Pols pray just to make it today

Opinion

January 11, 2013

Pols pray just to make it today

By Kathryn Jean Lopez/Syndicated columnist The Picayune Item Picayune Item Fri Jan 11, 2013, 08:00 AM CST

WASHINGTON, D.C. — There was a young man — 23 at most — quietly saying his morning prayers on Capitol Hill on the third day of 2013, and it seemed for a moment like a warm ray of light in the midst of a blistering cold spell.

He walked into a church here just behind me for a bipartisan, ecumenical prayer service that marked the beginning of the first day of the 113th Congress. The last days of the 112th were a bit, how does one put it, hellish. In contrast, the church meeting was quite beautiful. Prayer leaders were not just the priests who welcomed all to the Catholic parish just a jaunt away from the Capitol building, but several protestants; House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who is Jewish; and Rep. Keith Ellison, who is Muslim.

Before and after the service, speculation abounded about whether or not Rep. Boehner would even end the day as speaker. He did. But that doesn’t mean peace came to the Hill, or even the majority caucus. During the drama of the previous days, a “fiscal cliff” was averted — or a can was kicked down the road. I’m not sure most Americans know or care beyond being depressed about it all — about the job they don’t have or a sense of rot around them. A generation that went to outer space has kids and grandkids who may not leave their parents’ basements anytime soon. They’re not getting married, and even if they do, there are ridiculous expectations about gender roles. And the old standby that could help us figure out our own lives, we are pushing to the sidelines: religion.

When he took the gavel of speaker two years ago, Boehner talked about Ash Wednesday, his Catholic faith and government’s duty to the people.

This second time around, he sounded more humble, graver and more cognizant of missed opportunities. He sounded an urgent alarm and even made a fundamental question about purpose: “When the day is over, and the verdict is read, may it be said that we well and faithfully did our duty to ensure freedom will endure and prevail. So help us God.”

But he also said this: “There is no substitute for the wisdom of the people. We are their servants.” As much of a sport as complaining about Washington has become, the situation there is not all the making of the politicians. Washington is a reflection of other things: It’s a mirror of the national soul. Legislators are, after all, representatives.

Grace is amazing, as the song says. And perhaps despite ourselves and our bad decisions or indifference or political despair, there are rising men and women of principle. The Green family that runs the Hobby Lobby arts and crafts chain is among them. They run their business in a way that’s conducive to the family and faith of their employees. They are refusing to comply with the government’s mandate that employers pay for insurance that includes abortion access and contraception because they are evangelicals opposed to abortion. As such, they are currently in defiance of the law.

I didn’t interrupt that kid praying to ask him, but I hope his prayer was that public servants take inspiration from the likes of the Greens, instead of viewing them as backward anomalies whose view of religious liberty has been consigned to the ash heap.

All too often, we give lip service to our faiths without thinking about what it takes to live up to them. The prayer service on a frigid, busy day in Washington, and the kid praying in front of it, gives me hope of a different outlook. “So help us God,” as the speaker began the 113th Congress.

(Kathryn Lopez can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com)

Text Only

Opinion

Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist

I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.”

March 29, 2013
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist

Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.

March 29, 2013
VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist

While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008.

March 27, 2013
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists

When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”

March 27, 2013
Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing.

March 23, 2013
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered.

March 23, 2013
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun

The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral.

March 22, 2013
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist

No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.

March 22, 2013
Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist

While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.

March 20, 2013
Multiculturalism is not rational
By Thomas Sowell/Syndicated columnist

Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism.
Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley.

March 20, 2013
More Opinion Headlines

Opinion

Search Results

Pols pray just to make it today

Site Map

Contact Us