Catholics have to submit to authority. Then they have to do humbling things such as going to a priest and confessing how they've messed up all over the place. They have to find their place and make their way in a rigid hierarchy and confess exact dogmas. And, oh, the guilt! Catholic self-examination of conscience is unceasing. Catholicism is a very humbling prospect.

Protestantism, these days at least, is so very different. An above poster noted that Protestantism often seems like a self-help project. It's very accomodating, and all about you. Compared to Catholicism, Protestantism is hardly dogmatic at all. What is the difference between a Presbyterian and a Methodist these days, really? Protestantism bends around the individual. You're a minister and you want get married? Well, why not? Want to use birth control? Go ahead. Put out communion for anybody who happens by? Why not? That's very inclusive of you!

Catholicism does not bend in these way. It expects you to bend to it. who are you, anyway? It calls you to be a part of something bigger, grander than yourself. Conform your life towards God and goodness, not the other way around. 

I'm a relative newcomer to Ricochet, and I've really enjoyed it. I've always valued great message boards, starting back in the pre-Interet BBS days. A good forum is hard to find! Ricochet is one of them, though. I really hope things work out. I've asked my friends to give this place a look and to please do as I have done and join. Who knows if that will work, they rarely listen to me! But hopefully some will. Best of luck!

Oral contraceptives are not a trivial thing to be taking. Asking doctors to explain what occurs to women curious about the pill, the morning after pill, etc., is not unreasonable. Furthermore, all oral contraceptives for women are to some degree abortifacients, even the pill. Many pro-life women take the pill not knowing this, so bad is education on this point. There's no way practicing Catholics can support Jindal here, obviously. It is saddening that this suggestion is coming from the governor of Louisiana, what that says about the once proud Catholic legacy of that state. Ironically, Jindal says it's time "to stop government from dividing people or insulting deeply held religious beliefs" on his way to doing exactly that.

Costas said, "Those who need tragedies to continually recalibrate their sense of proportion about sports would seem to have little hope of truly achieving perspective." But exploiting sports' human interest stories is Costas' own bread an butter. What is he doing in this segment, but what he always does these days? He's enveighing down as a moral force, using sporting events to shape opinion and to promote his views. Those views would be his refined, gauged, politically correct views calculated to evoke the highest targeted lauds. Once, years ago, Costas was a remarkable sportscaster. You'd be hard pressed to find a better baseball color man, a guy who knew the game, one familiar with the vast arcana of baseball lore, and one also genuinely and infectuously excited about all things going down on the field. That Bob Costas is long dead. Now he's an absurd schoolmarm, with a stuttering strange screen mannerism and weird makeup. And he's got nothing to add intellectually or morally. All he's got is strained theatrics. So, we have a tragedy among the Kansas City Chiefs? What do we do, but wheel out Bob Costas to exploit it to the hilt.

but Obama scotched it. Curiously, we also have one of the world's largest undeveloped uranium finds. These things languish in regulatory limbo. Meanwhile our coal mines are under assault and the future looks grim. Our betters in northern Virginia would not have any of this any other way. One bright spot is our wineries, which our betters do permit and even patronize. But all we have are niche vineyards good for a weekend outing from our Washington betters; they will never be globally or even nationally competitive anytime soon. Our betters also enjoy coming out for rounds of golf. Our golf courses are thriving. We do have a governor who's been highly touted for his conservativism, but sadly this conservativism has really not been in evidence since he took office. He is instead intrested in more education spending and ducking anything controversial. In our US Senate race, George Allen is an actual conservative, but he's having a tough slog against Tim Kaine, thanks again to northern Virginia. If the entire state excluding northern Virginia (which extends now to Fredricksburg) and Charlottesville does not go hard against northern Virginia in the ballot box, we'll continue to lose.

Thanks, Paul, for the great post. I'll oblige your request with a sitrep for my state, Virginia. Like Michigan, Virginia's a different state than it was in 2000, thanks to the relentlessly expanding federal government. Northern Virginia is the bustling land of federal workers, federal contractors, and those who serve them. They've grown to dominate the state politically and economically. This is not a good thing economically, since these people in the aggregate do not produce wealth but rather consume it. It is also unhealthy politically, because they are rather monolithic in their penchant to support continued expansion of governmental power and programs. Meanwhile private industry, agriculture and mining in the state have undergone a percipitous decline during this same period. Some formerly robust industries such as furniture, textile and chemical manufacture have essentially disappeared. Meanwhile Virginia's small farmers who used to thrive by producing the finest tobaccos, have gone from formerly plentiful to rare and struggling. All of this seems to please the folks in northern Virginia. We do have an effort to allow oil drilling off our coast, as Romney mentioned in the debate

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