Over on God In Government, WaPo’s Jaqui Salmon reported  yesterday that D.C. Archbishop Wuerl and Arlington, Va., Bishop Loverde will not be gracing tomorrow’s National Catholic Prayer Breakfast nor the accompanying evening Mass. The keynote address will be delivered by Raymond Burke, sometime archbishop of St. Louis and now Vatican canon law consigliere, who was prepared to lend his support to Randall Terry’s campaign to get Wuerl and Loverde ousted for being soft on life. No love lost there. Justice Scalia is also speaking. You get the idea.

Indeed,  the NCPB is pretty much the Catholic equivalent of the National Day of Prayer Task Force–and just as President Bush was in the habit of putting out the East Wing punchbowl for the latter, so he was, in office, happy to be guest of honor at the former. For Catholics United’s perspective (as of last year), see here. The founder and former president, Joseph Cella, served on John McCain’s Catholic Outreach Committee. The current president, Leonard Leo, was national co-chair of Catholic Outreach for the RNC.

It tells you something that the NCPB is not interested in gaining the approbation of its local ordinaries. Terry-like, it would rather poke sticks in their eyes. As on the left, deference to episcopal authority on the right ain’t what it used to be.