…is spending time talking about labels, coaltions and ideologies, as Fr. McBrien does here, fretting about where the "center" in Catholicism has moved to. As he has been for the last three weeks in his columns.

Buy a ticket on the clue train, which is called:

THE WHO CARES EXPRESS

There’s a hurricane striking Mexico, about, we can imagine, to bring great harm to a lot of already very poor people. There are other – hey, I hear a lot – of very poor people, many in war-ravaged countries around the globe. There are countless abused, emotionally shattered children and young people in this country and countless elderly, struggling with little or no support at the end of their lives. There are girls and women wondering what to do about the new lives inside of them and inching toward horrible decisions. There are people – so, so many – who want peace, want joy, but can’t find it, can’t hear it, can’t find a soul to tell them any Good News.

Oh, and some of us are trying to shake of the echoes of bombs in our sleep, and others whose ears are still ringing and whose sidewalks are still bloody, and who watch and wait for the next one, the one they pray will not come, but with fainter and fainter hope.

Why would anyone who is serious about the Christian faith, who loves God above all, is committed to serve Him and takes the Gospel as a matter of life and death and who has a national pulpit and voice waste one column inch, much less three columns blathering on about where the ideological "center" in Catholicism is now?  Isn’t there a charity, a cause, a spot or three on the earth where Catholics are sacrificing and serving to do great good, to love passionately as Jesus did, that you’d like to talk about, that you’d like to share, that you’d like to arouse support for or use to inspire?

Go out to all nations…and cluck like hens over your spot on the ideological spectrum.

Or you could shake it off, be abashed at your silliness, listen to Christ, and do something real. It’s never too late, you know.