"The Catholic case for Barack Obama" has rarely been put so convincingly as it is in this Newsweek essay. Or, at least, a case for voting freely, according to one's conscience and the range of issues. The argument is made by three leading Catholic legal and theological scholars, Nicholas P. Cafardi, M. Cathleen Kaveny and Douglas W. Kmiec, in "A Catholic Brief for Obama: Why the faithful can in good conscience back the Democrat."
The essay is a response to a pointed piece in the magazine by George Weigel, in which he coined the phrase, "Obamapologetics." Not bad. But the three scholars have a pretty good rejoinder. A choice excerpt:
Is Obama the perfect pro-life candidate? No. Is he preferable to the self-proclaimed "pro-lifer" McCain? Yes, because promoting life in actuality beats McCain's label and all of Weigel's elegant theorizing and hand-wringing. The Republican alternative familiar to Weigel is simultaneously self-righteous, easy and ineffective. The Democratic path is practical, anything but easy--as no act of bona fide love of neighbor ever is--but inviting of a life-affirming outcome.
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I'm in total agreement
You know, reading this, I can imagine Cafardi, Kaveny, and Kmiec writing "A Catholic Brief for Douglas: Why the faithful can in good conscience back the Democrat" before the 1860 election. Same logic.
True love of neighbor demands defending the weakest in our society; and the weakest, most downtrodden, most voiceless is the preborn child. It would be difficult to see how the aborted child would see "the Democratic path" as "life-affirming."
If the show weren't so pathetic, it would be fun to watch these three doing contortions to try to reconcile Obamaism with the Catholic Church, and, indeed, the ecumenical Christian tradition. (Heck, you can't reconcile their extreme position on abortion with Hinduism or Buddhism either!)
I don't see any difficulty in reconciling Obama with Catholicism. For me it's simple. Assuming that "culture of life" is the major issue for the Catholic voter, which president will actually affirm more lives in the way that really counts - by saving them?
McCain talks the pro-life line like a pro, but he's got a problem: he needs those unborn babies to mobilize his base. Dead fetuses are politically expedient, because they're something he can claim to crusade against, and he can blame the Left when nothing gets done. We've seen this over and over, where pro-life governments will talk about abortion during election campaigns, but then get into office and do nothing substantive. Didn't we just finish seeing it with Bush?
Obama, on the other hand, is proposing measures to change the landscape . . . not by changing the laws, but by changing the culture. He wants to make it so that women who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant have a real choice to KEEP the baby. For that to be a reality, women need good jobs with realistic wages, medical coverage, and legally mandated maternity leave. They need access to affordable and flexible education programs; a pregnancy during one's college years shouldn't amount to a life sentence behind the counter at McDonald's. For that matter, what about preventing unexpected pregnancies before they happen by educating young people about birth control *before* they become sexually active, and by making sure birth control options are within people's financial reach? (That's medical care again.) I could go on and on. These are things Obama is prepared to do.
I believe that, if America just snapped its fingers and made abortion illegal, women would return to the back-alley-abortion days of yore, for the simple reason that women who are pregnant with a child they know they can't care for are desperate for a solution. I know I would be! Isn't it better to create a world in which these women don't have to be desperate, in which they CAN care for the baby, in which they have a real choice? Women who aren't desperate for abortions can realistically see choosing life as a solution, but first we need to change that level of desperation by changing the society in which we live.
And hey, speaking of the culture of life, what happens once those babies are out of the womb? Which candidate is more pro-life for born babies, in terms of pollution, health care, foreign policy, and the like? Even if "the culture of life" is to be a Catholic's number one priority, life on the other side of the birth canal still counts.
Given the choice we have between more talk about outlawing abortion on the one hand, and actually doing something to reduce the frequency of abortion on the other hand, the sensible, responsible, morally defensible choice is very clear. It is Obama hands down!
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