Specifically, let's talk about Senator Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

It seems to me that, in trying to understand how Obama could have listened to Wright for 20 years, you are asking the wrong question.

The real question is: where else could he have gone?

My guess is that his church is more to him than just a place he goes of a Sunday morning, out of convention and habit. It's the heart and soul of his community - that group of other humans with whom he feels like he belongs.

What you should be asking yourself is this: why would a young, intelligent, well-educated man, from a prosperous, white family, join this church?

Could it be that he wasn't welcome in yours? (Oh, no, you'll protest, he would have been welcome in mine. Bullshit?)

Any catholic church in Chicago would have welcomed him, no questions asked, hands down.

There are Black people in my church. They're southerners of course, I like Black southerners more than I like fucking yankees of any color.

Jack

Smarmalade wrote the following post at 03/20/2008 1:23 PM: Any catholic church in Chicago would have welcomed him, no questions asked, hands down.

I know that to be true. The Catholic church has never discriminated against persons of any color, or social status.

Jack

My father was raised in a Catholic orphanage...taken from his mother cuz she just wasn't christian enough.

He was beaten for speaking Mohawk; beaten for speaking French (canuck french); and was scrubbed with a brush because his skin was brown. That never happened to the little Irish brats living there.

the papacy...but you are absolutely right about this one particular thing. In fact the Catholic church is huge in Africa with many Bishops and I believe soon a cardinal on the way.

I don't drink. I converted the the Catholic Church when I was 17, stayed in it for 20 years before going back to my Baptist roots. There were Blacks and people of other colors and origins in the church when Blacks did not attend Protestant churches in great numbers.

Going back to the 50s, I remember sometimes seeing Black people in Baptist churches. Some individual members may not have liked it but I have never seen anyone turn them away.

Jack

Nuns beat everybody, Cat. Not really, but I just don't believe what you say. I don't believe that happend like you say.

If they beat his ass then he probably needed to have his ass beat.

Jack

I've driven as far north as Regina and saw not a single plastic bag on the side of the road...and it's a long way to Regina.

Beautiful country...The wheat fields were dotted with grain silos and elevators every 20 miles or so...I took lotsa pictures...but they started to look icono-chliché (is that a word?)

Anyhow, nary a bag. If there was any litter, it had to be smaller than a candywrapper.

You're right. Catholics and dems go together like peas and carrots.

Although I'll never understand why. But that is for a different post.

Isonomist:

Please tell us how Canada is devoid of racism, anti-semitism, and litter.

It isn't. My own hometown would have been an awful lot like Alabama, if you were an Indian.