No Irish need apply

Sure and it was a grand day when conservatives finally claimed political correctitude for themselves.

William F. Gavin, writing for National Review Online, opines that McCarthyism is a slur against the Irish.

Don’t leave it with me. See what you make of his argument.

After years of scorning the “culture of victimization” and ridiculing style guides that prohibited paddy wagon and dutch treat and welsh on a bet, a conservative stands up to defend an alcoholic senator who made incoherent and unsubstantiated accusations of subversion, and who was ultimately censured (Do you know what it takes for the United States Senate to censure one of its own?) on the basis of defending his Irish Catholic ethnicity.

A different ethnic tradition might term this chutzpa.

Religion and politics

Yesterday afternoon I sent out this tweet: The Rev. Canon* Mary Douglas Glasspool has received the necessary consents for her consecration as a suffragan bishop. This is significant because her consecration in May will make her only the second openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church and the first lesbian bishop.

Subsequently, @mkecoffee tweeted thus: I think the Episcopal church has long been little more than a thin veneer on top of a secular worldview.

There is something to that. (Thought I was going to spring to the defense of liberal ecclesiology, didn’t you?) If I will concede that there is an argument to be made here, will Mr. Coffee and those who agree with him entertain the possibility that other denominations or congregations are cloaking secular conservative cultural views in the mantle of religion?

Discuss.

*Because she serves as canon to the bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, her formal title is the Rev. Canon. My former newspaper, The Baltimore Sun, continues to refer to her as the Rev. Forgive them, for they know not what they do.