There has been much discussion about whether Catholics in good standing can support Senator John Kerry for president because of his extreme views on abortion. His voting record and public statements on life issues clearly contradict the Church’s teaching and many Catholics are insistent that this disqualifies him for consideration.

There are Catholics, however, who are actively supporting Kerry’s presidential bid and they are not shy about expressing their opinions.

One such group is Pax Christi USA (peace of Christ), an organization calling itself “the national Catholic peace movement.” Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles, Gabino Zavala, heads Pax Christi, and the other clergy representative on the group’s National Council is Father Kevin M. Queally, T.O.R., campus minister to the Saint Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania.

Their narrow focus on issues of war and peace has led them to join forces with abortion supporters. They recently partnered with the NAACP in “an effort to bring international election observers to the US to monitor the upcoming November elections.” Last winter, the NAACP for the first time in its 95-year history announced its support for keeping abortions legal. According to a March Lifenews.com article, NAACP Board Chair Julian Bond said, “This is an issue of equal rights, and we are pleased to join those insisting on a woman's right to control her own body.” Over the summer, Catholic University (CU) became embroiled in a controversy with the NAACP over the group’s effort to start a chapter at the school. NAACP’s support of abortion was the reason CU initially banned the group from campus. (The ban was rescinded October 13th after students met with the university president and pledged that the CU chapter would not advocate abortion rights.)

Pax Christi caused a stir this week after running an ad promoting the notion that Catholics should not focus solely on abortion when considering the candidates. The ad’s headline argues, “Life does not end at birth. Catholics called to vote for the common good.” The text begins by selectively quoting from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops 2004 Faithful Citizenship. “A Catholic moral framework does not easily fit the ideologies of ‘Right’ or ‘Left,’ nor the platforms of any party…. Our responsibility is to measure all candidates, policies, parties, and platforms by how they protect or undermine the life, dignity, and rights of the human person, whether they protect the poor and vulnerable and advance the common good.”

The ad continues with another statement from Faithful Citizenship. “It is a common misperception of politicians seeking office that the Catholic vote can be courted by addressing a narrow range of issues. In reality, the great majority of Catholics in the US, in agreement with the US Catholic Bishops, will vote for candidates based on the full range of issues, as well as on [the candidate’s] personal integrity, philosophy and performance.’” Taking a shot at our brave clergy, the ad boldly states, “Members of the media — and indeed a few of our own religious leaders — do a great disservice to our Church and nation when they attempt to use one or another issue as the benchmark for Catholic identity.”

Clearly, this “peace at all cost” organization does not view abortion in the same light as the document they quote in their ad. In Faithful Citizenship, the US bishops list “protecting human life” as the first moral priority. It continues, “Abortion, the deliberate killing of a human being before birth, is never morally acceptable.” The priority the Church places on protecting the unborn is clearly different from the Church’s stance on war. About armed conflicts, the document says, “Catholic teaching calls on us to work to avoid war.” An issue that is “never morally acceptable” is more significant than one we should “work to avoid.”

Pro-life Catholics in Pittsburg were outraged when they saw the Pax Christi ad in their diocesan newspaper. A Pittsburg Post-Gazette story on Wednesday said that an “ad in the Pittsburgh Catholic that criticized single-issue voting has sparked a flurry of opposing ads from groups that say that abortion takes priority over other social problems.” One such group is Catholics United for Integrity in Voting, which allowed the Post-Gazette to see a draft of their response ad. The draft said, “We are SCANDALIZED that many Catholics, including local priests and religious, have joined with Pax Christi USA in what we believe is their veiled, back door endorsement of an adamant pro-abortion candidate for the presidency.”

Another pro-life group, LIFEPAC, also responded by running an ad that argues that “five issues are non-negotiable for Catholics: opposition to abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell research, human cloning and homosexual marriage,” according to the Post-Gazette. “The only major party candidate for president of the United States that meets the above five non-negotiable issues is George W. Bush,” the ad closes.

A local doctor, Daniel Callaghan, was so upset by Pax Christi that he paid for an ad himself because “”I just feel somebody has to speak up for the unborn.” Callaghan sought to respond to Pax Christi’s moral relativism, which the newspaper describes as the “argument that Catholic womb-to-tomb social concern allows other issues to trump opposition to abortion.” His ad simply said, “Because of abortion, 44 million unborn American girls and boys went directly from the womb to their tomb.”

Another group calling itself Catholics for Political Responsibility (CPR) is even more brazen than Pax Christi. According to their website, Dr. Sidney Callahan, “a Catholic author on moral theology, professor and licensed psychologist” and Dr. David O'Brien, “Loyola Professor of Roman Catholic Studies at the College of the Holy Cross,” are the group’s co-chairs. CPR is “a group of serious Catholic worshipers, theologians, and nuns who feel called to defend our faith’s proud tradition of stewardship, social justice, and service to the common good. As conservatives try to reduce the profound Catholic tradition to a partisan tool, Catholics for Political Responsibility has launched a national radio campaign.” The campaign claims first, “George Bush’s leadership has been a moral failure.” Second, “John Kerry’s leadership demonstrates the best of Catholic tradition.” And finally, “Catholic conscience calls us to look beyond any one issue to support ‘the common good.’” The group is running four radio commercials in Ohio and Wisconsin, two key swing-states.

Pax Christi and CPR are part of a loud chorus of Left-leaning clergy, columnists, and lay leaders who continue to cling to the failed “seamless garment” theology. This teaching wrongly weighs all issues equally and argues the world is too complex for moral absolutes like opposition to abortion. Robert McFadden, a representative from Catholics for Kerry ’04, summarized this false teaching on Tuesday during Catholic Outreach’s press teleconference. Catholic Outreach held the press conference to discuss their election year primer, The Five Issues that Matter Most: Catholics and the Upcoming Election. The issues include abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide, stem cell research and cloning, and same-sex marriage.

McFadden, responding to the excellent commentary by people like Father Frank Pavone of Priest for Life about “non-negotiable” issues for Catholics, presented the pro-Kerry logic. “[I]n regards to the five non-negotiables, I…wanted to know if the 40,000 people around the world or children who died from today, from hunger are negotiable?” he began. “Are the lives of innocent children killed by a bombing in Iraq or Afghanistan negotiable? Is the dignity of the father who is unable to provide income and health care for his children because his job was shipped overseas negotiable?” He then moved from poverty, war, and healthcare to the environment. “Are the future natural resources for our children and grandchildren negotiable and are the futures of US children living with lead paint on their walls and mercury in the water negotiable?” Finally, he peddled the unsubstantiated accuasation that abortion rates have increased under President George W. Bush.

In his 1907 encyclical condemning the heresy of modernism (Pascendi Dominici Gregis), Pope Pope Pius X called this philosophy “cumulatio omnium haeresium, the syntheses of all heresies of the past.” The pope noted that, “many who belong to the Catholic laity, nay, and this is far more lamentable, to the ranks of the priesthood itself, who, feigning a love for the Church, lacking the firm protection of philosophy and theology…vaunt themselves as reformers of the Church.” He continues that these individuals “lay the axe not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fires. And having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to disseminate poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth from which they hold their hand, none that they do not strive to corrupt.” He concludes “none is more skilful, none more astute than they, in the employment of a thousand noxious arts; for they double the parts of rationalist and Catholic, and this so craftily that they easily lead the unwary into error; and since audacity is their chief characteristic, there is no conclusion of any kind from which they shrink or which they do not thrust forward with pertinacity and assurance.”

The sanctity of human life and in particular protecting the life of the unborn is non-negotiable and does trump all other moral issues facing our complex modern world. The Church could not be clearer on this. Look it up. Those peddling anything else would do well to reflect on Pascendi Dominici Gregis.

St. Thomas More, pray for us.

© Copyright 2004 Catholic Exchange

Craig Richardson is the founder of the recently launched Catholic Action Network, an organization committed to calling Catholics to authentic and faithful citizenship particularly on issues of life and family.