Death After Dishonor - The Catholic Bishops Inaction

We've heard it before under Clinton, who promised to make abortion "safe, legal, and rare". Back then, Democrat Catholics (which is to say those voters whose allegiance to the Democratic Party takes precedence over their loyalty to the Catholic Church) latched onto the last word. ("See, he said rare!") During the election, nominally pro-life Obamabots parroted the campaign propaganda point that Obama is pro-life since his policies would motivate people to have fewer abortions, at the same time he erases all legal restrictions on doing so. But as things already stand, any mother in need can now get all the aid she wants to raise a kid, and McCain wasn't going to eliminate it.

The sad truth behind these Catholics and others who claim the pro-life label for themselves is that they're insincere. They must be since they latch onto Obama's empty promises of lessening the abortion rate while simultaneously removing every extant vestige of legal protection for the unborn. If they cared a whit about protecting the unborn, they wouldn't settle for empty rhetoric and opposite actions. It would seem that this self-defeating stance is relegated to the pro-life cause and no other. No sincere pro-gun advocacy group is touting Obama as the pro-gun candidate since, though he would ban many types of guns now commonly owned and in use, he is going to send out checks to every American after tax time which, if you want, can be used to buy a new gun before the ban goes into effect. Gun-totin' yokels are neither as apathetic nor as easily duped about the Second Amendment as the American Catholic left are about abortion.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops must share the blame for the looming threat of the FOCA (Freedom Of Choice Act) to close hospitals. The members of the conference are of two minds. Conference president Cardinal Francis George is exemplary of the first, that which opposed electing a pro-abortion President from the outset (see interview below), while vice president Bishop Gerald Kicanas is of the second, to be complicit in Obama's being elected President (see interview below the first). The sharp division in the conference led to the issuance of a directive before the election to voting Catholics that was so weak and vague as to be non-committal.

In an October interview after the synod, Cardinal George of Chicago indicated that abortion correctly took precedence in importance over all other issues in play:

Q: Therefore, while you would presumably support better health care and anti-poverty measures, in your mind that’s not an alternative to efforts to outlaw abortion?

A: Absolutely right.

In his interview, Bishop Kicanas expressed quite the opposite stance:

Q: If I’m hearing you correctly, you’re saying that for a Catholic who
wants to approach his or her vote in three weeks with the mind of the church,
it’s not a slam-dunk which way that vote should go. Is that right?

A: Yes, and I think that’s what “Faithful Citizenship” is saying. As a disciple, as a citizen, you have to weigh issues, you have to consider the character of candidates, what you think they will be able to do in terms of affecting the society and the culture in which we live. Clearly, the document is saying that to vote for someone who is proposing actions that are intrinsically evil, because of their position on those intrinsically evil acts, is certainly problematic for someone who is a believer in Christ. You don’t believe in Christ and then vote for a person simply, or primarily, because they hold a position that’s contrary to the church. You have to take those positions into consideration, and then make a choice. These are never easy choices.

Sez him. The choice is clear and easy for every voter who cares about ending the intrinsic evil of abortion.

Only God knows whether the bishops' inaction delivered enough critical votes to Obama for him to win the election. Now that abortion extremist Obama won the election, it's come to this:

Along with their theological opposition to the procedure, church leaders say they worry that any expansion in abortion rights could require Catholic hospitals to perform abortions or lose federal funding. Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Chicago said the hospitals would close rather than comply.

Now that the time to put the weight and muscle of the Catholic vote behind defeating Abort-O-rama in the election is lost, the weapons available to the American bishops are issuing statements, pleas, requests, and recommendations, but the real power now resides with Barack Obama and both houses of Congress heavily in control of the Democrats. The bishops conference passed at the first call, and they've raised this round by betting the pot: our hospitals, irreplacable, built with centuries of work and sacrifice. We'll see whether they win, lose, or bluff. But they should not have waited this late to begin to push back.