If the Pope wants to keep up his entire European Christian conservative routine, a good start would be excommunicating Clarence Thomas for blessing the death penalty in the face of its cruelty. His understanding of the law might require him to do so, but that does not abrogate his higher moral responsibility.

The sad truth, unfortunately, is that holding your breath waiting for large churches to get noisy about prominent conservatives like they do, and less appropriately, about prominent liberals (it’s not Kerry’s job to rule on the justice of abortion, for instance) is a pretty reliable way to choke to death. But it doesn’t mean we can’t ask why it isn’t happening.

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On the other hand, it’s much more difficult to call Bill Kristol’s surreal take on one of his ostensible religion’s more important holidays sacrilege. After all, it might strike a Conservative, Orthodox, Reform, or For-Jesus Jew as inappropriate, maybe even insane, to associate the Biblical narrative of God’s deliverance from persecution with a military campaign against international terrorism. In fact, were Kristol any of those, that point would be easy to make; but the statement is much more consistent for his personal creed, in which the role of protector and jealous shepherd of the Chosen People - traditionally associated with the all-knowing, all-present one who is called I Am - is actually an official function of the U.S. Secretary of Defense. Other traditions of Neoconservative Judaism you might be unfamiliar with: acting out blood libels out of sheer cussedness and contempt for their coreligionists; insisting the prophet Elijah was actually a time-travelling Barry Goldwater; quietly worshipping Jesus, our Lord who is Christ; greedily devouring bacon cheeseburgers every Saturday, then hectoring Liberal children for being atheist queers on their way home from temple.