{"id":113,"date":"2008-05-11T16:54:44","date_gmt":"2008-05-11T16:54:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/benedictions\/2008\/05\/not-in-kansas-anymore-governor.html"},"modified":"2008-05-11T16:54:44","modified_gmt":"2008-05-11T16:54:44","slug":"not-in-kansas-anymore-governor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/05\/not-in-kansas-anymore-governor.html","title":{"rendered":"Not in Kansas anymore, Governor…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City has said that Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius–a Democrat, Catholic, and abortion rights supporter whose name has been mentioned as a possible Obama running mate–should stop receiving communion. The action, outlined in Naumann’s May 9 column <\/a>in The Leaven, the archdiocesan weekly, was triggered by Sebelius’ veto of a bill called the Comprehensive Abortion Reform Act, which passed both state houses.
\nNaumann and Sebelius have a long record of discussing and disagreeing on this issue, and it is no coincidence that the action comes right after Pope Benedict’s visit and New York Cardinal Egan’s rebuke to Rudy Giuliani, another pro-choice Catholic who took communion–apparently against an agreement he had with Egan–and at a papal mass, no less. The move also comes as Barack Obama, now the virtual Democratic nominee, is coming under increasing fire for his strong abortion rights stands. At one time Sebelius might have been an attractive running mate. But given Obama’s struggle with Catholic voters and regular church attenders, and his own abortion rights record, this dust-up may put the Kansan out of the running. Or not.
\nThe issue is an interesting one, with many chapters, and it is worth reading Naumann’s column in full. Sebelius, in her veto message, apparently noted that policies she backs have brought down the abortion rate in Kansas, which has become a center for out-of-state abortions and late-term abortions. But Naumann also notes that, incredibly, Sebelius has been taking political donations from Wichita\u2019s famous abortionist, George Tiller, who is, as the archbishops says, “perhaps the most notorious late-term abortionist in the nation.”
\nNaumann also says he wrote to Sebelius last August asking her to stop receiving communion, but apparently she received recently at an unnamed parish, prompting this public column. Sounds like fodder for a bracing debate. Naumann says Sebelius cannot receive until she “acknowledged the error of her past positions, made a worthy sacramental confession and taken the necessary steps for amendment of her life which would include a public repudiation of her previous efforts and actions in support of laws and policies sanctioning abortion.”
\nHardly sounds likely. The Kansas City Star also has coverage<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City has said that Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius–a Democrat, Catholic, and abortion rights supporter whose name has been mentioned as a possible Obama running mate–should stop receiving communion. The action, outlined in Naumann’s May 9 column in The Leaven, the archdiocesan weekly, was triggered by Sebelius’ veto of a bill…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nNot in Kansas anymore, Governor... - Benedictions: The Pope in America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/05\/not-in-kansas-anymore-governor.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Not in Kansas anymore, Governor... - Benedictions: The Pope in America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City has said that Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius–a Democrat, Catholic, and abortion rights supporter whose name has been mentioned as a possible Obama running mate–should stop receiving communion. The action, outlined in Naumann’s May 9 column in The Leaven, the archdiocesan weekly, was triggered by Sebelius’ veto of a bill…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/05\/not-in-kansas-anymore-governor.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Benedictions: The Pope in America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-05-11T16:54:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Gibson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Not in Kansas anymore, Governor... - Benedictions: The Pope in America","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/2008\/05\/not-in-kansas-anymore-governor.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Not in Kansas anymore, Governor... - Benedictions: The Pope in America","og_description":"Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City has said that Kansas Gov. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/benedictions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}