Bishops Blink on Abortion & Politics

You may recall that in the aftermath of the 2004 Election in which some Bishops threatened to deny the Democratic nominee John Kerry his right to receive the Eucharist, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops determined that the body of Bishops should speak with a more unified voice.

The result was the Statement on Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, which garnered a remarkable 98% assent among the body of Bishops who were present, debated and voted on the issue. Unlike prior USCCB Statements which were criticized by CathCons as having been drafted and approved by sub-committees (the implication being sub-committees full of liberal dissidents), the 2008 Statement was drafted, debated and approved directly by the Bishops themselves.

As 2008 progressed and it became apparent that many Catholics were (correctly) reading the Statement to permit their support for pro-choice politicians including Barack Obama, several partisan-prelates became more vocal and more strident in their condemnation of such voters. These GOPriests believed that a politician or party who merely gives lip-service to promising to attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade (as the GOP has for the last several decades, with no success) is to be preferred over a candidate or party who chooses compassion over condemnation and criminalization and who vows to do the hard work of actually trying to reduce the demand for abortions.

In addition, these same partisans insisted that the Statement be revisited at the Bishops' Conference which begins this Monday. Presumably they sought to revise the Statement to clearly preclude the support for pro-choice politicians altogether. Indeed, Denver ArchBishop Charles Chaput, the leading GOPrelate, who sometimes sounds like he gets his talking-points from Karl Rove instead of the Pope, recently said "Faithful Citizenship' didn't and doesn't work because it's been applied by different people in very different ways." Of course, a careful reading of the Statement makes clear that allowing "different people" to apply the Church's teachings "in different ways" was the very point of the Document.

The stridency of these GOPrelates was to no avail, and may in fact have backfired. Last Tuesday a clear majority of Catholics voted to send Barack Obama and Joe Biden to the White House. This represented a dramatic shift from the Catholic vote in 2004. The Obama/Biden ticket even made substantial in-roads amongst the sub-group of Catholics who attend Mass at least once a week, which is the group that has traditionally been the most Republican.

Now, perhaps in response to those Election results, the Bishops late yesterday quietly revealed that they were dropping "plans to discuss the practical and pastoral implications of these serious matters."

This was a complete 180 from earlier in the week, when Newark, New Jersey ArchBishop John Myers described the urgency of the Post-Election debate as "a very big deal".

Is this a capitulation and realization that such partisan stridency has been counter-productive to the cause of life and has divided and diminished the flock rather than built it up? Or is it a "honeymoon" to wait and see what policies the new Administration actually pursues?

Either way, the ball is now in the new Obama/Biden Administration's court to follow through on the very promising positions they staked on the full range of Catholic Social Teaching.