A Catholic Wife and Mother Explains Why She Skipped Mass Last Sunday: Anybody Listening?

A Catholic wife and mother writing anonymously explains why she and her husband skipped Mass last Sunday:

As she notes, her son is preparing for first communion and her husband asked her not to attach her name to her statement because their son might come to grief as a result of their speaking out.  As she also notes, while the bible uses words like "love," "poor," "rich," "forgive," and "sick" repeatedly, it never once--not a single time!--speaks of "contraception." But every four years now, in a sickening display of political partisanship, the U.S. Catholic bishops crank up their amplifiers and blare incessantly about pelvic issues.

While they're almost completely silent about war.  Or about the serial adultery and serial marriages of some Catholic candidates who profess to be saviors of family values.

And so this Catholic couple boycotted Mass last Sunday, because they did not want to hear the partisan rant du jour this election cycle.  The writer concludes, 

Knowing that a bishop’s letter about contraception was likely going to accompany mass today, my family and I decided to abstain. What would we do instead? Perhaps we could spend the day reading the Beatitudes, which illustrate and exemplify the core tenets of our faith, and celebrate the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, and the peacemakers. Or, we could reflect on lessons about morality from the Obama Administration’s determination to provide access to health care for everyone in need. Or, we could spend the rest of the day looking up biblical words relevant to those in need of health care coverage, such a needy (51 times), healed (69 times), and death (469 times). 

Any of these options would provide lessons more valuable than the one being taught by a Catholic institution bent on winning the next election.

I suspect these aren't the only Catholic families making a similar decision right now.  I'm also inclined to think some of those families may simply give up on the church, as the mean-spirited partisan politics plays out one more time--this season, with the absolutely stomach-churning collaboration of co-belligerent "liberal" Catholics who appear utterly impervious to any appeals to stop politicizing the Catholic faith and stop driving away fellow Catholics who are, in many cases, the direct object of the bishops' war-mongering.

Anybody listening out there?