exist to serve the interests of government. And if they don't, for example, if they insist on holding firm on such silly issues as, say, abortion, well, Washington can just ignore them. Like the Speaker does her own Church's insistence that she bring her views on this particular topic into line with the teaching of the Church. However, as the Speaker last year noted, she has thoroughly studied the history and theology of the abortion issue from the Church Fathers to the present, and she finds that the Church has nowhere taken a firm stand against abortion. So bug off, Rome.

Now, where were we? Yes, of course: priests and preachers, instead of wasting their breath on empty doctrine and silly spiritual instruction, or risking their liberties on conservative political issues, should just listen to the Speaker and serve up - in proper homiletical garb, of course - the correct views on the really important issues of the day, and she'll let us know what we can preach on next.

It must be fun being Speaker of the Hypocrites. For now.

T. M. Moore