One of the publications that I read on a regular basis is The
National Catholic Reporter. Although its intended audience is the Catholic
population, I have found that the articles it prints are well written, and it
covers a range of viewpoints, from liberal to conservative, and some that are
entirely neutral.
This is how Wikipedia describes it:
“The National Catholic
Reporter (NCR) is a progressive national
newspaper in the United States that reports on issues related to the Catholic Church.
Based in Kansas City, Missouri, NCR was
founded by Robert Hoyt in 1964. Hoyt
wanted to bring the professional standards of secular news reporting
to the press that covers Catholic news, saying that "if the mayor of a
city owned its only newspaper, its citizens will not learn what they need and
deserve to know about its affairs". The publication, which operates
outside the authority of the Catholic Church, is independently owned and
governed by a lay board of directors. “
NCR has won the "General Excellence" award from the Catholic Press Association in the category of national news publications six times between 2008 and 2014. The Catholic Press Association in June 2017 awarded former NCR editor and publisher Tom Fox its highest honor for publishers, the Bishop John England Award.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Catholic_Reporter
A few days ago, the Reporter printed
two articles that highlight the difficultly inherent in discussing a very controversial
topic – abortion. The article below goes into more detail, but the short
version is that some of the folks at Notre Dame University do not want to
invite Joe Biden to attend this year’s commencement because he is a Democrat.
As we are all well aware, the Democratic Party believes that abortion should be
safe, legal, and rare.
Somehow, that makes the Republican
Party “pro- life”, even though the majority of Republican Party favor the death
penalty.
Sister Joan Chittester provides us
with the best possible description of the “pro-life” Republican Party:
"I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that makes you pro-life," she shared. "In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed." Chittister continued by noting those views aren't "pro-life" at all. "That’s pro-birth," she said, adding that society could benefit from a broader, more complex conversation on the subject.
Before
Roe v. Wade became the law of the land, a Republican governor, Ronald Reagan,
signed one of the earlier liberal abortion laws. Even though he later came to
regret his decision, the fact remains that he DID sign the bill into law.
Joseph
Biden Jr. is a devout Catholic, and carries a rosary with him every day. Even
he personally is opposed to abortion, he believes that laws (even ones you
disagree with) should be obeyed.
On occasion,
the president has been denied communion because of his position.
Some religious
leaders have gone as far as saying that “you can’t be a Democrat and a good Catholic”,
but the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops takes a more nuanced stand:
On
Nov. 7, president Jose Gomez issued a statement congratulating Biden and
recognizing him as only the second Catholic president in a country that’s
one-fifth Catholic. “Catholics have a special duty to be peacemakers, to
promote fraternity and mutual trust,” Gomez said. Then, 10 days later, after
hearing concern from some of the Conference’s other leaders, Gomez wrote a new
statement, announcing a working group to deal with the “difficult and complex”
situation of a Catholic president promoting policies including abortion access
and broad civil protections for LGBTQ people.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/12/09/biden-catholic-president-jfk-kennedy-bishops/
In October, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a Notre Dame alumna and faculty member, was confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Nearly 20 Notre Dame faculty members attended a White House ceremony Sept. 26 announcing her nomination, which was criticized as a COVID-19 "superspreader" event. Notre Dame President John Jenkins was spotted there not wearing a mask, a decision he later apologized for after contracting COVID-19 himself. At the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, among the Trump flags and "Stop the Steal" banners, a "God, Country, Notre Dame" flag could also be seen on display.
(On a
trip to Colorado last fall, we saw a billboard that read “LGBT = Liberty, Guns,
Bible, and Trump).
Given
the recent spate of unwelcome scrutiny, Notre Dame may decide to punt on or
postpone another national controversy. Yet should Biden receive and accept an
invite to campus, whenever that may be, it's likely that some of the very
individuals and groups present in the White House Rose Garden last fall will be
the very ones protesting his arrival, reflecting both a divided church and
campus.
https://www.ncronline.org/news/people/will-biden-be-invited-notre-dames-commencement
More than
200 years ago, our Founding Fathers strongly felt that
religion and state should not be mixed, but that’s easier said than done.
Al
Smith was the first Roman
Catholic to be nominated for president of the United States by a major party.
His 1928 presidential candidacy mobilized both Catholic and anti-Catholic
voters. Many Protestants (including German Lutherans and Southern
Baptists) feared his
candidacy, believing that the Pope in Rome would dictate his policies. Smith was
also a committed "wet", which was a term used for opponents of Prohibition; as New York governor, he had repealed the
state's prohibition law. As a "wet", Smith attracted voters who
wanted beer, wine and liquor and did not like dealing with criminal
bootleggers, along with voters who were outraged that new criminal gangs had
taken over the streets in most large and medium-sized cities. Incumbent
Republican Secretary of Commerce Herbert
Hoover was aided
by national
prosperity and the
absence of American involvement in war, and he defeated Smith in a landslide in
1928.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Smith
The second Roman Catholic to be nominated for the presidency
was John F. Kennedy in 1960. Like Al Smith before him, he was opposed by at least
some voters strictly because of his religion. Kennedy decided that the best way
to fight the religious bias against Catholics was to address the problem
directly. On September 12, 1960, he addressed the Greater
Houston Ministerial Association, a group of Protestant ministers, on the issue
of his religion. You can read his entire address at the link below:
Here’s
a key paragraph:
“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is
absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be
Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners
for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds
or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely
because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the
people who might elect him.”
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16920600
In November of 1964, noted conservative Barry Goldwater had this to say
about the Religious Right:
"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control
of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a
terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and
governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in
the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal
with them."
Barry Goldwater also was “pro-choice”:
“A woman has a right to an abortion. That’s a decision that’s
up to the pregnant woman, not to the pope or some do-gooders or the Religious
Right.”
For the record, Donald Trump was “pro-choice” most of his
life, but became “pro-life” in 2012 when it became politically expedient to do
so.
What’s truly illogical is the religious right’s devotion to Donald Trump.
A notable
fact in 2016 was that exit polls showed about 80% of white evangelical
Christians supported Trump in spite of his unfamiliarity with the Bible, his
divorces, his vulgar rhetoric and his association with porn stars. Trump's
reputation in moral terms hasn't changed all that much during his time in
office, but there is little evidence of slippage among these faith voters.
Once
upon a time, conservatives stood for ideas and values that mattered and so did
the Republican Party that gave them a political home. For example, in recent
years, at least since the Obama presidency, our conservative Catholic friends
have been keen to champion the rights of conscience. They have done so at a
time when too many liberals have abandoned their birthright as guardians of the
rights of conscience. Even if I have thought our conservative friends at times
were excessive or worse in their claims, at least conscience is a principle
worth fighting for.
Then
along came Trump. He does not, as Obama did, confront conservatives with a
challenge to conscience on this point of policy or that. They are expected to
abandon it altogether if it conflicts with fealty to their liege lord. The
proceedings in Orlando last weekend would be sad if they were not so
frightening. What has happened to conservatism and to the once great party of
Lincoln? And how will we, as a culture, retrieve the parts of conservatism that
balance the whole?
https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/distinctly-catholic/trump-still-golden-calf-gop
You’ll
never convince a Trump supporter that they should “switch sides” due to the
fact that millions of Americans believe that God made Trump president.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/27/millions-of-americans-believe-god-made-trump-president-216537/
What we are witnessing literally is a Trump cult, much like the one that Jim Jones led in 1978:
https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2018/11/forty-years-later-history-repeats-itself.html
If you don’t believe me, why else would there be a “golden
calf” at the recent CPAC convention?
Abortion is a VERY COMPLICATED TOPIC, and the article below explain why:
https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2018/07/roe-v-wade-is-in-news-again.html
https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2011/01/roe-vs-wade.html
The
Republican Party is determined to close as many clinics (like Planned
Parenthood) as possible, even though the closures do not reduce abortions because
women can no longer get birth control.
Venezuela
provides the best example of this phenomenon:
As oil
prices have declined, the economy in Venezuela has rapidly gone downhill,
resulting in widespread poverty.
One of
the casualties of declining income is birth control.
When
Hugo Chavez led the country, birth control was subsidized and widely available
- but that is no longer true.
Around
Caracas, the capitol, a pack of three condoms costs $4.40 — three times
Venezuela’s monthly minimum wage of $1.50.
Birth
control pills cost more than twice as much, roughly $11 a month, while an IUD,
or intrauterine device, can cost more than $40 — more than 25 times the minimum
wage. And that does not include a doctor’s fee to have the device put in.
With
the cost of contraception so far out of reach, women are increasingly
resorting to abortions, which are illegal and, in the worst cases, can cost
them their lives.
María
Ferreira, 23, and her husband, Joseph Cordova, 25, carefully plan their sex
life around the number of condoms they can afford each month.
Many
women who grew up believing that Mr. Chávez’s political movement, known as
Chavismo, would springboard them out of poverty, offering them education and
career opportunities, now face the task of raising four, six or 10 children at
a time when the basics of family care — food, soap, diapers — arrive
intermittently or not at all.
As
Venezuela’s economy — long buoyed by its vast oil reserves — began to tumble in
2014, the result of plummeting crude oil prices and poor
financial management, the government’s purchasing power dove.
By
2015, contraceptives, once free at government hospitals and broadly
affordable at private pharmacies, began to disappear. And women who could once
plan their futures — thanks to contraception — began to lose control.
There
is no easy solution to the crisis in Venezuela. At the moment, the only
possible ways to help are higher oil prices, a more diversified economy, and
better government oversight - and none of those things are likely.
The
United States CAN help - but only in a limited way.
The Mexico
City policy, sometimes referred to by its critics as the global gag
rule, is a United States government policy that blocked U.S.
federal funding for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that provided
abortion counseling or referrals, advocated to decriminalize abortion, or
expanded abortion services. When in effect, the Mexico City policy is a U.S.
government policy that requires foreign non-governmental organizations to
certify that they will not "perform or actively promote abortion as a
method of family planning" with non-U.S. funds as a condition for
receiving U.S. global family planning assistance and, as of January 23, 2017,
any other U.S. global health assistance, including U.S. global HIV (under
PEPFAR) and maternal and child health (MCH) assistance.
The
Mexico City policy was first implemented on January 20, 1985 by the second
Reagan administration.
Since
that time, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has
enforced the policy during all subsequent Republican administrations and
has rescinded the policy at the direction of all Democratic
administrations.
After its
initial implementation by Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1985, the
policy was rescinded by Democratic President Bill Clinton in January 1993,
re-instituted in January 2001 by Republican President George W. Bush, rescinded
in January 2009 by Democratic President Barack Obama, and reinstated in January
2017 when Republican President Donald Trump took office. In an address to the
World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Anthony Fauci, Chief Medical Advisor to
the President, confirmed that President Joe Biden would rescind the policy, as
with his Democratic predecessors; the recission occurred later in January 2021.
Research
shows that by reducing funding for family planning organizations which use
abortion as one of many methods of family planning, the Mexico City policy has
had the inadvertent impact of increasing unintended pregnancies and
abortion.
That
last sentence best explains the paradox of Republican thinking. By reducing the
number of clinics in a state, in an effort to reduce abortion, MORE abortions
become likely due to the reduced availability of birth control. As a reminder,
the last time that the number of abortions increased from one year to the next
was in 2006, when George W. Bush was president.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico_City_policy
It
remains to be seen whether Joe Biden gives the commencement speech at Notre
Dame in May, but my guess is that he will – and that’s a very good thing.
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