Guest Editorial: Doug Kmiec, 'A Prayer From Barack Obama'
That “we can live with one another in a way that reconciles the beliefs of each with the good of all.”
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LOS ANGELES (Catholic Online) - In the Feb. 26 Democratic debate, Tim Russert asked Sen. Barack Obama what he thought of minister Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement of him.
Obama said he denounced it, which was good enough for everybody but Sen. Hillary Clinton, who demanded that Obama also reject it. Obama, with bemused annoyance, complied, but I thought, uh-oh, here we go, will Republicans dissatisfied with their default nominee be the next potential votes denounced and rejected?
Russert didn’t ask, and Obama said he welcomed support from a wide range of people including Republicans and independents. What a relief!
In an essay for Slate magazine (“Reaganites for Obama?” Feb. 13), I suggested that two groups I know well — Reaganites and Catholics — might be happier with Barack Obama than Sen. John McCain.
The essay stirred up a ruckus among my former Reagan administration colleagues (who thought I was abusing some substance, like a few other Malibuites who succumbed to their “last temptations” in recent years) and in church communities across the country (which just said they would pray for me).
My reasons for writing so provocatively were a combination of skepticism toward McCain (full disclosure: I was a legal adviser to Mitt Romney, so skepticism came naturally) and a fascination with Obama. Unless you gave up TV for the duration of the writers’ strike or something shorter, such as Lent, the Ronald Reagan comparison is obvious. Obama’s eloquence and inspiration is inescapable.
The Catholic doubts about McCain are more subtle, but my point — which actually has implications for many faiths — is that signing on to the McCain campaign by default slights a large body of religious teaching in opposition to Iraq and strongly in favor of immigrants, the environment, and the family wage.
So with the innocence of someone who teaches Sunday school in a laid-back beach community, I suggested that believers had a moral obligation to inquire further.
SOMETHING DEEPER
The suggestion gathered some support, but also abundant amounts of personal vilification insinuating that I had sold my soul for a prospective Supreme Court appointment in an Obama administration (which has the entire People for the American Way in stitches) or damning me for eternity.
Ordinarily this would not prompt me to write more, but now that the epithets have temporarily subsided (Muqtada al-Sadr’s cease-fire or perhaps the surge is working), herewith a few additional thoughts in mitigation (or aggravation as the case may be).
Well before Obama entered the national consciousness by means of presidential primary, he addressed what he called “the mutual suspicion that sometimes exists between religious America and secular America.”
In a speech entitled “Call to Renewal,” given in Washington in the summer of 2006 (at a poverty conference of the same name), Obama noted that during his Senate campaign, he was challenged on his abortion views. Obama gave the standard liberal response: It is impermissible to impose his religious views upon another. He was running for “U.S. senator of Illinois and not the minister of Illinois,” he quipped.
Had Obama left it at that, he could easily be written off by conservatives as just another secular, anti-religious, and, likely, big-government liberal.
But the insufficiency of that answer nagged at him. He realized — and this epiphany explains his successful campaign, I believe — that the greatest division in America today is “not between men and women, or those who reside in so-called red states and those who reside in blue, but between those who attend church regularly and those who don’t.” He also recognized that some conservative leaders “exploit this gap” by reminding evangelical Christians how much Democrats disrespect their values and dislike their church.
Truth hurts, but, of course, pointing fingers at Pat Robertson or Karl Rove would still not have merited positive conservative or Catholic notice — if Obama hadn’t kept talking. He didn’t just criticize those on the right who used religion as a wedge issue; he directed a healthy amount of criticism at his own party.
Democrats, he said, avoid engaging the substance of religious values by falsely claiming the Constitution bars the subject. Even worse, some far-left liberals paint religious Americans as “fanatical,” rather than as people of faith. Now that got my attention.
Here was a Democrat who got it. Indeed, why say “Democrat”? Here was a public figure who actually understood that, for millions of Americans, faith “speaks to a hunger that’s deeper than... any particular issue or cause” — his words, lest Hillary and the copyright police get on my case.
Obama reflected on how neither of his parents were actively religious, and yet he found himself ...
Obama said he denounced it, which was good enough for everybody but Sen. Hillary Clinton, who demanded that Obama also reject it. Obama, with bemused annoyance, complied, but I thought, uh-oh, here we go, will Republicans dissatisfied with their default nominee be the next potential votes denounced and rejected?
Russert didn’t ask, and Obama said he welcomed support from a wide range of people including Republicans and independents. What a relief!
In an essay for Slate magazine (“Reaganites for Obama?” Feb. 13), I suggested that two groups I know well — Reaganites and Catholics — might be happier with Barack Obama than Sen. John McCain.
The essay stirred up a ruckus among my former Reagan administration colleagues (who thought I was abusing some substance, like a few other Malibuites who succumbed to their “last temptations” in recent years) and in church communities across the country (which just said they would pray for me).
My reasons for writing so provocatively were a combination of skepticism toward McCain (full disclosure: I was a legal adviser to Mitt Romney, so skepticism came naturally) and a fascination with Obama. Unless you gave up TV for the duration of the writers’ strike or something shorter, such as Lent, the Ronald Reagan comparison is obvious. Obama’s eloquence and inspiration is inescapable.
The Catholic doubts about McCain are more subtle, but my point — which actually has implications for many faiths — is that signing on to the McCain campaign by default slights a large body of religious teaching in opposition to Iraq and strongly in favor of immigrants, the environment, and the family wage.
So with the innocence of someone who teaches Sunday school in a laid-back beach community, I suggested that believers had a moral obligation to inquire further.
SOMETHING DEEPER
The suggestion gathered some support, but also abundant amounts of personal vilification insinuating that I had sold my soul for a prospective Supreme Court appointment in an Obama administration (which has the entire People for the American Way in stitches) or damning me for eternity.
Ordinarily this would not prompt me to write more, but now that the epithets have temporarily subsided (Muqtada al-Sadr’s cease-fire or perhaps the surge is working), herewith a few additional thoughts in mitigation (or aggravation as the case may be).
Well before Obama entered the national consciousness by means of presidential primary, he addressed what he called “the mutual suspicion that sometimes exists between religious America and secular America.”
In a speech entitled “Call to Renewal,” given in Washington in the summer of 2006 (at a poverty conference of the same name), Obama noted that during his Senate campaign, he was challenged on his abortion views. Obama gave the standard liberal response: It is impermissible to impose his religious views upon another. He was running for “U.S. senator of Illinois and not the minister of Illinois,” he quipped.
Had Obama left it at that, he could easily be written off by conservatives as just another secular, anti-religious, and, likely, big-government liberal.
But the insufficiency of that answer nagged at him. He realized — and this epiphany explains his successful campaign, I believe — that the greatest division in America today is “not between men and women, or those who reside in so-called red states and those who reside in blue, but between those who attend church regularly and those who don’t.” He also recognized that some conservative leaders “exploit this gap” by reminding evangelical Christians how much Democrats disrespect their values and dislike their church.
Truth hurts, but, of course, pointing fingers at Pat Robertson or Karl Rove would still not have merited positive conservative or Catholic notice — if Obama hadn’t kept talking. He didn’t just criticize those on the right who used religion as a wedge issue; he directed a healthy amount of criticism at his own party.
Democrats, he said, avoid engaging the substance of religious values by falsely claiming the Constitution bars the subject. Even worse, some far-left liberals paint religious Americans as “fanatical,” rather than as people of faith. Now that got my attention.
Here was a Democrat who got it. Indeed, why say “Democrat”? Here was a public figure who actually understood that, for millions of Americans, faith “speaks to a hunger that’s deeper than... any particular issue or cause” — his words, lest Hillary and the copyright police get on my case.
Obama reflected on how neither of his parents were actively religious, and yet he found himself ...
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Mr. Kmiec is simply wrong. Even worse he has attempted in his worthless book to drag Abp. Chaput along with him. Chaput however has now issued his own statement:
Archbishop Chaput Says He's No Kmiec
Affirms Defense of Life as Top Church Priority
DENVER, Colorado, OCT. 17, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Archbishop Charles Chaput says Catholic legal scholar Douglas Kmiec "couldn't be more mistaken" in comparing his own moral reasoning regarding the 2008 presidential election to that of the archbishop.
Archbishop Chaput said this tonight at a dinner sponsored by ENDOW (Educating on the Nature and Dignity of Women). The talk, which he said reflects his own opinion as a private citizen, is titled "Little Murders."
The prelate spoke at length of Douglas Kmiec’s book "Can a Catholic Support Him? Asking the Big Question about Barack Obama," in which the Pepperdine law professor argues why Catholics should cast their vote in November's presidential election for Senator Barack Obama.
Kmiec publicly endorsed the Democratic candidate earlier this year, stating in an article for Slate that Obama is a "natural" for Catholic voters.
Archbishop Chaput noted that his own book, "Render Unto Caesar," was heavily cited by Kmiec in his defense of Obama: "In fact, he suggests that his reasoning and mine are 'not far distant on the moral inquiry necessary in the election of 2008.'"
"Unfortunately, he either misunderstands or misuses my words, and he couldn’t be more mistaken," said the archbishop.
No regrets
"I believe that Senator Obama, whatever his other talents, is the most committed 'abortion-rights' presidential candidate of either major party since the Roe v. Wade abortion decision in 1973," he added. "Despite what [...] Kmiec suggests, the party platform Senator Obama runs on this year is not only aggressively 'pro-choice;' it has also removed any suggestion that killing an unborn child might be a regrettable thing."
The prelate affirmed that the platform of the Democratic Party that emerged from its national convention in August "is clearly anti-life."
"Kmiec argues that there are defensible motives to support Senator Obama," continued Archbishop Chaput. "Speaking for myself, I do not know any proportionate reason that could outweigh more than 40 million unborn children killed by abortion and the many millions of women deeply wounded by the loss and regret abortion creates."
The prelate continued: "To suggest -- as some Catholics do -- that Senator Obama is this year’s 'real' pro-life candidate requires a peculiar kind of self-hypnosis, or moral confusion, or worse.
"To portray the 2008 Democratic Party presidential ticket as the preferred 'pro-life' option is to subvert what the word 'pro-life' means."
Archbishop Chaput said he thought Kmiec's endorsement of Obama has "done a disservice to the Church, confused the natural priorities of Catholic social teaching, undermined the progress pro-lifers have made, and provided an excuse for some Catholics to abandon the abortion issue instead of fighting within their parties and at the ballot box to protect the unborn."
Uncomfortable
"The truth is that for some Catholics, the abortion issue has never been a comfortable cause," said the Denver prelate. "It’s embarrassing. It’s not the kind of social justice they like to talk about. It interferes with their natural political alliances.
"And because the homicides involved in abortion are 'little murders' -- the kind of private, legally protected murders that kill conveniently unseen lives -- it’s easy to look the other way."
The archbishop called it "wrong and often dishonest [...] to neutralize the witness of bishops and the pro-life movement by offering a 'Catholic' alternative to the Church’s priority on sanctity of life issues."
"As I suggest throughout 'Render Unto Caesar,' it’s important for Catholics to be people of faith who pursue politics to achieve justice; not people of politics who use and misuse faith to achieve power," he said.
Archbishop Chaput lamented that for 35 years he's watched the pro-abortion lobby fight tooth-and-nail against the pro-life movement: "Apparently they believe in their convictions more than some of us Catholics believe in ours. And I think that’s an indictment of an entire generation of American Catholic leadership."
The prelate continued by affirming that being pro-life is much deeper than looking to overturn Roe v. Wade, or being a "single issue" voter: "The cornerstone of Catholic social teaching is protecting human life from conception to natural death. [...] Every other human right depends on the right to life."
He added: "So I think that people who claim that the abortion struggle is 'lost' as a matter of law, or that supporting an outspoken defender of legal abortion is somehow 'pro-life,' are not just wrong; they’re betraying the witness of every person who continues the work of defending the unborn child.
"And I hope they know how to explain that, because someday they’ll be required to."
--- --- ---
On the Net:
Full text: www.zenit.org/article-23964?l=english
There are natural laws (i.e. truths). These natural laws are inviolatable. No reasonable man would defy the law of gravity and stand under a falling piano (like in a trash bag commercial).
Wikipedia describes "inalienable rights" as natural rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They are the most fundamental set of human rights, natural means not-granted nor conditional."
Now, Barak Obama and his supporter, Douglas W. Kmiechis, need to realize that their decision that a woman's right to choose (in their view a inviolable individual right) trumps the natural law and first inalienable right - the right to life. The fallacy of their thinking is that they move from a person's right of choice (free will) forward from inviolatable to inalienable.
Inalienable trumps inviolatable. Life trumps Choice.