I’m not one of them.
Neither is Archbishop Chaput of Denver, Colorado. But the newly minted group who named themselves “Roman Catholic for Obama” saw fit to selectively quote him in their promotional literature.
He responded in a charitable and clear way:
In the years after the [President Jimmy] Carter loss, I began to notice that very few of the people, including Catholics, who claimed to be “personally opposed†to abortion really did anything about it. Nor did they intend to. For most, their personal opposition was little more than pious hand-wringing and a convenient excuse—exactly as it is today. In fact, I can’t name any pro-choice Catholic politician who has been active, in a sustained public way, in trying to discourage abortion and to protect unborn human life—not one. Some talk about it, and some may mean well, but there’s very little action. In the United States in 2008, abortion is an acceptable form of homicide. And it will remain that way until Catholics force their political parties and elected officials to act differently.
Emphasis mine.
Archbishop Chaput quotes from their website:
[Catholics for Obama:] “After faithful thought and prayer, we have arrived at the conclusion that Senator Obama is the candidate whose views are most compatible with the Catholic outlook, and we will vote for him because of that—and because of his other outstanding qualities—despite our disagreements with him in specific areas. “
[Chaput again:] I’m familiar with this reasoning. It sounds a lot like me thirty years ago. And thirty years later, we still have about a million abortions a year. Maybe Roman Catholics for Obama will do a better job at influencing their candidate….
Changing the views of “pro-choice†candidates takes a lot more than verbal gymnastics, good alibis, and pious talk about “personal opposition†to killing unborn children. I’m sure Roman Catholics for Obama know that, and I wish them good luck. They’ll need it.
This past Easter, during my self-imposed moratorium on (constructively) critical posts, Senator Obama made the comment that he didn’t want his daughters to be punished with a baby if they had sex and got pregnant.
Horrible isn’t it? But I once looked at children in the exact same way and feared few things more than fathering a child and that child “ruining my life”. That is exactly how I thought about it: It would “ruin” my life.
Why? Because I had plans, big ones, to make a great impact on the human race, solving scientific challenges and propelling our species across the solar system and the galaxy. I was going to do this and that and become a great man, and having a child would mess all that up because I would have to pay for the child’s care and upbringing and “it” would take up all my time and ruin my plans.
I wouldn’t mind having a few children, one day, when I was ready to do so and had everything all lined up. So I can understand how Senator Obama thinks about children and the possibility of his daughters having one someday, out of wedlock and unwanted.
Children are a punishment because they ruin your life if you get pregnant (or get your girlfriend pregnant) when you don’t want one.
What is the common thread through all these statements: They are all me-focused. It’s all about me and what I want and what I am going to do. But when another person, a little baby, defenseless, comes into being through my actions, suddenly it’s not all about me because this baby is a person who has the right to live and to live long enough to decide for themselves what they want to do.
But with legal abortion, I can decide that that child, that other person, dies, and do so with legal impunity, though the emotional, spiritual, and sometimes physical scars that it leaves are deep and ugly.
Faithful Catholics believe that the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit to teach all truth, that she cannot err in matters of faith and morals. I assented to this belief with all my heart when I entered the Catholic Church as a convert 7 years ago as all converts do.
The Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, teaches that abortion is always morally wrong, a grave evil. Senator Obama supports every form of abortion through all stages of the baby’s life in the womb, and even outside the womb if the baby manages to survive.
His belief directly contradicts the teaching of the Church and therefore of Christ.
Archbishop Chaput finishing the out-of-context quote that this group took from him:
But [Catholics who support pro-choice candidates] also need a compelling proportionate reason to justify it. What is a “proportionate†reason when it comes to the abortion issue? It’s the kind of reason we will be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them face to face in the next life—which we most certainly will. If we’re confident that these victims will accept our motives as something more than an alibi, then we can proceed.