With fewer than two weeks to go until election day, the race for president is a toss-up. While some national polls have President George W. Bush with a 5-7 point lead, larger sample-size polls show Bush with a 0-3% advantage, well within the margin of error.
On the Democrat side are people like Robert McClory, a former priest and a professor of Journalism at Northwestern University. He wrote an article recently for the Chicago Tribune that typifies the tactics of the Left to inoculate Kerry from his horrendous abortion record. He claims abortion “does not exist in a hermetically sealed box all by itself. It exists in a complicated world where real people, including legislators, have to make practical, prudent decisions on what can work.” He added in “such a world the terms ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ lose their absolute character.” He calls the Republican “rallying cry (echoed by a tiny minority of Catholic bishops) that abortion trumps everything” simplistic sloganeering.
McClory also points to the Durbin study. “On affordable housing, expanding child tax credits, raising the minimum wage and the right to unionize — all matters the bishops strongly endorse — Republican Catholics gave zero support. That is, they unanimously voted against such legislation.” He finishes with the twisted “seamless-garment” theology that has infected so many clergy and theologians formed back in the 1960s and 1970s. “Perhaps then, the more relevant question in this election is: How can a Catholic vote in good conscience for a candidate who consistently announces a pie-in-the-sky opposition to abortion, but who refuses to support the kind of down-to-earth measures that can reduce the number of abortions in the here and now?”
Along this same line, Kerry supporters are also peddling a study “coincidently” released last week by Glen Harold Stassen, a professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary. The study claims the abortion rate declined prior to President Bush’s election but has increased since. The study’s not-so-subtle message is to provide the seamless garment crowd some tangible data to backup their theories by claiming President Clinton’s economic policies lowered the abortion rates while Bush’s “cruel” policies led to an increase. Lifenews.com debunks this theory and reveals the flaws in Stassen’s study. In their article Dr. Randy O'Bannon, director of education at the National Right to Life Committee, concludes, “[M]ost of the abortion decline in the 1990s occurred during the first few years. That's when the first President Bush was in office and shortly thereafter — before Clinton's economic policies would have had an effect.”
In the end, the debate over which candidate Catholics should support boils down to whether or not you believe the life issue is non-negotiable. On one side are people like Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, who said clairvoyantly back in March, “John Kerry…is going to have a very hard eight months.” He explained Kerry’s difficulty comes “precisely in explaining how one can claim to be a Catholic while denying what the Catholic Church has identified as a central, unchangeable teaching.” On the other are people like McClory and so many others who are peddling the same tired theology that appears more and more absurd with every sonogram done on an unborn child. The side that prevails will determine the next president.
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.
In electoral vote count projections, neither candidate is close to the magic 270 necessary for victory. One political website (realclearpolitics.com) on Wednesday showed Bush with 227 electoral votes based on solid or leaning states and Kerry at 206.
The Rasmussen polling firm has Bush with 222 projected electoral votes and Kerry with 190. More significantly, Rasmussen shows ten states with a combined 126 electoral votes in the toss-up column. These include Florida (27), Iowa (7), Michigan (17), Minnesota (10), Nevada (5), New Hampshire (4), New Mexico (5), Ohio (20), Pennsylvania (21), and Wisconsin (10). The good news for President Bush is that of these states, six went for Vice President Al Gore in 2000 (Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin). This means that Bush won before without the majority of the current toss-up states — states he might take this time.
What is noteworthy about these toss-up states is their significant Catholic population. This fact is not lost on either campaign or third-party groups focused on maximizing the Catholic vote for either candidate. This also explains why the intensity level is so high and points and counterpoints are flying back and forth about which candidate best represents Catholic teaching.
Pope John Paul II declares in Evangelium vitae, “Abortion and euthanasia are…crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize.” In November 2002, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life. The doctrinal note said, “John Paul II, continuing the constant teaching of the Church, has reiterated many times that those who are directly involved in lawmaking bodies have a ‘grave and clear obligation to oppose’ any law that attacks human life. For them, as for every Catholic, it is impossible to promote such laws or to vote for them.” Many view this document as Rome’s way of addressing the scandal pro-abortion Catholics like Kerry have committed by constantly opposing the Church’s teaching on life.
Those who take this Church teaching seriously see Senator John Kerry as a poster boy for “pro-abortion” Catholics, along with Senator Ted Kennedy, Senator Dick Durbin, and other notables. There is no question when it comes to the sanctity of human life, Kerry has rejected the Vatican’s call to oppose laws that attack human life. He has a twenty-year record of actively working for the powerful pro-abortion lobby. On this point, there is no debate. This alone disqualifies Kerry’s candidacy for those Catholics who take seriously these words of the Congressional for the Doctrine of Faith: “Democracy must be based on the true and solid foundation of non-negotiable ethical principles, which are the underpinning of life in society.”
Credible Catholic officials are challenging Kerry on his extreme pro-abortion record. On Wednesday, a newspaper advertisement consisting of an open letter ran in five swing state (Pennsylvania, Iowa, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Florida). Nearly forty prominent Catholics, including Senators Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback, former US Ambassador to the Holy See Thomas Melady, and Bowie Kuhn, former Commissioner of Major League Baseball, signed the “Open Letter from Fellow Catholics to John Kerry.” The ad, paid for by the Bush-Cheney campaign, said, “our faith is tied to reason. We choose goodness and truth not only because faith tells us to, but also because doing otherwise would be inherently wrong.”
The letter continues that innocent “human life must always be protected. Senator John Kerry, you have said that ‘life begins at conception,’ but you have persistently supported abortion and oppose all sensible restrictions on the practice.” After presenting a litany of anti-life votes Kerry has cast over the years, it continues, “apparently, when it comes to the issue of the right to life, you follow neither your own faith nor your own reason.” The letter closes, “As Americans and Catholics, both faith and reason lead us to President George W. Bush as the choice for life, compassion and justice for all. For that reason, we are urging fellow Catholics to join us in voting for the president on November 2.”
State Representative Brian Golden, a pro-life Catholic Democrat from Massachusetts, feels so strongly about the sanctity of life he has endorsed President Bush over favorite son Kerry. He also signed the open letter. Golden says Kerry is one of the most “fervent” supporters of abortion in the Senate. He added that for Kerry’s 20 years in the Senate, the presidential contender has been consistently wrong “on matters most fundamental to Catholics.”
Golden is not the only pro-life Democrat to recognize Kerry’s unacceptable abortion record. Democrats for Life of America (DFLA) announced they have decided not to endorse either presidential candidate. According to CNSNews.com, DFLA said in an e-mail, “Kerry is not pro-life and Bush is not a Democrat.” The group said another reason they are not supporting Kerry is that “one of his first acts after being elected would be to overturn the Mexico City Policy and allow US funds to be used for abortions overseas.”
Despite the clarity of the Church’s teaching on life, some Catholics hold that it is not only acceptable to vote for Kerry but that he is the better choice. They do not deny that abortion is important, rather they claim it is just one of many issues to consider like the Iraq war and spending levels for the poor. Kerry himself outlined this position recently. According to the Denver Post, he urged Catholic voters to “look at his entire record in public office, and not just his position on abortion rights.” Kerry then cited Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's recent letter and claimed the letter “said it is not necessarily sinful for Catholics to consider all aspects of a public official's record.” He also “cited a Democratic Senate survey that tallied votes on all the social justice, environmental, anti-abortion and foreign policy issues listed as concerns by America's Catholic bishops. Kerry said he had the best record in the Senate when it came to Catholic issues.” Fellow pro-abortion Catholic Senator Dick Durbin put the flawed survey together last summer to help Kerry. Incredibly, the survey weighs abortion, which is always intrinsically evil, equally with issues like media ownership and mercury exposure reduction.
