Heavy Load
I have to fight a tendency to despise Catholics like Garry Wills, John Cornwell and pro-abort politicians.
There is no such tendency with respect to Andrew Sullivan. With Wills, Cornwell and politicians there is a degree of distance: writers Wills & Cornwell skew history and politicians politic in order to get elected. But with Sullivan you can see it's personal. We know where he's coming from.
His tendency to want to redefine sin is understandable. I watched the movie "Miracle" over the weekend (about the 1980 US Olympic hockey team's victory) and U.S. coach Herb Brooks kept emphasizing the need to "sacrifice for the unknown". What was unknown was how they would do at the Games. He could guarantee them nothing but asked them to sacrifice all the same. We're all called to sacrifice, i.e. carry our crosses, and some look heavier than others. Sullivan's is no splinter. He would have to go without sex the rest of his life, and that's large, as my stepson would say.
There seems little artifice from him. He wears his heart on his sleeve and if he looks at the world through the prism of his personal cross I can't bear him ill will. The reason "Mothers Against Drunk Driving" is so effective is because the group elicits similar sympathy. It wouldn't behoove us to let MADD make our alcohol laws - they would enact a second Prohibition if they could - but one can look at them with sympathy for the cross they've carried.
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