Recently in Abortion Category

This morning's Washington Post made me choke on my coffee:  "Catholic Church Gives D.C. Ultimatum."  The Catholic Archdiocese is playing political hardball by threatening to cut off social services to the city's poor--including the homeless, the hungry, the sick, and children--if D.C. expands gay and lesbian civil rights and recognizes same-sex marriage.

That's right.  The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington is holding poor people hostage in order to keep gay and lesbian persons from getting married.  They are willing to trade the indigent for getting their theological way.  

I don't like to criticize other people's religious faiths or churches.  There's plenty enough to criticize in my own Protestant tradition.  In the last year, however, we have witnessed a new authoritarian activism on the part of the Roman Church hierarchy that has an impact well beyond the Catholic Church.  This new coercive Catholicism is akin to the development of the Christian Right in evangelical churches in the early 1980s--a religious-political movement that reshaped American culture.  This is everybody's business.

In the last year, new Catholic politics emerged in the Prop 8 campaign in California where the church invested vast resources of money and leadership to overturn gay marriage; and then did the same in Maine.  Last week, in a political maneuver worthy of Tom DeLay, authoritarian Catholic bishops forced a Democratic Congress to adopt the Stupak Amendment undermining the legal right to choice by threatening to torpedo health reform.  Now they threaten the D.C. City Council?  Using the lives of poor people as a political tool?

I don't want to be alarmist about this.  Nor, in this ecumenical age, do I wish to be seen as a nativist calling for a new anti-Catholic crusade.  That would be a terrible misrepresentation of these concerns.  Nor do I want to offend Catholic friends and family.  But it is profoundly disturbing that the Roman Catholic Church appears to be using threats and fear to manipulate a democratic political process to enforce Catholic doctrine regarding abortion and human sexuality.  There seems to be a political pattern developing that should cause broad-minded citizens--Catholics included--to ask some serious questions regarding what is happening within the Catholic hierarchy.

Recently, Congressman Patrick Kennedy did just that.  In an argument with his own bishop about health care, Kennedy reminded the Bishop of Rhode Island that American Catholics have a long history of diversity and dissent regarding formal Catholic teaching.  Disagreement with the Catholic Church was, Kennedy argued, part of the dynamic of being Catholic in a democratic society.  Here's the bishop's answer:

"The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy on some issues does not make me any less of a Catholic." Well, in fact, Congressman, in a way it does. Although I wouldn't choose those particular words, when someone rejects the teachings of the Church, especially on a grave matter, a life-and-death issue like abortion, it certainly does diminish their ecclesial communion, their unity with the Church. This principle is based on the Sacred Scripture and Tradition of the Church and is made more explicit in recent documents.

For example, the "Code of Canon Law" says, "Lay persons are bound by an obligation and possess the right to acquire a knowledge of Christian doctrine adapted to their capacity and condition so that they can live in accord with that doctrine." (Canon 229, #1)

The "Catechism of the Catholic Church" says this: "Mindful of Christ's words to his apostles, 'He who hears you, hears me,' the faithful receive with docility the teaching and directives that their pastors give them in different forms." (#87)

It is worrisome that a Roman Catholic bishop would remind a member of the Kennedy political family that "docility" is the primary calling of faithful Catholic laity.  What about courage, compassion, and creativity?  

Oddly enough, Roman Catholic leaders have adopted a strategy of authoritarian engagement with the body politic at the very moment at which their church is declining. One in ten Americans is now an ex-Roman Catholic, with numbers dwindling, churches closing, a decline in the number of priests and religious, and with only immigration holding the number of communicants steady. With the church clearly in crisis, the bishops apparently have chosen to use the sick, poor, homeless, children, the faithful laity, and marginal as tools to increase their public power and influence by coercing public policy to fit their theology.  You'd think that they would be looking inward to see what is eroding Catholic congregations instead of lobbying Congress and threatening politicians. 

This is not what John F. Kennedy would have imagined for his beloved church when he so courageously broke through the boundaries of anti-Catholic prejudice to become the nation's first Catholic president.  The eternal flame at his grave in Arlington witnesses to the ancient Catholic vision of universal peace, justice, and love. The new authoritarian Catholicism is not only playing politics but it is replacing a more generous vision of historic Catholic faith--the traditional one that sides with the poor, the oppressed, and the outcast--with a vision of political power.  For that, I am deeply sad.  Coercive religion should have no place in a church or a pluralistic, democratic nation--much less in City Hall or the halls of the United States Congress.

Rev. Donna Schaper is the Senior Pastor at the Judson Memorial Church in New York City.    

William James in his marvelous book, THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, speaks of the transition from Catholicism to Protestantism as the transition of the brocaded, artistic, colorful Baroque to one man in a black suit carrying a black book which he places on a plain table in an unornamented meeting house.  His observations are on target.   There is nothing perfect about Protestantism.  Still it has a few values that might make a non-violent approach possible for those of us who spiritually and theologically value the right to choose an abortion.  With Hillary Clinton, many of us think abortion should be safe, legal and rare.  We also think it is a constitutionally guaranteed right.  We also have respect for the constitutional promotion of a brocaded right to the separation of church and state.

When Roman Catholics take up a separate offering to remove abortion from federal funding and send their people home with an experience of the body of Christ - and a postcard to send to their congressional representatives - they violate both the body of Christ and the constitution.  These are not small matters.  Some of us are tempted to do more than growl: our stomachs churn at the deeper issue of one theology dominating another, illegally.  Some of us find ourselves filling up with a kind of hate at injustice, abuse of the constitution, power gone amok.  Some women are wearing T-shirts saying that we are feminists formerly for Obama.  Not me: I see what he is up against. We surely understand the President's dilemma and praise our baroque friends for their protection of immigrants, gays, even women to a point in the new and overall positive health care bill.  We sense ourselves eating different bread but not being part of a different body.

The reason hate is so tempting is that we are in fact so close to our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters.  In the name of all that is good about Jesus and his international body, I spend a good bit of time praying for the hate and anger to subside.  I also pray for the right lawsuit to stop my sisters and brothers from abusing the constitution by handing out post cards and taking up special offerings.   Protestants may be plain but we frown on this sort of imperial moral legislating.  We actually believe in the separation of Church and State and hope no (consenting and believing) Catholic will ever have an abortion.

It is not hateful to call to account. Nor is it hateful to enjoy the right to be different.  While frowning on the temptation to hate a group of unmarried men, namely the bishops, who don't even represent their people, who believe more than not in the right to choose an abortion being protected by the federal government, we who are hurt and we who will be hurt by the lack of funding for abortions have a right to call for strong countervailing action.  A good lawsuit against the postcards would go a long way towards resolving this dilemma.  Then we might go back to living on a fair and even playing field when it comes to politics, theocracies and women's rights.

Aborttion has been part of the healthcare debate from the beginning.  The effort was supposed to be that the healthcare bill would be "abortion neutral" meaning it neither expanded the opportunities for abortion, nor restricted them.  Now it seems that no longer suffices for the US Catholic Bishops who want to impose their view on abortion on all of American citizens and make this an anti-abortion health Care bill.  Sara Posner at Relgion Dispatches explains the current fight over abortion in the health care bill:

As the House of Representatives health care reform bill edges closer to a vote, anti-choice Democrats continue their threats to hijack the bill over abortion funding. These members, and their supporters, are the very constituency Democrats have been urged to placate on abortion-related issues. That strategy, misguided to begin with, seems even more so as the "pro-life" Democrats are trying to bring down their own party's signature legislative initiative.

As part of Democrats' re-tooling in the post-"values voters" election of 2004, they tried to be more "friendly" to religion. A big part of that strategy included making anti-choice Democrats feel more "welcome" in the party by being less doctrinaire on choice, and acknowledging the claimed heartfelt religious belief at the core of these Democrats' position.

But now some of these Democrats, who claim to be pro-life, are playing politics with health care reform, aligning themselves more closely with the anti-choice hard right and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) than their own party. They insist that efforts to ensure that no public funds will be used to cover abortion services are insufficient. This game-playing is not about public funding of abortion, already outlawed in the Hyde Amendment (which bars federal funding from being used to pay for abortions for low-income women under Medicaid and other programs). Indeed, the House bill already incorporates Hyde through its own amendment authored by pro-choice California Democrat, Rep. Lois Capps.

Instead, these Democrats, led by Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, are pushing for an amendment to restrict womens' access to abortion. And that's not theology, it's politics.

Even so, says Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, those attempting to torpedo health care reform over the abortion issue do not represent mainstream religious views. "Pro-choice religious groups and leaders are very mainstream. They are supporting health care reform in the broadest framework," she said in an interview with RD.

While the USCCB has taken a hard line on opposing health care reform (which it claims to support) if abortion isn't sufficiently restricted, it does not represent the views of most Catholics. A recent poll commissioned by Catholics for Choice found that 68% of Catholics disapproved of the Bishops' opposition to health care reform that includes abortion coverage; 56% believed the Bishops shouldn't even be taking a position on the health care reform legislation. The views of the country's 65 million Catholics, said Jon O'Brien, the group's president, "are not represented by 350 members of the USCCB."

Other pro-choice religious leaders are similarly dismayed. Rev. Debra Haffner, president of the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing, reacting to efforts to restrict abortion coverage in health care reform, wrote on her blog, "It is profoundly unjust when the private moral choices of women... are subject to majority vote and political trading. There can be no common ground when votes are allowed to strip people of their existing rights."

Planned Parenthood, said Richards, wants the Hyde Amendment repealed because low-income women should have equal access to abortion services. But, she added, "we're not taking the position that health care reform is the place to relitigate that issue... unfortunately a handful of people would rather bring down health care reform in its entirety than provide the coverage women already have."

Read the entire article on abortion and health care over at Religion Dispatches:

Randall Terry is back with his after-life threats just in time for Halloween as reported by Associated Press:

WASHINGTON -- Anti-abortion activist Randall Terry is calling on people to burn effigies of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this Halloween, as part of a "Burn in Hell" video contest to protest the health care legislation in Congress.

Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, said Tuesday that the contest serves as a political and spiritual statement that "gives people a chance to peacefully vent their rage."

"If Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid force us to pay for child killing and they die unrepentant, they will burn in hell for this," Terry said in a telephone interview.

But House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., called the contest "unfortunate."

"I don't think appealing to people's anger and in effect inciting them to acts which either display or in any way project violent acts is consistent with rational discussion of very critical issues," Hoyer told reporters.

A YouTube video of the contest instructions shows how to print a poster of Reid and Pelosi and construct a stand for it. The clip shows a person dousing the Democratic leaders' images with flammable liquid. The next scene shows their picture going up in flames. People are then encouraged to take pictures, record and submit online the footage of their Oct. 31 protests.

"No, this is not a threat to their body," an unidentified man says in the instructional video, "but it is a threat to their soul."

While this is a pretty spooky ploy I think most pro-lifers are embarrassed by these tactics finding them counter-productive as well as opposed to the American spirit of civil debate and disagreement.  Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners, whom I know to be personally opposed to abortion, responded to Terry's Burn in Hell proposal with this statment:

By John Gehring
Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good

Just in time for Halloween, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights is once again spooked about all those "radical secularists" lurking ominously behind ever corner. In case you didn't notice, these godless heathens are "waging war" against American culture and plotting to "smash the last vestiges of Christianity in America." So argues the irrepressible cultural warrior in a recent On Faith commentary and in his new book, "Secular Sabatoge: How Liberals Are Destroying Religion and Culture in America."

You have to hand it to the guy. Donohue makes righteous indignation and throwing rhetorical bombs into an art form. He is about as subtle as a fist in your face. If you are looking for reasoned and sensible analysis turn on PBS, Donohue seems to snarl. His latest depiction of cultural doom probably elicits a yawn from most religious Americans who are not obsessed with the bogeymen of multiculturalism, secularism, homosexuality and Hollywood hedonism that Donohue rails against with a bullying style.

Everyday in our churches, mosques and synagogues people of faith gather humbly to pray for wisdom, compassion and justice. We give public expression to this faith by comforting the sick, welcoming the strangers among us and seeking peace in a world torn by violence. We lobby Congress to pass health-care reform, fix a broken immigration system and address global climate change as profound moral issues. Even on difficult issues, we reject culture-war showdowns by encouraging pro-choice and pro-life elected officials to find common ground and reduce abortions by increasing support for pregnant women, expanding adoption opportunities and preventing unintended pregnancies.

Keeping track of Donohue's latest offensive comment keeps the watchdogs at Media Matters for America busy. Here's a few of his signature gems:

▪ "Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular...Hollywood likes anal sex." MSNBC, Scarborough Country, 12/8/04

▪ "A lot of these people are gold diggers looking to get money from the Catholic Church."  -Speaking about the clergy sex abuse scandal. The Last Word with Matt Cooper 5/29/2009

At least when he gets to feeling down about things, Donohue raises his chin and cheers himself up with this comforting thought:

▪ "The culture war is up for grabs. The good news is that religious conservatives continue to breed like rabbits, while secular saboteurs have shut down: they're too busy walking their dogs, going to bathhouses and aborting their kids. Time, it seems, is on the side of the angels."  On Faith, Washington Post, 10/19/09

It's sad, if unsurprising, that the media regularly turns to Donohue for a "Catholic view" on issues. While Donohue's bluster makes for sensational television, he rarely raises his voice to speak about issues at the heart of Catholic social teaching. While the U.S. Catholic bishops' 2008 election-year statement on political responsibility emphasized a consistent ethic of life tradition that recognizes torture, unjust war, the death penalty, genocide, racism and poverty as "direct assaults on innocent human life," Donohue is uncharacteristically mute on these points. Abortion is not the only "life issue" for Catholics. As Auxiliary Bishop Gabino Zavala of Los Angeles told the Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr. last year: "We are not a one-issue Church...but that's not what always comes out."

We live in an age where the shrillest voices often drown out sober debate and thoughtful insights. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh watch their ratings soar with every outrageous remark. Bill Donohue gets invited on TV because he bellows and bloviates with the best of them. While some enjoy the antics, most of us are tired of the noise machine. Faith and reason are not enemies, but together help illuminate our path through the dark forests of fear, ignorance and injustice. Sometimes we just need to turn down the volume and tune out the shouters to find our way.