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God has called us to exercise our human freedom for the good. Why I do not support Doug Kmiec's endorsement.

LOS ANGELES (Catholic Online) - Today, I was greeted with the news that Doug Kmiec, a top notch pro-life Constitutional lawyer and a man whom I deeply admire for having stood for the rights of an entire class of persons, children in the womb, when so many have failed to hear their cry, has made a Presidential endorsement.

Professor Kmiec holds the distinguished Caruso Family Chair and Professor of Constitutional Law at Pepperdine University. He is a legal scholar of the highest order. He is also a dedicated and sincere Catholic Christian.

He has an accomplished record of public service. He served as head of the Office of Legal Counsel (U.S. Assistant Attorney General) for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He is the former Dean of the law school at The Catholic University of America, and was a member of the law faculty for nearly two decades at the University of Notre Dame.

So, who did Professor Kmiec endorse?

Senator Barack Obama. His decision is sending shock waves throughout the Pro-Life community. (Read Doug Kmiec Article on Catholic Online)

I wanted to get out ahead of this story before all the discussion, both charitable and uncharitable, began. I also wanted to use it as a framework for a broader discussion. So, I grabbed your attention with this title, didn’t I?

I will probably get a lot more than just attention. I am sure I will receive angry E-Mails. Political discussion is all getting so, well, “un-civil” and we have not even made it through both major party conventions. I am tired of the stridency, the talking heads and the messiness of it all! I am also tired of the unelected talk radio hosts who have appointed themselves as the new oracles and I can barely listen to their wasted words.

Let me make myself and the title of this article a bit clearer, “God is not a Republican or a Democrat”. Nor is He a member of the Constitution Party, the Libertarian party… or any of a growing number of political “alternatives” that reflect a growing dissatisfaction with both major political parties.

Nor can God be placed within the numerous categories bandied about these days in the kind of "Balkanized" landscape of political discourse. You know the labels like “liberal”, “conservative”, neo-conservative”, “neo-liberal”, “paleo-conservative”, or any permutation of them.

Political parties are our creation, not God's.

In fact, it seems like the political labels we currently use in our public conversation go through a change almost every twenty years. Yesterdays “liberal” is today’s “neo-conservative”. Or, are they actually? Most of yesterdays’ “liberals” would have opposed the initial decision to enter into Iraq with no justification.The "neo-conservatives rattled their verbal swords and led the charge. So, are yesterdays “liberals” more like the “paleo-conservatives”?

Well, you see the problem with all these labels.

God has called each one of us into this real world, a world which he fashioned, and given to us the capacity to exercise our human freedom for the good. We make our choices and in those choices we change ourselves, as well as the world around us, for better or for worse. One of our choices is how we choose to govern ourselves and whether we will do so for the common good.

We who live in this wonderful Nation call the United States of America will soon be faced with one of the most important choices in my lifetime, electing the next President of the United States. This is an election of particular importance for Christians because of the issues that most of us hold as vital to a truly just and humane society.

Over the years I have come to group those issues in categories around what I call “four pillars of social participation”; the dignity of every human life (from conception through to natural death), the primacy of true marriage and family (as the first vital cell of all civil society as well as the first church, first government, first school, first economy and first mediating institution); authentic and responsible human and religious freedom; and our obligations in solidarity with all the poor and the needy.

I have worked for decades to encourage Christians, indeed all people of faith and good will, to build a more just and human society around these four pillars. I have participated in, and helped to build, movements and associations oriented toward this vital work because I have long believed and proclaimed that my faith compels me to live a unity of life.

I reject the so-called “private/public” dichotomy of some Catholics and other Christians in public life as heresy. My faith is profoundly personal but it is radically and fundamentally public. It is not a coat that I put on when I enter a Church building ...