"... the thing which I greatly feared is come" (Job 3:25)

Dearly Sinners: I realize it’s only been just over twenty four hours, but as the Communion’s most Doctrinally Orthodox Christian I must force myself to put aside personal feelings of grief, and minister to a world torn asunder by the passing of Obama’s health care bill.

Indeed, sinful as you are, I know you too are all crushed with shame at knowing the United States is no longer the world’s only industrialized nation not guaranteeing health care as a right of citizenship. Like me, I know you are grieving at the thought that America’s splendid decline in female life expectancy (down to twentieth place from #1 in 1945 and #13 in 1960) is unlikely to continue, and are wondering how much longer the U.S. will be able to proudly boast a childhood mortality rate equal to that of Macao, with even more children per 1,000 live births dying before the age of five than Croatia.

Or what about old people? As anyone who’s ever travelled to Britain, Canada, Australia, or anywhere in western Europe will tell you: in these countries there simply aren’t any old people, because they’ve all been subjected to forcible euthanasia by socialist medical schemes. And those not killed aren’t, like our own indigent poor, permitted to subsist on expired cans of cat food until honest, god-fearing, and entirely treatable illnesses take their lives in the absence of professional care, but are able to prolong their unproductive existences – even to the shocking point of enjoying good health - by receiving treatment they obviously don’t deserve.

And don’t get me started on abortion. Like little Matt Kennedy, I too have taken Pharisaic pride in pretending to have no idea whether or not my insurance fund underwrites terminations for those able to afford cover (they do: if not directly then through one of their subsidiaries, but like most Conservatives I don’t ever let commercial realities prevent me from taking the sanctimonious high ground), but now I’ll no longer be able to feign moral superiority. More so, what will the future hold for babies who, like Sarah Palin’s son Trig, are diagnosed with conditions such as Down’s Syndrome, but whose mothers haven’t been able to wrangle a fortune out of the people of Alaska and the GOP? I’ll tell you – instead of dying in their early twenties from a lifetime of substandard health management they’ll now have the opportunity to reach their full potential; to lead rich productive lives in which they may even force Conservatives like myself out of the nasty preconception that the only reason their non-Christian parents didn’t abort was because they couldn’t afford to.

Nor, I greatly fear, will there in the future be the same number of young women who, in an attempt to afford treatment for themselves or their loved ones, resort to employment in pornography and prostitution. The resulting decrease in sweet pretty things desperate enough to jeopardize their health, sanity, and future in order to obtain that which would be their’s by right in any other civilized nation can only mean the cost of such services increases. And then how will the Ould twins be able to afford their research materials? (Although I dare say that in Peter’s case a shortage of women won’t be too calamitous.)

No, My Sinners, this is a terrible time in the history of the United States, and I fear things are only going to get worse. Who knows where this President is hell-bent on going? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we soon see such fine institutions as Enron and Lehman Brothers run into financial difficulties, or the Detroit motor industry in need of a bailout. Why, the world may even find America embroiled in an endless conflict on the other side of the world, one in which, unlike Vietnam, it proves impossible to win the hearts and minds of the people and bring unity to a previously divided nation.

I’m Father Christian and I teach the Bible.