Maurin was certainly a man of deep faith but he was no slavish follower either of popes or kings and was a strong foe of theocracy, coming closer to being a Marxist instead, albeit with his faith firmly intact -- best described as an agrarian collectivist. While I do not share his faith, I do appreciate that he was among the few who truly lived its tenets in a very practical, earthy way -- with a keen eye dissecting power no matter what its source, particularly as it hypocritically did not live up to promise and especially when dropping that ball created abuse of privilege at the expense of the weak and powerless.

You're welcome. When I stumbled upon the piece, I could not help but see an analogy to the wet-finger-in-the-wind permanent campaign approach that is substituting for real leadership too much these days. It gave us DADTDP and DOMA in the Clinton era and portends much not to like now.

Precisely -- with the caveat that on rare occasions real progress reveals itself as having taken place. We are a self-delusional bunch when we relapse into Bill Bennett mythology with all its marble pedastaled leaders when, in fact, it is the dynamics of a utopianly fully participatory democracy that our system was designed for and which every failure to attain explains the greater failures in accomplishment of those lofty goals enough that we never really get to see if the design of the system is the problem or not.