U.S. Bishops are confronting the ‘single issue’
Head on this time.
They’re holding their semi-annual conference right now and focusing on how they – and Catholics – handled the most fundamental question of the elections.
The nation’s Catholic bishops crafted a statement on abortion and politics Tuesday that they hope will “address a particular moment,” in the words of Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, for American Roman Catholic voters and even for the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama.
Good timing. Exactly one week ago, the majority of the demographic known as ‘the Catholic vote’ went for Obama, refuting or just ignoring Church teaching on abortion and embryonic stem cell research, and the more than 100 bishops who publicly clarified that teaching before the election. It wasn’t clear enough, or….didn’t matter.
The bishops discussed their failure to convincingly impress upon the country’s 67 million Catholics the church’s teaching that abortion (and, by extension, embryonic stem cell research) is “intrinsically evil” and must be the pre-eminent issue — above even than the economy — Catholics carried with them into the voting booth.
Denver’s Archbishop Charles Chaput has called the bishops’ voting guide, “Faithful Citizenship,” too quiet and “not very clear.” Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence said from the meeting floor Tuesday that “Faithful Citizenship didn’t have the impact we wanted it to have.”
That’s been clear for a long time (way before the elections), especially as mainstream media lifted certain lines out of that guide to say the bishops essentially made all issues equally important. Not true, and lots of clergy, scholars, writers and speakers have had to do a lot of explaining to clarify that.
Time for a new clarification, and this time, they need to nail it.
Cardinal Edward Egan of New York said the bishops were “aiming at one issue and I hope we don’t lose that” in the letter’s language. “We have one important thing to say, and we should say it clearly and with punch, and not let it get lost.”
Right. Because when that “one issue” is lost, what do issues like health care and the economy matter (when they’re only available to some human beings)? Here’s the point (and the most explicitly accurate one, no matter how hard the pro-abortion movement tries to shut it down as an “old” argument, to end the discussion): Abortion is the modern day slavery movement.
Bishop Daniel Conlon of Steubenville, Ohio, said slavery “was a matter of absolutes — either you had slavery or you didn’t have slavery. So it is with abortion.” Conlon continued, “This is not a matter of political compromise. This is not about common ground. It’s an absolute moral issue.”
Once we ‘get’ that one, we can talk about all the others that depened on it.