Recently in life issues Category

Pat Archbold at the National Catholic Register writes about about how the media is "very confused" about how to react to the appointment of Archbishop Jose Gomez to the Los Angeles Archdiocese. It's actually pretty funny.

The media is alternately ecstatic and apoplectic over Pope Benedict's choice for the city of Angels. Several news outlets, notably the LA Times, have already written several articles about what to expect from Archbishop Gomez and have even tried to send thinly-veiled warnings. But in most of the coverage, the media makes the same mistake that it always makes when it tries to cover religion like politics. They attempt to view all matters through the lens of politics and feel compelled to attempt to classify everything in terms of the modern political definitions of 'progressive' or 'conservative.'

Trying to do this with Archbishop Gomez has left their collective heads spinning.

Archbishop Gomez is a Mexican-born hispanic. Hooray!

Archbishop Gomez is a full member of Opus Dei. Gasp!?!

Archbishop Gomez is a staunch defender of immigrants. Hooray, he is a progressive!

Archbishop Gomez is a staunch defender of life. (He even denounced a Catholic university when it invited Hillary Clinton.) Horror, he is a conservative!

Archbishop Gomez has a history of dedication to the poor. Progressive!

Archbishop Gomez is vocally opposed to homosexual marriage. Conservative!

I could go on. They are perplexed. How can a Bishop be 'orthodox'--which in the mind of the media means 'conservative' and uncaring--and still dedicated to the poor and the defenseless?

A one word answer: Catholic. What the media consistently does not get is that 'orthodoxy' in a truly Catholic sense entails love for all the teachings of Jesus, as handed down through the Church including the command to love.

Archbishop Gomez loves the Church, the poor, the homosexual, the immigrant, and the unborn all at the same time. He is Catholic.

So when the media reports on the Church, they should take off the politically-colored glasses of red and blue and remember one thing. It's the love, stupid.

One thing I have always found fascinating about Catholic bishops is that they defy and at times force us to consider what we mean when we use political terms like "conservative," "liberal," and "moderate."

An example: This week Archbishop Jose Gomez of the San Antonio Archdiocese was introduced to his new archdiocese, Los Angeles, California. It is the largest Catholic diocese in the country, heavily populated by Latinos and Mexican natives.

From the L.A. Times blog:

He invited everyone to "thank God for our diversity and to commit ourselves to things that unite us," which he explained were "our service to Jesus, the poor, the defense of the unborn child, the immigrant and the disabled."

Here we have all in one breath the enthusiastic mention of three interest groups typically (but not necessarily accurately) advocated for by the political left, the poor, the immigrant, and the disabled, and a mention of one interest group typically advocated for by the political right. Gomez's top issues do not at least at first glance easily fit into a particular political template, but I am not sure that he is necessarily a "moderate."

A "moderate," as I understand the term, means someone who straddles the fence on each issue. Gomez, and other bishops I have known and followed over the years, do not straddle the fence on much of anything. Rather, he and other Most Reverends hold strong decisive positions often associated with* Republicans on some issues, and on other issues hold strong decisive positions often associated with* Democrats.

I say "often associated with" because the religious positions do not always translate neatly into a governing policy. For example, belief in the importance of serving the poor is not the same at least conceptually as support for confiscatory tax rates and redistribution of wealth in order to do so.

Archbishop Gomez has a reputation of being "conservative" at least in a religious context because of his membership in Opus Dei, a fictional bizarro version of which was written about in the DaVinci Code. Also:

Gomez built a reputation in San Antonio as a staunch traditionalist who reversed some of the more liberal-leaning initiatives of his predecessor. According to local news reports, he disbanded a Justice and Peace Commission whose members disagreed with his support for a state constitutional amendment barring gay marriage, and he once denounced a local Catholic college for hosting then-presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, an advocate of abortion rights.

Since taking over the San Antonio archdiocese in 2005, Gomez has pleased some members of the community with his strong anti-abortion stance and his insistence on traditional church doctrine, while alienating others who favor a more progressive approach, according to the San Antonio Express-News.

Someday someone is going to have to explain to me how clear and effective communication of a religious teaching and tradition constitutes "alienating" somebody. His Excellency is charged with teaching and safeguarding the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as received via the Holy Spirit by the Catholic Church. Even if someone doesn't believe that, surely they can understand that Archbishop Gomez believes it, and so considers himself bound. What else is His Excllency supposed to do?

At any rate, I'll be excited to see how Archbishop Gomez adjusts to his new surroundings, and more importantly, how his new surroundings adjust to him.

From ABC News March 4:

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., today said he and 11 other House members will not vote for the health care bill unless it includes more stringent language to prevent federal funding from going toward abortion services.

Some Dems want to remove public funding for abortions from Obama's proposal."We're not going to vote for this bill with that kind of language," Stupak said on "Good Morning America" today, referring to the Senate health care bill, which includes less restrictive language than what the Democratic lawmaker proposed in the House.

Stupak said he is willing to take the criticism that will be hurled at him if he blocks the bill because of the abortion language, but that he won't back down on his principles.

"I want to see health care pass. I agree... people are being priced out of the market. We must have health care but, boy, there are some principles and beliefs that some of us are not going to pass," he said. "We're prepared to take the responsibility. I mean, I've been catching it ever since last fall. Let's face it, I want to see health care. But we're not going to bypass some principles and beliefs that we feel strongly about."

The ongoing abortion debate threatens to stall the health care bill and reflects the deep divide among Democrats.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (a Catholic, by the way) is repeating a line from last year that abortion funding is not in the latest version of Obama's overhaul of the medical care system. The press at the time believed healthcare reform's pro-choice supporters but later had to backtrack and admit that abortion funding was in fact there.

It doesn't matter if abortion funding is or is not in the bill, because pro-lifers do not trust this president any farther than he can blow smoke. He could sneeze on their shirts and they wouldn't believe the boogers. They know he is a huge fan of Planned Parenthood and its mission of making "every child a wanted child," not by conforming human hearts to charitably accept the gift of life but by subjecting inconvenient children to barbaric deaths that scar their mothers for life.

Remember the Freedom of Choice Act?

I remember when everyone thought it was the Republicans with a puffed up sense of righteousness, who thought they knew right and wrong better than everybody else. Religious conservatives took hits for "legislating morality" -- using their elected status to impose a narrow moral worldview on their helpless constituents.

No more.

Now, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has proclaimed that her Democratic colleagues have some kind of higher duty to pass healthcare reform, even if it means ending their careers. So has President Barack Obama.

"[T]he American people need it," she said. "Why are we here? We're not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress."

Very noble. Of course, Pelosi is not in the awkward position of representing constituents who think nationalized healthcare reform is a bad idea. Her constituents are definitely more likely to re-elect her because they are just as uncompromisingly liberal as she is. But let's assume she's sincere in saying that her colleagues should sacrifice their political careers. Why is that so? Because she and other Democratic leaders believe it is The Right Thing To Do. In other words, they are legislating morality.

That is one assessment of the current situation. The other assessment is that Democrats believe that the quickest way to concentrate as much power as possible in the hands of the federal government is through people's medical care. Because through that you can control every aspect of people's lives. I can't disprove that, but, perhaps naively, I prefer to assume best attentions.

That supporters of nationalized healthcare reform think it's The Right Thing To Do explains their determination to "ram it down people's throats" no matter how much the people protest it, and no matter how obvious it may be that a vote for healthcare reform will effectively destroy one's chances of getting re-elected. Would some Republicans fall on the sword to pass major abortion-curtailing legislation, Roe v. Wade notwithstanding? Sure. This healthcare reform legislation is at that level for certain Democrats. It is so fundamental and dear to their hearts that at this point consent of the governed, and even consent of colleagues, is out the window.

But the people are opposed to healthcare reform not on coldly political grounds but moral grounds also. It's a huge tax increase. Although it has been painted as a glorious government bequest unto its people, it's a government taking. It forces people to buy something even if they don't want it. And if they already have it, it forces them to pay more for it, under the pretense that what they will get is better than what they have now. It places the next generation of Americans under tremendous debt. It may not even accomplish the extension of coverage to the supposedly 30 million people it claims. It would force taxpayers to pay for medical procedures to which they have deeply moral and religious objections, like abortion.

Supporters of the medical care overhaul will say that the government must intervene because so much uncompensated care is unsustainable. Conservatives agree that such a problem exists. The question, as Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin made plain at the healthcare summit on Thursday, is whether the federal government is competent to address that problem with one-size-fits-all legislation. Conservatives believe that allowing the people to develop market-based, private sector solutions would not only work better, it would also be the right thing to do.

President George H.W. Bush made the Christian virtue known as "prudence" nerdy when he used it during his administration. But it seems our elected officials could use more of this virtue, which dictates that we cannot achieve good works solely through the righteousness of our intentions. We have to smartly channel those intentions in ways that can be effective.

In the first year of wrangling over the huge government overhaul of healthcare reform, the use of taxpayer dollars in all the different proposals to fund abortions proved to be a major sticking point, maybe even the main reason nothing got passed.

Well now the latest proposal, straight from the White House, apparently is coffing up even more tax dollars to pay for abortions through its funding of "community health centers," like Planned Parenthood.

If abortion really was the factor that halted Obama's vision of nationalized healthcare reform last year, and I think the case can be made that it was, then he is only hurting his chances of getting something, anything, passed. As the Cato Institute observes:

Abortion may be the one issue that Democrats care about more than health care. Democrats may therefore prefer to let ObamaCare die than violate their principles on abortion. One can imagine pro-life Democrats saying, Health reform, yes -- but not at the expense of the unborn, just as one can imagine pro-choice Democrats saying, Health reform yes -- but not at the expense of a woman's right to choose.
No matter which way ObamaCare comes down on abortion, the legislation could lose enough House Democrats to fall short of the 218 votes needed to win.

Life News has more here and here.

Tim Noah with Slate magazine, I hope as a joke, wrote an open letter to Pope Benedict XVI to implore him to get those pesky Catholics off the backs of the elected officials who really really really want to pass the government overhaul of the nation's medical care system.

It's pretty clear from reading the letter that Mr. Noah doesn't know much about the Catholic faith -- not that we would expect him too, since he readily admits that he is not Catholic.Here's some input for his edification.

He writes: "I'm not sure you even know this, but (apart from the Republican Party) no institution poses a greater obstacle to the passage of health care reform than the Catholic Church." Amen to that.

"The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops refuses to support a compromise the Senate reached on the question of whether private health insurers operating within the new insurance exchanges established under the bill could provide unsubsidized coverage for abortions."

Let me help ya out here, Noah. Making an abortion easier to commit in any way shape or form does not constitute a "compromise." Putting the American taxpayer even a step closer to paying for other people's abortions (or "reproductive healthcare," as you might call it) is not a compromise. Catholic politicians are free to compromise on abortion, but only if the compromise serves to tighten acess to abortion. They are not free to vote in favor of, neither are the American bishops free to sign off on, a so-called "compromise" that relaxes abortion limitations or regulations.

John Paul II, who would probably humor you about as much as you could expect Benedict to, actually wrote about this in his encyclical called Evangelium Vitae ("The Gospel of Life"), in paragraph 73.

when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects.

Mr. Noah claims that "It isn't even true that the Senate bill allows federal funds to be used for abortions."

Well, except that it kind of is. The Heritage Foundation laid it out on January 8:

Here is how it works: the Senate version of Obamacare says that "an exchange shall be a governmental agency or non-profit entity that is set up by a State." The Exchange "shall make available qualified health plans to qualified individuals and qualified employers." Now, the federal government will subsidize private insurance plans through tax credits and subsidies to a state's Exchange or non-profit entity. These health care plans are allowed to cover abortion, but through an accounting gimmick where an individual who wants abortion coverage will pay $12 extra for a plan.

Very simply, the House bill explicitly forbids federal funds from going to any plan that covers abortions, similar to the law governing the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan. The Stupak Amendment will require insurance companies to omit abortion coverage if they get federal monies. The Senate restrictions explicitly allow for abortion coverage in federally subsidized plans, under the pretext that people will have to pay an extra $12 dollars in non-federal monies for the coverage. Considering all the federal money that will be pouring into the system, $2.5 trillion over the first 10 years of implementation, to argue that no federal money will support or promote abortion under a government-run health care system defies logic. It seems clear that the House and Senate have a long way to go to reconcile their differing positions on abortion.

Mr. Noah even implored the Holy Father to tell his American bishops more or less to back off their opposition to the abortion language in the bill.

Not likely, Mr. Noah.

Just this past week the Holy Father affirmed that the Church has the right to bring Gospel values into a public debate. Over in Britain, Parliament is considering an Equality Bill, so-called, that Benedict said would actually impose "unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs."

Catholic bishops have said the bill means churches could be sued by anyone who was turned away as a candidate for the priesthood on grounds of gender or sexual lifestyle.

(Which makes me wonder, if turning away a candidate for the priesthood on the grounds of gender or sexual orientation is really as offensive as the proponents of this "equality bill" believe it is, why don't they just let the people freely boycott the Catholic Church and allow the tired, antiquated institution to die, at least in their country? Is it because they know that their disgust is not shared by the people they represent? But I digress.)

The point is you won't get much out of telling Pope Benedict that he may not want his bishops "mucking around in U.S. politics to quite this extent," other than a light chuckle, maybe.