Ready with an answer

Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput has always struck me as one of our more media savvy, culturally engaged and politically aware bishops in the United States. He knows the one-liners intended to shut down reasoned argument. He’s used to charges like ‘aren’t you beating a dead horse?’, lines thrown out to distract attention from the real issue.

“If a horse is dead, get on a different horse,” Chaput said. “I think being more aggressive, more assertive doesn’t in any way violate the principles we have to follow” under laws governing nonprofit involvement in politics.

What’s the occasion for these comments?

As most of the nation’s 268 active Catholic bishops met for a private retreat this week in New Mexico, questions were building about how prominent their voices will be in the 2008 race.

Chaput’s voice has already been a leading on in past elections, and his will be one of the prominent voices in the current presidential race.

A vocal proponent of calling on Catholic politicians and voters to follow church teachings, Chaput also made it clear he thinks the time for behind-the-scenes diplomacy with politicians is over…

Chaput said his more aggressive posture grew partly out of frustration from his personal meetings with politicians, who often would just “look at you vacantly.”

That’s gone on for too long. Between frustrated Catholics in the pews and provocative journalists in the media, the issues of faith and morality in politics are getting a lot of attention. It will only increase as the election gets closer and the parties main candidates emerge.

“I think there is a dynamic in the (bishops) conference towards wanting to put down serious markers on what the bishops themselves have declared to be the premiere civil rights issues of our time,” said George Weigel, a Pope John Paul II biographer and a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington…

One guidepost will come at the next U.S. bishops’ conference meeting in November, when a statement on faithful citizenship, a sort of voters guide, is up for revision.

Chaput, for one, said while all issues in the statement are important, he doesn’t think the conference does a good enough job identifying abortion as a “foundational” issue. He said the statement has been “used by Democrats who want to downplay the issue of abortion because of their party politics.”

Chaput added he doesn’t like either political party. To him, neither encapsulates the range of Catholic teaching.