Cari Jane Hadac, age 10, died on June 23, 2010

Cari Jane Hadac, age 10, died on June 23, 2010. She had brain cancer. Your humble servant here never met her. He does not know her family.

However, he heard a fundraising appeal to cover the costs of Cari's surgery at the end of mass last week at his church in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin.

He squeezed his wife's arm as she sat next to him. Of course, she knew his thoughts, feelings about what we had just heard.

Another American family had to beg for charity to pay for the medical care of a dying child.

This writer lived in Canada for eight years, and never, ever once in my church there did he hear such an appeal.

He bit his tongue, too, as his wife and he left church, because he is strict about separating religion and politics, for the sake of religious freedoms, yet, in America.

Still, the politics of vampire American insurance companies making obscene amounts of money off the sick and dying found their way into our parish.

We are better than this.