God Bless General Franco. At least that's what American Catholic school children were instructed to say back in the 1930s, according to my mother. So I don't find the pastoral letters concerning the Eucharist and Catholic officials and voters who support abortion rights all that credible. At first I was sad. Then I was outraged. Now I'm thinking - the only way they win on this one is if I continue to care about what a few priests have to say and join them in viewing the altar as a political battlefield.

The church's track record on morality and politics stinks, at best. If you want to know the real legacy of Franco, here's a good source. Followed of course by the Church's evil silence during the Holocaust or its decades of evil that allowed pedophiles, not only to remain free, but to inflict more betrayals on parish after unsuspecting parish. And that's just this century! A Time for Honesty is the pastoral letter by Newark Bishop John J. Meyers that the visiting priest at my church talked about a few weeks ago. A time for honesty -- I couldn't agree more.

If you haven't been following this particular issue, all of the pros and cons are covered online, from local papers to magazines like Time and Newsweek.

There are two questions I have not seen raised yet. One, no one is denying that this has been a position of the Catholic Church for years. So why go hard-ass now? Why take the moral high ground while still reeling from the pedophile scandal? It's time for honesty NOW? This has got Opus Dei written all over it and it seems like a chosen few were selected to deliver the message. But I'll need more proof of their involvement before I can take that any further.

And the second question, and the one that I really want an answer to, is at what point does the political exhortations from pulpits in god knows how many churches across this country lead to an investigation of the Roman Catholic Church's non-exempt tax status? While the bishops are clever enough not to name names (they must have learned SOMETHING through the pedophile years) and even go so far as to state they are not telling anyone who to vote for, there is no mistaking the message: your President, your Senators and your Representative - hell, your local school board member - must be anti-choice. So they are telling people who to vote for. If that isn't a political position, I don't know what is. So why no action? I can't wait for the bishop's meeting in October. That should be quite a show.