First, a necessary prefatory remark:  I have 18 years of Catholic education, my working-class parents had 12 years of Catholic education, and my son attended parochial schools before going to a public university.

Now I can proceed to criticize the Catholic establishment without being accused of being anti-Catholic.

Let’s start with Georgetown University and the controversy regarding law student Sandra Fluke and her silly, vacuous, socialist demand for free contraceptives.  A personal anecdote is very germane to the issue.

When our son was in high school and trying to decide on what university he would attend, my wife and I accompanied him on a family trip to the East Coast to visit two universities, one of which was Georgetown.  The Georgetown orientation for prospective students and their parents was memorable--and nauseating.

The presenters and the other parents and students in attendance reeked of East Coast preppy pretentiousness and left-liberalism.  Not only did they wear J. Crew apparel and drive Land Rovers, they sat in the audience with that special look that wealthy left-liberals wear with pride--a look of smugness, sanctimony and staged sensitivity.   They beamed and nodded in agreement as the presenters from Georgetown’s admissions department droned on about diversity, social justice and other causes du jour instead of curriculum and academics.  As my eyes rolled around in their sockets, and as I sighed, groaned and mumbled my displeasure, my wife poked me in the ribs with her elbow and said, “If you say anything out loud, I’ll rip off your lips.” 

Later, a Georgetown student ambassador took the group on a tour of the campus.  She was completely clueless about the possibility that someone in the group might be of a different political persuasion.  She proudly pointed out the townhouse across the street where catsup baron John Kerry had lived, she drooled with effusiveness as she recited the names of Democrats who graduated from Georgetown and risen to the top of government, such as Madeline Albright, and of course she repeated the party line about diversity and social justice.

Halfway through the tour, our son turned to us and said, “Let’s get out of here.  This isn’t for me.”  I was one proud pappy.

Moral of the story:  Georgetown deserved what it got in Ms. Fluke.

We later attended an almost identical orientation at another Jesuit university, Santa Clara, which is on the left coast.  We observed the same pretentiousness, smugness, sanctimony, staged sensitivity, and obsession with diversity and social justice.  Accordingly, our son came to the same smart conclusion that he had reached at Georgetown.  He now attends a public university that, in spite of the standard leftward tilt of public universities, has more diversity, especially the socioeconomic and political varieties of diversity, than the two Jesuit schools.

Also getting what they deserve are Catholic hospitals, many of which love to accept Medicare and Medicaid money and are supporters of nationalized medical care/insurance.  Instead of lobbying for enabling legislation to make it easier for them to fulfill their Biblical mission of helping the poor and healing the sick through charitable giving, they transferred the mission to the government and are now bristling that the government is telling them what to do.  Shortsighted, they could not see how the problem of the uninsured could have been solved if churches, charities, fraternal organizations and other voluntary associations had the regulatory means to offer group medical plans to their members.

Catholic Charities has an even worse pact with the devil.  According to some estimates, it gets over half of its funding from the government.  As a result, it has made a hard left turn, as I know from having read insider correspondence that a mole within the organization used to provide to me.  It was like reading correspondence from the Communist Party.

To repent for its sins, the Catholic establishment should go to confession and then say three rosaries as a penance.  

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Mencken’s Ghost is the nom de plume of an Arizona writer who can be reached at ccan2@aol.com or ghost@menckensghost.com.