If we get in the wayback machine and head to 2006, we learn that the hottest topic in the land was Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith as he warmed up to his 2008 presidential bid, in which McCain prevailed in the primaries.  (Partner Lowell Brown and I maintained a blog on the topic for years – through the 2012 cycle.)  Romney was absolutely hounded about his faith and story after story appeared about the apparent abnormality of the Latter-Day Saints.  Chief among the charges was that Romney, as president, would somehow be beholden to the church’s hierarchy in Salt Lake City – similar charges to those levelled against Al Smith way, way back when and John F. Kennedy concerning their Roman Catholicism and the Pope in Rome.

Well, here we are with a Roman Catholic president, and he is headed to Rome to meet with the Holy Father as one of the final acts of his presidency.  But the plot thickens…

A couple of weeks before this White House announced its odious death penalty commutations, the Pope quite publicly called upon the president to do so.  Now, given that in his senility Biden’s actions seem dictated by the last person to whisper in his ear – the charge of undue religious influence on government action seems far more plausible than at any previous juncture in history.

So, where is the outcry?

Not even a small fraction of the “ink” has been spilled examining the possibility now compared to Romney or Kennedy, when there is currently far more evidence of the possibility than there ever was for either of those two figures.

In Kennedy’s day there was some genuine religious bigotry going on.  During Romney’s first run, religion played a far bigger direct role in electoral politics than now, and there were some branches of Protestant Christianity that were pushing back on religious grounds.  Their voice was hugely amplified, far beyond its natural volume, by a media that was becoming increasingly partisan and opposed to Romney.

Well, now the media lies in ruins, having been revealed to be so partisan that it participated actively in covering up the president’s obvious limited functionality.  And with this issue, the ruins are bouncing.  Shouldn’t they at least ask a few questions about the role the Pope’s prayers played in the White House decisions?

Do I think Biden ordered the commutations because the Pope told him to?  No, I don’t – I don’t even think Biden ordered the commutations; someone in the White House apparatus did.  This discussion matters because it reveals the media for the biased, inconsistent, highly partisan bunch of yahoos that it is.  But even at that, their greatest crime is that they reduce religion to a political cudgel.  The only force in this nation that actually tries to make better people, and they want to reduce it to just another cog in the mechanism of politics.

Shame. much shame, is due.