When spin words collide

Someone named Philip Lawler is given space in the Wall Street Journal today to issue a fatwa on the question of whether Senator John Kerry is entitled to receive communion in a Catholic church. A quick bit of Googling (and there's more below) establishes that Lawler is a Republican hack who sometimes finds the Republicans not extreme enough for his tastes. He also edits something called the Catholic World News, which keeps to the tradition of wacky publications with World in their title, such as the Weekly World News and the WorldNet Daily (incomparably renamed WorldNut Daily by Roger Ailes).

Now Lawler must sidestep several issues here. One is his own complete lack of status to be issuing any judgments on what the Catholic church should do about a particular matter. While keen to lecture the rest of us on the meaning of the Eucharist, there is no mention of the old Augustinian principle that for all practical matters still determines church doctrine: Roma locuta est; causa finita est: Rome has spoken, the case is closed. And in this case, despite his attempt to hype a statement from one Vatican spokesman, Rome has not spoken about this specific issue so Lawler should shut his trap and wait until they do.

And then, to the extent that Rome has expressed reservations about politicians not fully aligned with Church teaching receiving communion, there's the matter of the death penalty. How does Lawler deal with this?

The church's stance on capital punishment is more nuanced

So, the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy discovers the virtues of nuance. But here's a new prayer for Lawler the next time he's at Mass: Lord make me nuanced, but not just yet -- because this is the favoured Rovian spin word to attack John Kerry. He's all nuanced about foreign policy while with Dubya, it's just bombs away. You'd think the Wall Street Journal editorial people would have spotted this, since they lead the VRWC in its usage; go to Google and enter nuance kerry site:www.opinionjournal.com and watch the number of links pile up faster than the price of Google's IPO.