That Newt Gingrich is a passionate man is without question. He’s a more passionate man than Charlie Sheen, and that, that my friends is a whole lotta passion bein’ stirred.

Newt’s been passionate about defending marriage from the awful scourge of people who love one another. So passionate, in fact, he separated with one wife while she was undergoing cancer treatment, to marry his high school sweetheart – who was also his geometry teacher…with whom he’d been having an affair for 6 years. That’s OK though, he divorced the schoolmarm for Wife Number 3 all on the up-and-up. Watch out ladies! Is that a foursome I see hovering in the background? Newt is, after all a passionate guy.

He’s passionate about other things too. For example, he’s passionate about BJs. Of course, he condemned Clinton for this. But, it’s different if you come by your BJ honestly, like Newt does – by innocently walking down the street and being surprised to trip and find his pecker has fallen into a woman’s mouth. Passionate stuff that.

But, he’s saved his biggest passion for his country. This patriot, by his every act, word, and deed, found himself so in love with Lady Liberty that he toiled for long hours grifting donors, lobbying lobbyists, and squeezing in the odd Contract on America that he broke down . He strayed. He divorced wives. Yes, he presumably even got illicit BJs. All for the taste of sweet, sweet liberty.

Ahhh, but the sweet smell of Lady Labia’s Liberty’s essential fluids also delivered him from his decadence and landed him on CBN describing his conversion and salvation through Catholicism – a religion uniquely qualified to cater to the passions of his ilk.

And now, Brother Newt, friend of God, and passionate of unzipped pant, bellows to the rafters, “HALLELUJAH! PRAISE ST. RONNIE OF REAGAN! – THE PATRON SAINT OF TEA PARTIERS WANTS ME TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT!”

“I am but a mere vessel of Reagan conservatism to use as St. Ronnie knows my destiny will surely take me. Oh, and log on to newt.org to contribute. Visa and MasterCard welcome.”

Now let’s hope that those hooligan journalists don’t ask him the most salient question…

If being a Congressman drove you to such passion that you lost your mind and fornicated like a Viagraized Easter Bunny, how will you fare being the much more passionately pressurized President.

Inquiring ex-wives want to know.

Cross posted at The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!

Last week I highlighted Glenn Beck’s call for people to leave churches where the pastor talks about “social justice,” equating those churches to Nazism and Communism. His words, I said, weren’t just a distortion of the phrase “social justice” or the umpteenth example of his omnipresent specious logic but also proof that he understands neither the role of a pastor in a church nor the role churches play in their parishioners’ lives.

One thing I momentarily avoided, however, was a discussion of Christ’s actual teachings. James Martin, S.J. shows no such hesitation in America Magazine and nailed the subject beautifully in yesterday’s post, “Glenn Beck to Jesus: Drop Dead.” The Jesuit Martin focuses on Catholic social teachings through the centuries but broadens his article at the end to include all Christians and even Jesus Christ Himself.  

Glenn Beck is, in essence, saying “Leave the Catholic church.” Or, if you like, the Catholic church is a Nazi church. (Which would have surprised Alfred Delp, Rupert Mayer and Maximilian Kolbe.) Or a Communist one. (Which would have suprised Jerzy Popieluszko and Karol Wojtyla)…

But Glenn Beck is saying something else, which might get lost in the translation: Leave Christianity. Again and again in the Gospels, Jesus points to our responsibility to care for the poor, to work on their behalf, to stand with them. In fact, when asked how his followers would be judged, Jesus doesn’t say that it will be based on where you worship, or how you pray, or how often you go to church, or even what political party you believe in. He says something quite different: It depends on how you treat the poor.

In the Gospel of Matthew (Chapter 25) he tells his surprised disciples, that when you are meeting the poor, you are meeting him… Ignoring the poor, and ignoring what keeps them poor, is, quite simply, unchristian. Indeed, the poor are the church in many ways.  

Something Martin didn’t say but that I have learned as a result of this latest Beck flap is that the term “social justice” was even coined by a Jesuit priest in 1840. So yes, Glenn Beck is calling the Jesuits and anyone who went to their schools a bunch of Nazis. And more than that, since it is the book of Isaiah that tells us to "Cease to do evil, leard to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow," he is also saying that all Jews and Christians are Nazis. Because on Fox News, only Nazis and Commies define "good" as seeking justice for the oppressed.

Politics Daily also picked up on Beck’s quote yesterday. As of this writing, David Sessions’ article has 616 comments and 588 retweets. Maybe this time Beck finally went too far for his own good?

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I took my 8 y/o daughter recently to visit the grave of my grandmother and grandfather.  They're buried in a little cemetery in Batavia, IL called Resurrection.  My daughter said it was too bad that we didn't bring flowers and I agreed.  I'm not much of a cemetery visitor myself, but there is something about flowers.

We agreed to bring flowers next time.

(Cross-posted at The National Gadfly)

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Scott Shields recently asked you readers of MyDD as to why Brian O'Dwyer is angry re the recent Amanda Marcotte/Edwards blogging fiasco.  I googled "Amanda Marcotte", saw the post, read it and decided to join MyDD.  So hi everybody.

I'll be upfront.  I'm not a liberal or a progressive.  I'm a moderate.  I'm not a Democrat.  I'm an independent.  I'm also a Catholic.  Just like Brian O'Dwyer, who, also like me, is of Irish descent.

I believe that a woman has a right to an abortion, although I'm not much for partial birth abortion.  I was once fuzzy on gay marriage, but when it came down to it...I proudly voted against the proposed state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage here in Virginia.  Unfortunately it passed.  I also was horrified by the pedophelia scandals.  And they had nothing to do with homosexuality or liberal bishops as people like Rick Santorum would tell you.  Oh, and I think Bill Donohue is a pompous bigoted blowhard.  You see, I'm able to disagree with the faith that I was raised.  OK?

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Is discrimination against homosexuals acceptable? That, amazingly, is the question currently being debated in British society. The Equality Act of 2006 (.pdf), which comes into force on April 6th, made discrimination "in the provision of goods, facilities and services" illegal. At the time, Prime Minister Tony Blair - an Anglican whose wife is a Catholic - proposed an exemption for Catholic adoption agencies, on the grounds that, in the words of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales,

"Catholic teaching about the foundations of family life, a teaching shared not only by other Christian Churches but also other faiths, means that Catholic adoption agencies would not be able to recruit and consider homosexual couples as potential adoptive parents."

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