I enourage you to read the whole text of the speech yourself, and not be content with media snippets or one-sided opinions.
Or, if you don't want to read it, it's already on YouTube. Check Deacon Greg Kandra's "Deacon's Bench" blogsite for the video. (He's pretty on top of things.)
I don’t know where you went looking to find “shrill shouting” and “hateful demonization”, but I don’t think that is a fair characterization of the unambiguous guidance issued by the USCCB, the respectful protests of more than 60 bishops, the prayerful witness of several hundred Notre Dame students and faculty, and the petitions and rosaries offered by several hundred thousand laypersons in an effort to save the president of Notre Dame from scandal. Sadly, that effort failed, and the highest-profile Catholic university in the world publicly honored an extremist abortion-rights advocate at its commencement ceremony.
ReplyDeleteI do wonder what sort of “genuine dialogue” Catholics are supposed to have with President Obama. He is not an idiot, and we must presume that he knows enough about basic biology to understand that abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent human life. By his own admission, he is okay with that. In fact, he says that the private choice of a woman to kill her own unborn baby for any reason at any time is a fundamental human right. I suppose we might tell him that we Catholics think it is really wrong to kill babies, but as he told us in his speech, he has already heard it from a pro-life Christian doctor and didn’t change his mind. Why should he? Father Jenkins didn’t seem to be all that bothered by Obama’s support for abortion, nor did several thousand graduates who gave him a standing ovation. So long as politicians know that there is a higher price to pay for opposing abortion than for supporting it, there is no reason to believe that any amount of dialogue is going to be meaningful, much less productive. The real dialogue has to take place within the pro-life movement, specifically between those of us who think that abortion is the preeminent moral crisis of our time and those who think it is just another issue to be compromised for the sake of competing political or social priorities.
Jim Belna
Jim. Talk about unfair! Your concluding statement is an insult to all who seek to place abortion within the broader context of human life issues, of which there are many. "...those who think it is just another issue to be compromised for the sake of competing political or social priorities" includes not only myself and Professor Kmiec, but also the semi-official (and highly regulated!) voice of the Vatican Newspaper, and the Holy Father himself, both past and present, who never fails to include other social injustices in speaking of abortion, and who frequently speaks of other serious moral issues without mentioning abortion.
ReplyDeleteFather Tom:
ReplyDeleteI don’t understand why you feel insulted. As far as I can tell, we are in complete agreement as to the current state of Catholic pro-life advocacy. Surely you must admit that there are two camps: those who think abortion is of singular importance, and those who think it must be placed “within the broader context of human life issues, of which there are many”. Obviously, if a pro-life Catholic decides to support a pro-choice politician out of a conviction that he or she will more effectively advance other important issues like immigration reform or universal healthcare, a compromise has been made. I did not pass judgment on the moral quality of that compromise, nor did I do so in the case of “doctrinaire” pro-lifers who refuse to support pro-choice politicians under any circumstances. I have merely acknowledged the obvious fact that this split exists, and expressed my opinion that it is important for the two camps to engage in dialogue in the hope of reaching a consensus approach to the issue of abortion. I hope that we can at least agree on that.
Jim Belna