John O'Connor began his tenure as the nation's leading incense-burner 16 years ago.  He immediately began preaching condemnation of sinners and the subjugation of women, leading many Southern Baptists to believe he might one day see the light and reject the Catholic cult.  But, alas, he died an 80-year-old Hell-bound mackarel-snapper.

Nevertheless, we must all regret the fact that O'Connor's strong voice against women, homos and birth control users will no longer be heard.  We can hate the man without hating his good works and words.  Among O'Connor's wonderful legacy to the cause of morality were the following:

 *  He opposed all forms of birth control, especially the use of condoms, because, by preventing children from coming into the world, birth control is the equivalent of murder.  Granted, we know the real reason birth control is wrong is because sex is for procreation only, but his stance was right, albeit for the wrong reason.

 *  He acknowledged the subordinate role of women in the world and vehemently opposed allowing women to open their mouths in church.

 *  He compared aborted fetuses to the victims of the Holocaust.

 *  He wrote a book praising U.S. military action against those slanty-eyed demons in Vietnam.

 *  He strongly supported U.S. nuclear policies against the criticism of those do-gooder environmentalists and people who seek to prevent the Biblically-mandated apocalypse.

 *  He despised homosexuals and was opposed to any activity which might help them.  Believing the damned perverts should be excluded from society, he opposed any laws or regulations against discrimination of homos.  He kicked a gay Catholic group out of a parish church where the group had met for years.  He believed the church should not serve the needs of homos and therefore defied a local ordinance that required social service organizations to include homos in their outreach.

*Recognizing that bad people deserve to die, he refused to speak out against capital punishment despite church doctrine opposing execution.

*  In 1990, he proclaimed that listening to rock music is "a help to the devil" and can "lead to demonic possession."

There are numerous other statements and actions by O'Connor which revealed his abject hatred of sinners.  Suffice it to say, his heart was in the right place even though his faith not.  What a shame he never became a Christian (Southern Baptist), and how ironic that he will be spending eternity with the very people he condemned in the very place to which he condemned them.  Watch your backside, Cardinal!