Monica, we need you now!

As I've no doubt shared with you on this blog before, I have a great admiration for Sister Joan Chittister who writes for the National Catholic Reporter - a progressive publication committed to peace and justice. Today I have come across an article she wrote entitled, "Monica, we need you now". By way of sharing a conversation that took place at a Christmas party, Sr. Chittister discusses the difference between "sins of the flesh" and "sins of the spirit":

One woman put it this way: "Where is Monica Lewinsky when we need her?" Nobody laughed. The comment made the point: There are scandals and then there are scandals.

It's one kind of scandal when a president cannot control a need for sexual satisfaction. What the moral theologians have traditionally called "the sins of the flesh" -- as in "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" -- most often carries an overtone of human weakness, a lack of personal discipline or emotional maturity or psychological control of sexual impulses.

It's another kind of scandal when a president cannot control a need for power. Deceit, spuriousness, pride and calculated dishonesty fall into the category of "sins of the spirit." These are not confined to private or personal sexual behaviors. "Sins of the spirit" have to do with intellectual malice, with the cultivation of behavior and attitudes that attack the very ideals of the human community and pollute a whole way of being alive. This day's scandal yielded no ordinary political conversation. The group wrestled with the problem. Didn't the attack on the World Trade Center demand a more intense kind of intelligence gathering? Didn't the president have the responsibility to do this? Wasn't it imperative that it be done?

Yes, yes, and yes. The answers came easily, it seemed. Then what was the problem? A continuing discomfort hung in the air; something begged to be said yet. People put their eyes down and bit at the inside of their lips.

Then a woman dared the breach: "We may need to do this kind of thing -- but not like this. Not without legal permission, not without the approval of the Congress. Not in the United States of America. We elected a president. Not a king."

But Bush's lust for power knows no bounds. The same is true for the people who surround him. What bothers me is the apparent massive ignorance of the American people. The ordinary person who is happy to trash the Constitution doesn't know what the Constitution actually says or why it is a treasure that we endanger at our peril.