shelbinator.com

What the hell, let’s just make this Abortion Wednesday. I was just alerted to an interesting op-ed in the WaPo about how the US Conference of Catholic Bishops would apparently unleash more hellfire and damnation on anyone opposing the bills discussed below than on anyone who executed a doctor convicted under HB1.

I am so glad I managed to find a Catholic church in this town that isn’t so single-issue. But I guess it doesn’t matter since I’m goin’ to hell anyway.

It’s not only lawmakers and candidates who risk damnation, 98 percent of the U.S. bishops agreed last November, but the voters who put them in office. “It is important to be clear,” the bishops said in a 44-page statement titled “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” “that the political choices faced by citizens[emphasis added] not only have an impact on general peace and prosperity but also may affect the individual’s salvation.”

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To Catholics like me who oppose liberal abortion laws but also think that other issues — war or peace, health care, just wages, immigration, affordable housing, torture — actually matter, the idea that abortion trumps everything, all the time, no matter what, is both bad religion and bad civics. It’s not, for God’s sake, as though we’re in Nazi Germany and supporting Hitler.

Or is it? Amazingly, at least one influential bishop has made just that comparison publicly, and it’s a good bet that many others believe it privately.

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That Doran forgets his history (five of the seven justices who supported Roe v. Wade were actually appointed by Republican presidents) doesn’t obscure his point. He is not alone among Catholic bishops in his attempt to anathematize the Democrats, to make the party and its candidates illegitimate in the mind of the electorate. George Weigel — papal biographer and intellectual guru to the new generation of conservative bishops — said as much, as the wafer wars reached a fevered pitch. “The Republican Party is a more secure platform from which Catholics can work on the great issues of the day than a party in thrall to abortion ‘rights,’ gay activism, and a utilitarian approach to the biotech future that is disturbingly reminiscent of ‘Brave New World,’ ” he wrote in his syndicated column.

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This year’s presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, will be deemed worthy of support because of his consistent antiabortion voting record. But does anyone believe that outlawing abortion, or even turning the issue back to the states, will be anywhere near the top of McCain’s priorities? It wasn’t for Ronald Reagan (tax cuts and a military build-up trumped everything), or George H.W. Bush (a longtime supporter of Planned Parenthood who appointed the pro-abortion rights David Souter to the Supreme Court), nor even for George W. Bush, who has yet to call for actually overturning Roe, much less a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion. Meanwhile, is it fair for a Catholic like me to suspect that the liberal economic policies of the Democratic candidate, whether Obama or Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, will result in less dire poverty and thus perhaps fewer abortions? And isn’t that supposed to be the goal?

The bishops seem to have forgotten that it is not simply aspirations that matter, though they seem more than willing to accept rhetoric (”I am pro-life”) over results.