I would weep more for the likes of Governor Sanford (and Ensign, et al) if I wasn’t weeping for his family and citizens, and all of us whom he has so betrayed. I can find few tears for Judas Iscariot – he chose his paths all the way to his suicide. The Jewish original may have led to my salvation and yours, but it isn’t what he intended. For all Judases, “It’s all about ME”. And, this feeble and heartbreaking attitude holds impulsive influence, even as history teaches that such recourse leads only to one suicide or another.

It would seem that the tempting dangers of power should cause those who take to it to so pre-dress in sackcloth and ashes, even if only symbolically every ‘morning offering’ of their lives.

Among the worst these sinners in political office will suffer is that who should be their loved ones will never fully trust them again. Then again, taking as so many of them do to the powers of their offices, and even as not taking to humility, maybe they are already in infidelity to their loved ones – why not go deeper into sins including apparent infidelity? As one wit put it, ‘a man can cheat on his wife . . .’ (and family) ‘. . . with weekend golf as easily as with another woman’.

And, how many families cheat corporately, what with the TV (‘American Idol’ anyone?) getting the attentions of everybody to the near exclusion of everyone else in the family circle? Temptations abound, since they are part of Satan’s ‘easy way out’ of commitments to have ‘eyes to see’, and responsibilities to have ‘ears to hear’.

And, pathetically, without value or humor, the more I learn of our faith, to make it more and more my faith, the more distant I feel from fellow Catholics, even those in the pews! I can enter my parish Palace for our Christ during the weekly forty-five minutes of scheduled Confession before the Saturday anticipatory Mass to find no one in line; and, then see the congregation nearly en masse going up to Communion! Imagine that – given the opportunity to refresh via His Sacrament of Penance right before accepting His Sacrament of His Eucharist – and, hardly any takers! Is that not likely ‘small first sin’ on the way to greater sins, all bound up in self-absolution and minimizing God’s graces, if not witness to effective and ‘convenient’ agnosticism? Maybe, we need annual homilies on the ‘inconvenience’ of at least Purgatory, not to mention the eternal ‘inconvenience’ of never being with God eternally!

And, may I take one last moment to comment on the noise level of the incoming pew-dwellers, that my own prayers of Penance often must wait until I am home? I keep wanting to shout out, “This is HIS house, not yours!” I hold my tongue – what’s the use? Even my pastor is more likely to find me at fault than them.