Pro-Obama Catholic predicts 'very positive' ties with Vatican
Print Friendly VersionBy JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Perhaps the most prominent Catholic backer of the presidential aspirations of Barak Obama today predicted warm U.S./Vatican relations under an Obama administration, arguing that it would enable new partnerships built around the church’s social teachings.
Douglas Kmiec, former legal counsel for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, also said that while he has given “no thought” to the prospect of serving as Obama’s ambassador to the Vatican, he would “never rule anything out.”
Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine, is author of Can a Catholic Support Him? Asking the Big Question about Barack Obama, in which he argues that the pro-life teachings of the church can be reconciled with voting for Obama despite the Democratic candidate's pro-choice stance. Kmiec spoke this morning to reporters in a conference called organized by the “Matthew 25 Network,” a coalition of Christian groups that has endorsed Obama.
Relations with the United States are a diplomatic priority in the Vatican, and some analysts have speculated that an Obama victory would create new tensions between Rome and Washington because of differences over the “life issues,” above all abortion. Kmiec, however, offered a different forecast.
“An Obama presidency would open the door to what is frequently called the best-kept secret of the Catholic church, which is the balance of its social teaching,” Kmiec said. He argued that many of the Vatican’s social concerns are broadly congruent with the likely priorities of an Obama administration, including health care, a living wage, economic policies that promote the well-being of families, and environmental protection.
Kmiec also pointed to a broad meeting of minds between Obama and the Vatican over the war in Iraq.
“The mindset that took us to war is not his,” Kmiec said. “He believes that our greatest strength as a country comes not just from military defense but international diplomacy, for the kind of understanding which the Vatican has repeatedly asked America to have of other cultures and other religions.”
For those reasons, Kmiec predicted, “relations between Benedict XVI and the Holy See under an Obama administration would be very, very positive.”
Given Kmiec’s improbable emergence as a pro-life Republican making a Catholic case for Obama, some handicappers have speculated that, should the Democrats prevail, Kmiec would be a logical choice to represent the new administration to the Vatican. Ironically, Kmiec began the ’08 election season as an advisor to the Mitt Romney campaign alongside the current U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, Mary Ann Glendon, who at the time was still serving as a law professor at Harvard.
Kmiec said that he has not thought about the post, and that “it would take an awful lot of persuading for Mrs. Kmiec to leave her home” in California. Nonetheless, he said, “I never rule anything out.”
During the conference call, Kmiec repeated what has become his standard pitch to Catholics on the campaign trail: While abortion is a grave moral evil, there are alternative ways to promote the right to life beyond efforts to reverse Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.
“McCain represents the old view that hasn’t succeeded, of promoting life as an abstract proposition through the criminal law, pointing the finger of condemnation,” Kmiec said. Obama, he said, represents the view that “the way forward is not debates over law or philosophy, but extending a hand of compassion” to women dealing with unexpected or unwanted pregnancies.
“By addressing the circumstances in which women often find themselves, especially those who are poor or without a spouse, offering them resources and an ethic of personal concern, you have a greater chance of life being chosen and a culture of life being honored,” Kmiec said.
Conceding that Obama does not have “a perfect Catholic position on abortion,” Kmiec nonetheless insisted that voting for the Democrat is “not inconsistent with the teaching of the church.”
“I have no grievance with the hierarchy,” Kmiec said, “but with some of my fellow Republicans.” Kmiec charged that “some partisan Republicans think the Catholic vote is permanently indentured to the Republican Party” because of the abortion issue, which he called a “misstatement of the faith.”
A friend sent me this in an
A friend sent me this in an e-mail and it illustrates quite well why I will NOT vote for neither candidate this fall! THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO MADE US WHAT WE ARE TODAY! WHY PERPETUATE THE TRAVESTY?
ARTICLE BY CHARLIE REESE
Many, many, many Americans need to read this and revisit their high / high school civics classes and notes, paying particular attention to who does what in our government structure and operation. Most of the "finger-pointing" going on right now on various issues is totally bogus.
By Charlie Reese*
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The President does
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, The Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices - 545 human beings out of the 300 million - are directly, legally,
morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress.
In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered but private central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority.
They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton-picking thing.
I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist
promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of
party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall.
No normal human being would have the gall of a speaker [of the House of Representatives], who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits.
The President can only propose a budget.
He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving
appropriations and taxes.
Who is the speaker of the House?
She is the leader of the majority party.
She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want.
If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts - of incompetence and
irresponsibility.
I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.
When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they
want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.
If the Marines are in IRAQ , it's because they want them in IRAQ .
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems.
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they
can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power.
Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like 'the economy,' 'inflation' or 'politics' that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.
They, and they alone, have the power.
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses - provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.
We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
*Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel.
(And keep in mind this congress only worked 93 days last year. The shortest season in history and at a time that we are at war and the economy is in the
tank. Vote early and vote often. Lets clean house and start over!)
_____
THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO MADE US WHAT WE ARE TODAY!
I rest Mr Reese's case!
In concurance!
James E. Duane, nobody special, not even a real good citizen!
I wonder what Mr. Kmiec has
I wonder what Mr. Kmiec has to say about Mr. Obama and the freedom of choice act? How would that act help to limit the number of abortions in this Country?
Anne, you must have your
Anne, you must have your head in the sand.
Abortion has become a nonissue in the last two weeks.
When you have a country that is facing economic collapse, the abortion issue becomes irrelevant.
When you have millions of people becoming homeless, abortion becomes irrelevant.
You need to wake up anne. Abortion is no longer a relevant issue.
It is still important, but it is way down on the priority list now.
I ask you, if you were being evicted from your home, if you were tens of thousands in debt, with no where to go, except to the street or perhaps a homeless shelter, would you really care about the abortion issue? I think not.
There will be plenty of time to deal with it later. Our first priority now has to be the economy. It has to be about the living first.
Chaput's Facile Caricatures
Chaput's Facile Caricatures of Pro-Choice Catholics
What Professor Kmiec gets and folks of the ilk of Archbishop Chaput apparently do not is that our efforts to reduce and eliminate abortion are only going to be as effective as our weakest link in a long chain of metaphysical, ontological, deontological, moral, practical, legal, demographic, legislative, judicial and political realities. Kmiec gets the utter folly of placing all of one’s anti-abortion eggs in one basket, as so many seem to do, such as hitching one’s anti-abortion dreams to a POTUS candidacy for the past 35 years. Meanwhile, inordinately higher probability outcomes on other seamless garment of life realities are in the offing this election cycle?
http://www.geocities.com/rc4o08/abortion_politics.htm
The Society of Jesus is correct in saying: "When abortion laws are changed, it will not be the imposition of a narrowly confined religious position upon an unwilling majority, but rather the consequence of a new broad-based consensus grounded upon persuasive and reasonable arguments accessible to people of all faith traditions and people of none ... ... ... ... ...
... ... ... ... ... ... ... We must acknowledge, however, that phrases such as `the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' and `the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family' in documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are phrases with contested meanings that others understand differently than we do." (A Statement of the Society of Jesus in the United States on Abortion)
What is at also stake in these discussions are distinctions between the various "voices" of the Magisterium and the types of responses they require from the Faithful, sometimes distinguished as the assent of faith (obsequium fidei) and religious assent (obsequium religiosum). There are further distinctions that come into play such as: a) obsequium religiosum, which means to be acknowledged with reverence and adhered to sincerely (somewhat analogous to that which is commonly called "the benefit of the doubt") or one with the searching church, working for clarification; b) voluntatis obsequium or obedience; c) intellectus obsequium or deference; d) attention bienveillante or cordial attention; e) docilité d'esprit or willingness to be instructed; and f) obsequium fidei or the unconditional acceptance of faith, which is an unqualified mental acceptance (beyond but not without the propositional), whereby we are one with the believing church holding firm to a doctrine.
The above-discussion of the hierarchy of truth, voices of the Magisterium and responses of the Faithful vis a vis various types of assent has only an indirect bearing on our consideration to the extent we must draw a further distinction, with Cardinal Newman, between assent and inference, which he considers to be a proposition intrinsically dependent on other propositions, where the object of inference is truth-like and ultimately syllogistic. This, then, introduces another assent, complex assent, which is made consciously and deliberately with acts of inference as its antecedents.
To wit, then, per P.J. Toner `s entry on Infallibility in The Catholic Encyclopedia: "Assent is given not to the logical force of the syllogism, but directly to the authority which the inference serves to introduce; and this holds good in a measure even when there is question of mere fallible authority. Once we come to believe in and rely upon authority we can afford to overlook the means by which we were brought to accept it, just as a man who has reached a solid standing place where he wishes to remain no longer relies on the frail ladder by which he mounted. (Volume VII. Published 1910. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Nihil Obstat, June 1, 1910.)
Now, even as we properly suggest that our fellow Catholics "[must] bring to the discussion and debate one's deeply held values and moral convictions," before we either explicitly or implicitly suggest that they are somehow a) "putting aside their deeply held moral and religious beliefs" b) "muting themselves in public debate on foundational issues of human dignity" c) "[reducing] faith to private idiosyncrasy, or a set of opinions that we can indulge at home but need to be quiet about in public" d) "separating [their] private convictions from [their] public actions ... diminishing both" e) "smothering [their convictions] under a snowfall of alibis" --- it seems to me that it is incumbent upon us to inquire of this or that fellow Catholic as to exactly what type of assent they have given to this or that moral teaching.
This is to recognize, then, that many Catholics, with this same deference, attention, willingness, reverence, sincerity, obedience, acknowledgment and obsequium may have assented even though they have indeed engaged an act of inference but, in so doing, could not, with all intellectual honesty, be moved by this or that syllogistic force or concur in this or that logical conclusion, perhaps, in all good faith, not even recognizing certain of the concepts and categories employed in such arguments. This is to suggest that the snowfall of ad hominem characterizations of such loyal Catholics and faithful citizens would melt before it hits the ground, because such rash judgment is one thing that assuredly has no place in our public square.
Only if one, as a believer, engages in both assent AND inference, however formally or informally, can one then honestly urge such convictions on the wider community of value-realizers through such formal argumentation as is the currency of political discourse.
This is why the Archbishop's simplistic characterization of all pro-choice Catholics as "smothering their convictions under a snowfall of alibis" is but a facile (and uncharitable) caricature of so many loyal Catholics and faithful citizens.
See this Book Review of Chaput's "Render Unto Caesar":
http://www.amazon.com/review/R13B8O6AWJT857/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
I find this entire post
I find this entire post laughable. That Kmiec can really assert that the Vatican would overlook Obama's pro-abortion stance borders on the truly comic. Of course, if President Obama went to the Vatican, Benedict would meet with him. But that's not the say that Benedict wouldn't also read him the riot act in private (something he did to Tony Blair and George W. Bush when he met with them). Cordiality is quite another matter, however.
I'm sure that the Holy See
I'm sure that the Holy See would in any event refuse to accept Professor Kmiec's appointment as ambassador because of his pro-abortion politicking--just as it required Paris to abandon its first and second choices as French ambassador.
Prof. Kmiec says that
Prof. Kmiec says that Senator Obama believes in "'extending a hand of compassion' to women dealing with unexpected or unwanted pregnancies . . . 'especially those who are poor or without a spouse, offering them resources and an ethic of personal concern, [so that] you have a greater chance of life being chosen and a culture of life being honored.'"
We know this much for sure: what Obama actually intends to extend to these women is an offer of federally funded abortions.
He certainly does not want to support the work of the crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) that actually provide all manner of practical assistance to women who are experiencing crisis pregnancies, which save the lives of many children. A very modest amount of federal funding going to such centers in some states. Pro-life lawmakers have pushed legislation to greatly expand such funding, but it has been blocked by lawmakers who allied with the abortion lobby. Late in 2007, RHrealitycheck.org, a prominent pro-abortion advocacy website (representing the side hostile to government funding of CPCs), submitted in writing the following question to the Obama campaign: "Does Sen. Obama support continuing federal funding for crisis pregnancy centers?" The Obama campaign's official written response was short, but it spoke volumes: "No."
But Obama would provide unlimited funding to abort the unborn children of the poor. He advocates repeal of the Hyde Amendment, the law that since 1976 has blocked almost all federal funding of abortion, which has been one of the most successful "abortion reduction" policies ever adopted. By even the most conservative estimate, there are more than one million Americans alive today because of the Hyde Amendment. Indeed, the pro-abortion groups periodically put out papers complaining about this effect. According to a 2007 NARAL factsheet, "A study by The Guttmacher Institute shows that Medicaid-eligible women in states that exclude abortion coverage have abortion rates of about half of those women in states that fund abortion care with their own dollars. This suggests that the Hyde amendment forces about half the women who would otherwise have abortions to carry unintended pregnancies to term and bear children against their wishes instead."
In 1993, there was debate in Congress over whether to continue the Hyde Amendment. The Congressional Budget Office (at that time under Democratic control) wrote, "Based on information from the Centers for Disease Control and from States that currently pay for abortions using state funds, the federal government would probably fund between 325,000 to 675,000 abortions each year [if the federal government resumed Medicaid funding for abortion]. The increase in the total number of abortions would be smaller, however, because some abortions that are currently funded by other sources would be partially or totally paid from federal funds . . ."
Although Speaker Nancy Pelosi and most other Democratic congressional leaders are hostile to the Hyde Amendment, the law has been extended anyway because President Bush issued a letter in early 2007 saying that he would veto any bill that weakens any existing pro-life policy. However, because the Hyde Amendment (and a number of similar provisions that govern other federal programs) must be renewed annually, things could change quickly under a president determined to re-establish federal funding of abortion on demand.
Douglas Johnson
Legislative Director
National Right to Life Committee
Washington, D.C.
http://www.nrlc.org
legfederal//at//aol-dot-com
There is another way to look
There is another way to look at this: Women are having abortions where abortions are Federally funded because they really do not want to have the babies they have conceived. In places where Federal funding is not available to poor women, they have the babies that they do not want and may reluctantly and inadequately care for as a result. No where does Federal funding of abortion force a woman to have an abortion. However, the lack of Federal funding apparently does force women into motherhood.
Or it forces them into back
Or it forces them into back allies, prostitution, theft or whatever else they have to do to survive.
Kmiec is quite naive. Obama
Kmiec is quite naive. Obama will always be vilified in conservative Catholic Realms of Higher Glory as being that pro-abortion President! No matter where else he is in sync with the Vatican, when it comes to "the foundational issue" he will be sent to the wood shed.
"the foundational issue" For
"the foundational issue"
For those who follow the words of Our Lord, the foundational issue is to FOLLOW THE WORDS OF OUR LORD.
All other teachings are extrapolations there of, valid or otherwise.
... the greatest of these ...
I think the part that is not
I think the part that is not "naive" is to understand that there are those in the Vatican and such inner circles that are also increasingly concerned about the destruction of the social security net in this country of ours, a country which once implemented social measures to show concern for others, and to keep the bottom from dropping out as it has been. That is increasingly becoming a shell without the necessary substance to hold some of the national structure together.
While I agree that many conservatives will always see things in remarkably the same stagnant ideological place they are in now, there are others who are returning to a more traditional conservatism that does not strip bare the social security net. I think it's a mistake to think that even B16 wouldn't have reason to be glad that another perspective in this area is taking hold; he's made it pretty clear a few times that he is also concerned about the loss of Western European values which have held nations together in regard to those in need. I think we don't know yet, but given the Vatican's pliability when it comes to working with politicians, I don't think it's naive to think there is the likelihood of very positive ties between the two.
"conservative Catholic
"conservative Catholic Realms of Higher Glory"
You must be referring to the pedophile protectors
I dont think being on the outs with that group will give either
Kmiec or Obama reason to loose much sleep
Oh, Jimmy, did you mean to
Oh, Jimmy, did you mean to say that? Is the implication in the language of the church? Please reconsider.
What if the Vatican
What if the Vatican withdraws from the US the invitation to have an ambassador at the Vatican?