National Catholic Prayer Breakfast

I attended this year, and took a lot of notes…and inspiration. It was a great gathering of lay faithful, religious sisters, clergy, bishops, scholars, Supreme Court justices, political candidates, and members of government, including President Bush. It’s interesting to see how the early coverage came out in this USAToday article.

President Bush preached to the choir at the National Catholic Prayer breakfast Friday, promoting the “dignity of life,” and stressing his opposition to easing restrictions on federally funded embryonic stem cell research — a reference to a bill he’s threatened to veto.

That lead is tendentious. “Preached to the choir”? And…why is the reference to the dignity of life set aside in quotes? At least the topic of life made it in the lead.

“In our day there is a temptation to manipulate life in ways that do not respect the humanity of the person,” Bush said Friday. “When that happens, the most vulnerable among us can be valued for their utility to others instead of their own inherent worth.”

… “We must continue to work for a culture of life where the strong protect the weak and where we recognize in every human life the image of our creator,” Bush said.

That got huge applause…from “the choir.”

After the president spoke, a female heckler shouted “War criminal! War criminal!” It was unclear whether the president heard her.

I seriously doubt it. I was in the middle of the room and didn’t hear her. In fact, this is the first I heard of it.

Bush, a Methodist, noted that this year’s prayer breakfast occurred the Friday after Lent.

“You know how to make a Methodist feel right at home,” Bush said, addressing the 1,700 Catholics in attendance, including several bishops and Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

A number of other conservative powerbrokers were on hand, including several cabinet members and former Sen. Fred Thompson, a possible Republican presidential candidate.

Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele was also there.

“There’s something powerful to be said when Catholics gather together in prayer and fellowship to express their gratitude for the faith and share the joy and love of the faith,” Joe Cella, the breakfast’s founder and president of its board, said afterwards.

This reporter sought out a critic of this gathering, and he found one who obviously did not attend and didn’t know what he was talking about, quite literally. It’s interesting how some people who dissent from Church teaching see politics in issues of faith and morals. This event is not about politics or political parties, but living and applying divinely revealed truths in the modern world.

The idea to host a distinctly Catholic prayer breakfast — in addition to the annual National Prayer Breakfast held each February — was sparked in 2003, while reading the late Pope John Paul II’s exhortations for Catholics to share their faith, Cella said.

Bush has addressed the breakfast each year since 2004 because he shares the church’s stance against gay marriage, embryonic stem cell research and abortion, Cella said, not because of his political party.

Or, put another way, those who take part tend to share the Church’s teaching upholding marriage as a union of one man and one woman, and the sanctity of all life from the moment of conception.

“It would be really hard to invite a president or any speaker if they did not support the church’s social teaching,” Cella acknowledged.

Though the breakfast is not run by the Catholic church, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is listed as a sponsor and a number of Catholic bishops attended, including Vatican envoy Archbishop Pietro Sambi and Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl, who gave the keynote address.

Wuerl exhorted fellow Catholics to “build a just and good society.”

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful.” he asked, “if, 50 or a hundred years from now,” people look back on this generation and say “they took the church’s moral teachings and fashioned a society where all human life is … respected and protected.”

Another thing this article did not mention. President Bush thanked the gathering for “leading armies of compassion” in the defense of life and the dignity of every person. “You are changing America one heart and one soul at a time.”