David Gibson: July 2008 Archives

As reports continue to cite Catholics like Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine or Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as veep short-listers for Obama, the McCain camp appears to have countered with a little-noticed event that could have large implications should Obama try to shore up his Catholic flank with the No. 2 pick. Yesterday in Denver, John McCain and his wife Cindy met with Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput, who is perhaps the most visible and outspoken churchman for denying communion to pro-choice Catholic pols.

Chaput has also recently challenged Catholics who are thinking of voting for Obama that they could only do so if they will be able to explain their reasons, "with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them face to face in the next life--which we most certainly will. If we're confident that these victims will accept our motives as something more than an alibi, then we can proceed." (Chaput is even clearer on why Catholics cannot vote for pro-choice pols in his new book, "Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life.")

With St. Louis Archbishop Raymond L. Burke having decamped to Rome to head the Vatican equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court--"The appointment is going to make every pro-choice Catholic politician very worried," as church pundit Father Thomas Reese put it--Chaput is even more prominent, but also maybe more isolated within the U.S. hierarchy, a large majority of which does not agree with Chaput's approach--just as he has made it clear he disagrees with his brother bishops.

So why is McCain reaching out to Chaput? The Denver prelate has no connection to McCain's home state of Arizona, nor did McCain meet with Washington's Archbishop Donald Wuerl. Chaput said afterwards that the meeting was private and no comment would be forthcoming. But McCain's courting of the Colorado churchman could shore up his bona fides with religious conservatives across denominational lines, who are more likely to join together in an "ecumenism of the barricades" against liberals in their own churches than find common ground with their co-religionists. 

A renewal of what Chaput called the "wafer wars" of the 2004 campaign--with pols and prelates battling over who is worthy to receive and who is not--would be ugly, but it might serve the McCain camp if it peeled off conservatives, especially some Catholics who have been flirting with Obama's "catholic" (small "c" is intentional) vision of the common good. Will that give Obama pause when he looks at a potential Catholic running mate?

It took five centuries and a culture war, but maybe the Reformation is finally over. Now it's schism all over.

Moreover, religious organizations, specifically churches, seem increasingly vulnerable. This WorldNetDaily piece lists the number of church shootings in the last couple of years, most notably the December 2007 shootings at a missionary training center near Denver and a well-known megachurch, New Life Church in Colorado Springs, which left four people dead. (The gunman was stopped by an armed guard.)

The problem, of course, is that many view the Second Amendment with reverence that surpasses even the First Amendment, or their reverence for Holy Writ, and polls show that  while the public is still supportive of some gun control laws, Americans are increasingly against further restrictions. (Check out this ReligionLink edition for other facts about the issue, and links to pro-gun Christian groups--among them my favorite, as a Catholic, the St. Gabriel Possenti Society, a group that promotes self-defense through gun ownership and is named after a Catholic seminarian in Italy whose "marksmanship and proficiency with handguns single-handedly saved" a village from a band of nationalist soldiers in 1860.)

Most faith groups have statements endorsing some form of gun control, but insiders will tell you that liberal religious groups don't see the issue as a winner, while conservatives don't want it to distract attention from their pro-life campaigns. One of the best initiatives out there is the God Not Guns Coalition, a project of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The coalition held its first nationwide "God Not Guns Sabbath" in September 2007.

Some will accuse advocates of gun control of "playing politics" with tragedies like the one in Knoxville, much as was done after Virginia Tech. As if such episodes should cause us to keep quiet rather than speak out. Trying to draw conclusions from actors and their targets is perilous; the Knoxville shooter was apparently a down and out fellow who was angry at liberals--odd, as liberal policies may have been his best chance--but in all these cases we are dealing with psychologically unstable people. Access to guns is the problem. (I wonder how many will highlight the Knoxville case as an example of anti-religious bias in the U.S., as was done with the Colorado shootings.)

Barack Obama is of course "gun shy" after his comments about "bitter" working class types and guns and religion--and his moderated reaction to the landmark US Supreme Court gun ruling last June (The District of Columbia v. Heller) shows he is, probably wisely, not about to make gun control a campaign issue.

But that doesn't mean religious organizations shouldn't be more vocal, or give him cover (so to speak). Instead, religious leaders--generally with the exception of inner-city congregations--would rather ignore the issue. Others, like the leadership of New Life Church in Colorado, say the shootings show why churches should have armed guards and congregants should pack heat. Not what Jesus would do, I think.