Bernardin and Obama and "Common Ground" (UPDATE)
Thursday July 2, 2009
The current president has cited the late cardinal before, most recently in his speech at Notre Dame: "He was a kind and good and wise man," Barack Obama said then of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin. "A saintly man." And the "Common...
Filed Under: Barack Obama, Cardinal Bernardin, Catholic journalists, Common Ground, Pope Benedict XVI, Vatican, White House
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David Gibson is an award-winning religion writer who specializes in writing about the Catholic Church, which he joined as a convert at the age of 30. He is the author The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World. He also wrote The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism. He has written about Catholicism for leading newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, Boston magazine, Fortune, Commonweal, and America. Gibson worked in Rome for Vatican Radio for several years and traveled frequently with Pope John Paul II. He later covered religion for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey. He has co-written several recent documentaries on Christianity for CNN. For further information check out his website at dgibson.com.Search This Blog
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And let us all remember it was Cardinal"cover-up' Law the un-official US primate who led the charge on Cardinal Bernardin..
Ed - (& David?)
Check out Carol Marin's recent column for further background on this 'question'. It's titled:
Let Bernardin's spirit guide Obama, pope
at www.suntimes.com
(url: http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/1642023,CST-EDT-carol28.article)
Be aware that the charge that Stephen Cook never really recanted still surfaces here in the midwest 'catholic' blogosphere. The complicated tensions in that charge lie just below the surface - and pop up whenever an effort is made to talk common ground.
It seems Common Ground is code for slight of hand. While being all for finding shared goals and beliefs it shouldn't be to the exclusion of addressing issues and finding compromise on things that each side oppose.
I wonder how many miles of this "Common Ground" will be placed in between the Pope and Obama in light of our President's easing of restrictions making it possible for federal tax dollars to go toward abortions?
Now as I've stated here in the past, personally I'm opposed to abortion but I do believe in a secular society that the legality should be decided on a county by county basis. Making federal taxes available means simply by paying these taxes I'm financially supporting a procedure I am vehemently opposed to.
Is this what Obama's idea of Common Ground is?
And sing all the praises of Bernadin now, but I don't remember so much as a single note being played for the man back in the day by the press. It seems the Press of today holds common ground with the Press of the past. Hypocrisy
You know, before we allow people to take on the mantle of Cardingal Bernardin, let's look at what he had to say about his "seamless garment" approach. He doesn't even think that those who subscribe to the philosophy can vote for a pro-choice politician:
"I don't see how you can subscribe to the consistent ethic and then vote for someone who feels that abortion is a 'basic right' of the individual." He went on to say, “I know that some people on the left, if I may use that label, have used the consistent ethic to give the impression that the abortion issue is not all that important anymore, that you should be against abortion in a general way but that there are more important issues, so don’t hold anybody’s feet to the fire just on abortion. That’s a misuse of the consistent ethic, and I deplore it.”
Bernardin's seamless garment, or "constant ethic" approach that President Obama is now touting as his guide is a useful tool for us to keep in mind that there are many issues that require our attention. However, when the unborn are being killed en masse, that is an overriding problem. It seems Cardinal Bernardin would agree.
C3: "Making federal taxes available means simply by paying these taxes I'm financially supporting a procedure I am vehemently opposed to."
Welcome to the United States, C3. Where have you been? Many of us have been paying taxes for programs that we vehemently oppose for years (Iraq war, subsidies to profitable corporations, the list is endless). When we raise an objection to it we are told to either leave or shut up by the guardians of liberty, the Christian Republican party.
Of those things paid for by the government, only one amounts to the termination of the lives of the most vulnerable members of society. And, just because some objectionable things are paid for by the government, it is not justifiable to then open the flood gates for all manner of immoral funding.
RJ,
Thank you for the most priggish of salutations. No kidding, we pay for things we are opposed to? I suppose the proper thing is to shut up when told and keep paying, right? Not by any means create a scuff, we wouldn't want to leave the comforts of our recently devalued homes and I don't know, maybe, uh, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?!?!
I don't know where you're from but where I come from if you get told to shut up and like it, you raise the rhetoric, volume, and get right up close and personal to make sure that everyone knows exactly who you are talking to.
The hopeless feeling of defeat and consequential concessions you are encouraging is the exact reason we are in this mess in the first place.
Last I checked it was the secular Democratic party that is hitting the mute button on this but I'll give you credit for one helluva good attempt at the old slight of hand, demonizing one group of people when it is the other that is doing the shhh'ing...
What I want to know is how do you part out the Catholic faith? It sounds like Obama feels that the abortion issue gets in the way of the "real issues". Unfortunately for him, the sanctity of life which includes abortion, is an integral teaching of the Catholic and many evangelical churches. Funny how people always want to throw out those integral, foundational teachings in the name of "common ground".
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