"Courageous?" Too funny...

Without weighing in on the merits of the health care bill, I would like to call attention to this absurdly funny bit in David Waters' in the Washington Post, about the four and a half dozen or so religious sisters claiming to represent 59,000 of their.. well, their sisters, in supporting the bill:

[Their letter to Congress said,] "Despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions. It will uphold longstanding conscience protections and it will make historic new investments - $250 million - in support of pregnant women. This is the REAL pro-life stance, and we as Catholics are all for it."

Can 59,000 Catholic sisters be wrong?

Surely they couldn't be more courageous. At a time when American sisters are under investigation by the Vatican, a direct challenge of the public position of the bishops is likely to raise a few eyebrows in the Church hierarchy.

Not sure his point in asking if 59000 can be wrong... of course they can. If it is right, it doesn't matter if it issues from a single voice crying in the wilderness, and if it is wrong, every soul on earth could agree and it wouldn't make it right.

Bu no, what makes me laugh (yes, literally... LOL. Not LMAO, however,) is the notion that there is some "courage' involved in their position --- ooooh, because the bishops won't like it?
(Scary, boys and girls!)

Because the bishops will do what, exactly? He tells us, actually.

Raise their eyebrows!

How very terrifying a prospect!

So how very valiant the sisters must be to risk such a thing!

The old guys in miters surely have no power over the sisters, after all. Right? Because the sisters aren't dependent on the bishops, or the rest of the Church for anything, right?

At least, that's what pretty much the same faction of sisters has been insisting, ever since the visitation was announced, that the Church hierarchy had no right to question them or investigate them? That they get nothing out of representing themselves as faithful Catholic, and derive no benefit from the association?

Because other than the threat of their powerful and terrifying eyebrows, the bishops have no leverage over the sisters, no call or claim on their loyalty or obedience, right?

Or have they?

And have the sisters been less than accurate in insisting that they owe the hierarchy nothing, that the Vatican had no right to investigate them?

(As for Glen Beck, I hope they make the silly man cry. His tears are highly entertaining, if not all that convincing. Is he a Catholic? I didn't know. I also don't know if the jackass who wrote the piece saying anyone can or does "assume Beck left the church long ago" isn't falling into the same error as the holier-than-thou conservatives who would try to tell those with whom they disagree that they aren't real Catholics.)