Health care House vote

Looks like we're in for a long evening, but there's a chance that the House will actually pass its version of health care reform. If Stupak's abortion provision passes (and right now it looks like it does), the more liberal House version may could have the backing of the US Catholic Bishops Conference.

But my guess is that all they wanted was to get rid of any abortion provision. When the chips are down, I would be awfully surprised to see the bishops spend political capital on the socioeconomic privations of their nonwhite, less wealthy parishioners.

In today's Catholic Church, political capital is only spent on abortion and homosexuality, the obsessions of wealthy donor factions like Opus Dei and John Paul II's favorite, Marcial Maciel's Legionaries of Christ. The opposition to war and the amelioration of poverty are just window dressing in the sense that the institutional power of the Church, especially in the United States, is rarely if ever brought to bear on politicians for their inaction on nonsexual issues. Sadly, I don't think I'll be proven wrong this time either; the Church of the poor will follow the money.