Well, a trip to the emergency room over the holidays interrupted my train of thought. I’m most grateful to a young cardiologist who treated me at Mercy Hospital in Iowa City. As we agreed that I should have a heart catheterization, he remarked gruffly, “You’ll be OK. You’re a healthy guy.” As it turned out, he was more than right. The catheterization turned up no blockages or other problems with my heart—not that hypertension isn’t a problem

—thanks Dr. Ammar! You’re a mensch.

Meanwhile, the Catholic bishops are seeking again to build sympathy for their continued effort to suppress women’s reproductive choices and impose catholic teaching on all employees of catholic institutions, whether they are catholics or not. Rich Lowry, writing in this week’s Time harangues us all in a piece that features a cartoon effigy of the president as Henry VIII, to view the good bishops as an oppressed religious minority and the president as their oppressor.

But the president may have outfoxed the proud prelates this time by removing the birth control mandate from their shoulders and placing it on the shoulders of insurance companies. The bishops are crying foul, as should be expected from a group of privileged citizens who have long been able to claim benefit of clergy in ways that defy rational analysis. Witness their attempt to blame the sexual abuse of thousands of catholic children on American culture—I wonder how that fits in Ireland and Holland—and their casuistic claim that catholic universities are not religious organizations when the issue is grant money.