{"id":2596,"date":"2008-11-11T09:47:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-11T09:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2008\/11\/omalley-on-obama.html"},"modified":"2008-11-11T09:47:00","modified_gmt":"2008-11-11T09:47:00","slug":"omalley-on-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/11\/omalley-on-obama.html","title":{"rendered":"O’Malley on Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"

The always-interesting Michael Paulson at the Boston Globe has just posted an interview<\/a> with Beantown’s cardinal archbishop, Sean O’Malley, in which he discusses the election, abortion, and a raftload of other things: <\/p>\n

Q: So many bishops spoke out on abortion in recent weeks, and yet a majority of Catholics voted for Barack Obama. What do make of that?<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>A: It was a very complicated election. I don\u2019t think that the abortion issue is what decided the election. It was more the economy, the war, and the dissatisfaction with the present administration.<\/p>\n

When I was in high school (in Ohio) I joined the NAACP and did voter registration in black neighborhoods, when I wasn\u2019t old enough to vote myself. And I was there at Resurrection City after Martin Luther King was murdered, and living in the mud with thousands of people on the lawn of the Lincoln Memorial and having off-duty redneck policemen throwing canisters of tear gas at us and shouting obscenities. So, to me, the election of an Afro-American is like the Berlin Wall falling. I mean, for my generation, I suppose young people today can\u2019t appreciate that, but to me it is something very big.<\/p>\n

My joy, however, is tempered by the knowledge that this man has a deplorable record when it comes to prolife issues and is possibly in the pocket of Planned Parenthood which in its origins was a very racist organization to eliminate the blacks, and it\u2019s sort of ironic that he\u2019s been co-opted by them. However, he is the president, and everyone wishes him well, and we will try to work with him. However, I hope he realizes that his election was not a mandate to rush ahead with a pro-abortion platform. And the fact that in states like Florida and California, where he won, the referendums on marriage showed that the people who were more socially conservative voted for him, but voted for him for other reasons than for issues like this.<\/p>\n

Q: There\u2019s been a lot of discussion about whether the bishops\u2019 teaching on voting is too nuanced, because it was used in all kinds of ways by all kinds of groups during this election, because it said Catholics are not single-issue voters. What do you think?<\/span><\/p>\n

A: I think that most Catholics understand what the church\u2019s teachings are and those voter guide things are always problematic but I think in general people understand. It was interesting, if one considers Massachusetts, which is so overwhelmingly Democratic, and 8 years ago Gore got 75 percent of the Catholic vote and four years ago, Kerry, who is Catholic and from Massachusetts, got 50 percent of it, so they lost 25 percent of the vote in four years, and I think a lot of that was the influence of people\u2019s concerns about life issues and things like that. And obviously when you look at the differential between the way that Catholics who are church-going Catholics vote and those who are not church going Catholics, I think that the Catholics reflect the church\u2019s teaching. Not as much as we\u2019d like them to, but certainly this last election there were many other factors that intervened.<\/p>\n

Q: You just alluded to the fact that many of the people in your archdiocese are Catholics who support abortion rights, including leading politicians, and both US senators. What is your position on whether they should present themselves for Communion, and whether you should be giving it to them?<\/span><\/p>\n

A: The church\u2019s teaching on worthiness for Communion and proper disposition is in the Catholic catechism, and it\u2019s no secret, and I support that. There is perhaps a teaching where we have not done as good a job of late as we used to. When I was growing up, we would go to confession every Saturday, we would fast from midnight, there was much more of an awareness of the need to be spiritually prepared and in communion with the church and in a state of grace. Today I think we need to reinforce that teaching a lot. And once that teaching is better understood, then, I think, it will be obvious as to who should be coming to Communion and who shouldn\u2019t. But until there\u2019s a decision of the church to formally excommunicate people, I don\u2019t think we\u2019re going to be denying Communion to the people. However, whatever the church\u2019s decision is, we will certainly enforce.<\/p>\n

Q: Your position four years ago was that you did not want confrontations at the altar rail.<\/i><\/p>\n

A: That\u2019s right. We do not want to make a battleground out of the Eucharist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can read more of the transcript at the link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And a full write up about the cardinal is in today’s Globe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

H\/T to Charlotte’s pal, Amy<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The always-interesting Michael Paulson at the Boston Globe has just posted an interview with Beantown’s cardinal archbishop, Sean O’Malley, in which he discusses the election, abortion, and a raftload of other things: Q: So many bishops spoke out on abortion in recent weeks, and yet a majority of Catholics voted for Barack Obama. What do…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,23,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-r-us","category-politics-and-politicians","category-the-pope-and-bishops"],"yoast_head":"\nO'Malley on Obama - The Deacon's Bench<\/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\/deaconsbench\/2008\/11\/omalley-on-obama.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"O'Malley on Obama - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The always-interesting Michael Paulson at the Boston Globe has just posted an interview with Beantown’s cardinal archbishop, Sean O’Malley, in which he discusses the election, abortion, and a raftload of other things: Q: So many bishops spoke out on abortion in recent weeks, and yet a majority of Catholics voted for Barack Obama. 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}