EXCLUSIVE: Doug Kmiec on 'The Politics of Apostasy'

MALIBU (Catholic Online) - On Easter Sunday, this former constitutional lawyer to Ronald Reagan, endorsed Barack Obama for president.

While that turn of mind baffled my political pals, it infuriated some of my fellow Catholics. I very much regret the discomfort it has brought to these life-long friends.

The Catholic faith is for me, as it is for millions, the embodiment of “life to the full,” to borrow the title of the wonderful book authored by the late American Catholic legal scholar Edward J. Murphy.

Denied the Sacrament?

Having been drawn to Senator Obama’s remarkable “love thy neighbor” style of campaigning, his express aim to transcend partisan divide, and specifically, his appreciation for faith ("secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square"), I did not expect to be clobbered by co-religionists.

On the blogs, I have been declared “self-excommunicated,” and recently at a Mass before a dinner speech to Catholic business leaders, a very angry college chaplain excoriated my Obama-heresy from the pulpit at length and then denied my receipt of communion.

Building a Bridge to Life – Abortion as Tragedy, not ‘Right’

It won’t help now that the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) has endorsed Obama over Clinton. This is an endorsement that is deeply troubling unless the good Senator Obama intends to match it with the sobering acknowledgment that abortion is less “right,” than avoidable tragedy.

As the likely nominee of his party, Senator Obama can afford to start building the bridges his inspirational messages have described. To my mind, there is no better time than now to announce a fulsome initiative, among other things, to promote adoption as an abortion alternative.

Daily Kos Meet Catholic Online

Can Obama deliver on his promise to build bridges and unbuild walls? It is likely unusual for the progressive blog, Daily Kos, to be cross-referenced on Catholic Online, but here is a quotation from a recent blog entry at that liberal site:

“This has been Barack's pattern through his entire campaign. He has spoken truth to privilege. He's made everyone uncomfortable, and that's a good thing. He's taken hold of some very big skeletons in the American closet, and shaken them until they rattled. He's thrown the windows open and let in some air.”

The terminology of opening windows is, of course, reminiscent of John XXIII’s description of the animating purpose of the Second Vatican Council, when the Catholic Church, itself, was ecumenically unbuilding walls between itself and other faith communities.

A Clerical Be-Heading?

Bridge-building and ecumenical effort is not all kumbaya. My distressing, but wrongful, denial of the Sacrament pales in comparison to the prospect that Senator Obama, himself, may be subject to the Islamic punishment of clerical beheading for having been born to a Muslim father and then voluntarily taking up Christianity.

International strategic thinker Edward Luttwak recently speculated in the New York Times that by this happenstance of birth, it is not “realistic” to think an “Obama presidency “will decisively improve relations with the world’s Muslims.”

Luttwak also served President Reagan, so it’s possible his essay is a McCain IED, but I doubt it. No, Luttwak’s learned insight is yet another example of the on-going depth of the “clash of civilizations,” as Samuel Huntington called it: the one-time theory, but now uncomfortable and violent fact, that cultural and religious differences dominate the post- cold war world.

Religion’s purpose is not the in terrorem social oppression of the human spirit, but its liberation from the pain and emptiness of worldly matters and goods. To those of us who believe, it is the way of eternal salvation.

It is also moral instruction for this world. Religion and morality are related, just as law is often premised on morality. But faith’s true power is in what it proposes, not imposes, upon man’s reason.

Catholic Thinking – No Simple Matter

Whether Senator Obama’s Christianity actually endangers his life by immunizing, as Dr. Luttwak reports, “any Muslim who kills him” as an apostate, I’m not sufficiently expert to say. The president of the North American Islamic Society has publicly contested it. This much I know: contrary to some partisan claims masquerading as "voter guides," American Catholics are not precluded from voting for Senator Obama.

Catholic instruction provides that “a well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program or an individual law which contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals.”

That obviously would preclude a Catholic voter from ...

+This article is theologically INCORRECT. It presupposes that every good is equally good. That is just not the case. There is a hierarchy. The Holy See has spelled this out time and time again, that one cannot choose a lesser good over a greater good. The systematic murdering of innocent lives in our own country is far worse an evil than the environment (which, by the way, we are not worship over human babies), even the war in Iraq, and much less the economy. Our happiness in this life is not more important than the butchering of innocent babies. And by the way, the murdering of a baby is a condemnable action, and as faithful Catholics we have a duty to Almight God to judge it as such. This is NOT the same as condemning the person who has the abortion, or even commits the abortion maybe he's completely possessed, for instance), but the law of God is black and white, not grey, as described in this article. God didn't change His thinking in the New Testament from the Old, nor does He go with the times because some enlightened, educated folks have a better idea that those Our Lord passed onto His Bride, the Church.

lb | 6/27/2009

The enemy in the Roe v. Wade controversy is not Planned Parenthood, the NARAL, Douglas Kmiec or the policies of the Obama administration: it is abortion itself, and the place to fight the battle is in the courts.

Why were the American bishops not in the courts in 1974, the year after Roe v. Wade was handed down? Why are none of the Pro-life organizations not challenging the Roe v. Wade decision in the courts? It will take 25 years and 50 million dollars to reverse that decision, but it can be done.

Where is the young lawyer(we need only one) of the stature and legal prowess of an Abraham Lincoln, a Louis Brandeis or a John Marshall? All this rhetoric is useless, unless someone is willing to challenge the abortion decision, IN THE COURTS.

Stop blaming the Supreme Court for that decision: we have not done our legal homework and we have not made ourselves authorities on constitutional law. If the African-American community had acted in this way, African-Americans, Plessy v. Ferguson would still be the law of the land.

If the question os abortion is only a religious issue, we have already lost. It is a legal and constitutional issue as well. Unless we can demonstrate this in the courts, public debate is useless.

Father Clifford Stevens
President, National Organization for Embryonic Law.

Father Clifford Stevens | 1/30/2009

| Politics