St. Thurgood? Not Good.

If further evidence that Episcopalians are demented is needed: Episcopalians in the Diocese of Washington, D.C., are asking the Episcopal General Convention, which takes place this summer, to declare the late Justice Thurgood Marshall a saint and include his name in the calendar of lesser feasts and fasts. As Diogenese pointed out, Marshall was part of the Supreme Court majority that legalized abortion with Roe v. Wade in 1973. Please St. Thurgood, don't pray for me.

Marshall was a lovely man, I'm sure. But his selection shows where modern Episcopalians see the moral center: government and the courts, not the church. In fact, the testimonials in Marshall's favor acknowledge: "Courts, not candles, were his milieu." (Translation: His church attendance was spotty but he was a liberal on the Supreme Court.)

Unlike the Catholic Church, which has an official canonization process (with miracles required under the theory that a candidate for sainthood can't perform as miracle from hell or purgatory and must be in heaven), Episcopalians seem to have embraced more of an anything goes process. But it is only in the last four or so decades that they have behaved with such reckless abandonment.