CHANNEL SURFING NUNS AND PUNISHING THE POOR

Half of this article is fact. Half is fiction. Hopefully, you'll be able to separate the fact from the fiction.

Three Catholic nuns, Sisters Peter, Paul and Mary were sitting in their convent parlor last night searching for something entertaining to watch on TV. Sister Peter controlled the remote. Because she had taken the name of the first Pope, it was an unwritten convent rule that she went first when it came to choosing the programming. Unfortunately, for the other two nuns, that meant putting up with Sister Peter's endless channel surfing.

Sister Paul is an avid Philadelphia Phillies fan; the convent fanatic if you will, but the Phillies were idle last night. Her second choice - the L.A. Angels were playing at home against the Nationals, but the 10:15 p.m. start on the west coast ruled out that game as a possible option, so she had already resigned herself to the fact that baseball would not be on the evening's menu.

Sister Mary is a Mother Angelica fan. For those of you who, like Sister Peter, are channel surfers, Mother Angelica is that elderly nun whose face momentarily pops onto your TV screen somewhere between channel 25 and channel 35. She's usually saying the rosary, but every now and then she's hawking statues of the Virgin Mary or the newest "must-have" necklace with a cross. Mother Angelica is the Catholic version of the late Billy Mays. She can sell anything!

When Sister Peter's channel surfing approached the Eternal World (ETW) Network, a Catholic television network that hosts Mother Angelica's programming, Sister Mary got kind of excited at the prospect of seeing her favorite nun in action, but those hopes were immediately dashed when the plastered-smile face of Raymond Arroyo lit up the screen. Mr. Arroyo is the ETW network's news director, and he hosts an evening news (I use that term loosely) show called, "The World Over". The show is more like propaganda than news, because Arroyo usually spends the entire show interviewing one person to get their take on world events, but I'm sure the nuns would disagree with my assessment, so let's just agree to disagree over that characterization.

Last night, Arroyo was interviewing a Catholic Republican Congressman on his show when my own channel surfing habit of pressing multiple buttons at once, paused my TV at the ETW channel. Like Sister Paul, I was hoping for baseball, but as I said earlier, it was a slow night. I didn't catch the Congressman's name, but when my TV locked onto The World Over program, Arroyo was in the midst of asking the Republican Congressman about how Republicans would answer critics who say that proposed Republican budget cut would hurt the poor. Because Arroyo seldom addresses Christ's social gospel, choosing instead to spend his time ranting about abortion, birth control and getting Republicans elected, I froze my fingers for a moment thinking that I would be treated to a rare occasion where Arroyo might actually advocate for the poor and take his Republican guest to task. Boy was I wrong!

The Congressman started off his response by stating that during our recent economic downturn, the poor have been hurt just as bad as the middle class had, which was really a sleight-of-hand in my opinion because the Congressman's underlying premise was that the poor were no worse off than the middle class. It doesn't take a degree in rocket science to understand the flaw in that argument, but Arroyo nodded his head, smiled, and said, "You're right", as if that made the statement Gospel truth, and the camera panned back to the Congressman.

The Congressman continued his response by stating that by cutting social programs and cutting taxes on wealthy individuals, the poor would actually be much better off because the wealthy would use their increased wealth to create jobs that would help lift the poor out of poverty. That's the standard Republican Party line, which isn't a new concept or anything like that, but what was [fascinating, disturbing, maddening or outrageous – you choose] was that a guy like Arroyo, a professed devout Catholic, could sit there and agree with the Congressman's views, hook, line and sinker!

I'm not sure what Gospel Arroyo reads, but I can't recall in the ones I've read any occasion where Christ informed his Apostles to stop helping the poor and favoring the rich as a pathway leading to anyplace good. I hope the nuns kept channel surfing. I know I did.