Rorate Caeli has the full article that has just been expunged from the Washington DC Archdiocesan website. So here it is:
Time to End the St. Patricks Parade and the Al Smith Dinners?
By: Msgr. Charles Pope
The time for happy-clappy, lighthearted engagement of our culture may be nearing an end. Sometimes it takes a while to understand that what used to work no longer works. Let me get more specific.
Decades ago the “Al Smith Dinner” was a time for Republicans and Democrats to bury the hatchet (even if only temporarily) and come together to raise money for the poor and to emphasize what unites us rather than what divides us. But in the old days the death of 50 million infants was not what divided us. We were divided about lesser things such as how much of the budget should go to defense and how much to social spending. Reasonable men might differ over that. Read more here.
