Sean Michael Winters offers a smart response (you can ignore the kind words about me) to my post about the Tiller murder, Bishop Finn, and the moral consequences of inflammatory rhetoric. Winters’ suggestion is that the rhetoric of war used by Finn amounts to a confession of impotence.

I fear that the reason for the warfare language, and for the Holocaust
comparisons, is not that it gets people worked up. My guess is that the
attendees at a Gospel of Life Convention were already worked up….No,
I suspect the warfare language stems, in part, from a different desire,
a desire to be listened to and obeyed. A general is obeyed, no
questions asked. Some of our bishops, alas, know that their own flocks
are no longer listening to them and instead of analyzing why, they lash
out and use inappropriate metaphors that cast themselves in the role of
a man to be listened to and obeyed.

Unlike his Kansas sidekicks (Archbishop Naumann & co.), Finn has not yet managed to issue a statement on the Tiller murder. On the bully pulpit front, he seems too busy with Missouri’s recent revival of executions. Yesterday, for example, he issued a clemency plea on behalf of Reginald Clemons, who is scheduled to be executed by the state of Missouri on June 17. But what about the fact that his “We are at war” speech was delivered just 10 miles from Scott Roeder’s house, 6 weeks ago?

Request: I’d be interested in hearing from the regular reader in Lenexa, KS about local reaction to Roeder’s arrest.