John Kerry's Abortion Problem and the Catholic Church
by John Leo
June 7, 2004
LifeNews.com Note: John Leo is a columnist and contributing editor at U.S.
News & World Re****t. Before joining U.S. News in September 1988, he
covered
the social sciences and intellectual trends for Time magazine and The New
York Times. He also re****ted on religion for the Times, and wrote essays
and
humor for Time.
It looks as though more than 90 percent of America’s Roman Catholic
bishops
want no confrontation with John Kerry over his sup****t of abortion rights
-
so far, only four of the 300-odd bishops said they would deny him
Communion,
and 15 others indicated serious concern over the issue.
I think Catholic objections to Kerry on abortion are sound. If you
proclaim
yourself a member of any faith, you ought to be able to stand up on the
well-defined moral issues that your faith considers crucial.
This goes for Catholic pro- choice Republicans, too. Arnold
Schwarzenegger,
Rudolph Giuliani, and George Pataki never seem to get around to talking
about abortion as a moral issue.
But the bishops are in a weakened position because they mishandled the
clerical *** scandals for so many years. And they are fully aware that a
dramatic election-year move against John Kerry, the first Catholic
presidential candidate since John F. Kennedy, would surely look as though
the church were aligning itself fully with the Republican Party. That
would
very likely harm the church at least as much as Kerry.
Besides, the bishops have already made their point. The voters will judge
for themselves. A Zogby poll last week showed Kerry getting low sup****t
among America’s 51 million Catholics on issues where he opposes the
church’s
position.
Kerry received only 23 percent sup****t from Catholics on the question
dealing with unrestricted stem-cell research and also 23 percent on
favoring
homo***ual unions. Two thirds of Catholics would be less likely to sup****t
a
Catholic presidential candidate who would use a Roe v. Wade litmus test
to
appoint pro-choice judges.
The poll re****ts the "startling" finding that Catholics in "blue" states
(those won by Al Gore in 2000) are much less likely to vote for a Catholic
candidate who is pro-choice. However, there is doubt about whether these
issues will dominate among Catholic voters, who tend to be a pretty
diverse
group.
The pollster, John Zogby, played down his own findings. He thinks the
economy, the war, and healthcare will be more im****tant to Catholic
voters,
and to everyone else as well.
A few points must be conceded to Kerry.
There was no thunderbolt from Rome about denying Communion to pro-choice
politicians, though some news media seemed to think so. The Vatican
statement by Cardinal Francis Arinze was an off-the-cuff remark, referring
to "unambiguously pro-abortion" Catholic politicians.
Whatever one thinks of "personally opposed" pro-choice politicians like
Kerry, it’s a stretch to argue that they "unambiguously" favor abortion.
In addition, the Catholic Church has procedures for denying Communion.
Bishops are supposed to discuss their objections with the person
involved,
then make an effort to understand his thinking and inform him in writing
if
a sanction is being imposed. It'’s not clear that the Communion-denying
bishops followed this procedure.
Yet, it's easy to understand the frustration of the bishops. They have
been
saying the same thing to Catholic politicians for many years, with no
result. They don't understand why a Congress that contains so many
Catholics
can't shake the stranglehold of the abortion lobby (I don’t understand it
either).
NARAL Pro-Choice America and the National Organization for Women are
surely
the most radical abortion groups on the planet. Their positions, such as
backing "partial-birth" abortion, go way beyond what the American people
are prepared to sup****t. Yet Catholic pols seem impotent on the issue.
Some,
like Kerry, appear at NARAL conventions, egging the activists on with "we
must take this issue to the people" rhetoric.
Kerry even voted to allow pregnant girls to be whisked across state lines
to
get an abortion, thus evading state law. Odds are he would have voted no
if
the bill had been about taking young girls to a dentist without a parent’s
knowledge.
Why do Catholic pols behave so oddly on abortion? Is it because they have
no real grasp of their own religion, or is it that they are simply
terrified
by the abortion lobby? Probably both, with emphasis on the latter.
The abortion lobby made an example of Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey in
1992. Casey was a great governor, liberal on every issue of interest to
Democrats except abortion. So he was pointedly banned from speaking at the
1992 convention. To rub it in, one of his most bitter opponents in
Pennsylvania, a pro-abortion Republican, was given a speaking role.
The liberal Village Voice was so upset by the crass treatment that it
offered Casey a forum in New York. But he was drowned out by an alliance
of
abortion-rights sup****ters and free-Mumia leftists.
Presumably the Kennedys and Kerrys remember the Casey lesson. Such is the
culture of the Democratic Party today. And there are no im****tant
Democratic
Catholic pols willing to stand against it.
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