UNHITCHED Christopher

"Didn't hear Donahue say that ["You want to take it outside, Christopher, that's fine...."] and wouldn't have made anything of it if I had: his assumed Irishness and his bid for the Gerry Adams vote isn't going to help him or his rapist-sheltering Church. Also, both of us are Americans and this is no time for tribalism. He did once write to me to say that my essay on abortion in Vanity Fair was the best thing he'd read on the subject, so he knows how to be generous and doesn't realize that it's his religion that prevents him from being a better person. He also forgets the biblical reminder that Christians must expect to be mocked and derided for their implausible beliefs and even be glad of the abuse: an injunction which makes nonsense of a special-pleading and self-pitying outfit like his own. That said, a measure of Guinness or a shot of whiskey wouldn't be refused on my side.

"I do sometimes ask myself if the Church actually licenses him as a spokesman. I presume they could tell him to desist if they wanted to and that (as Dorothy Day once admitted about The Catholic Worker) he'd have to pipe down in such a case. So—are we allowed to assume that he speaks for the The Faith? It seems to make my job too easy if so.

"You are welcome to use all of this or none of it but not—I stress not—to use an excerpt."

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