{"id":462,"date":"2009-05-04T19:44:14","date_gmt":"2009-05-04T19:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/05\/obama-supporters-russell-shaw.html"},"modified":"2009-05-04T19:44:14","modified_gmt":"2009-05-04T19:44:14","slug":"obama-supporters-russell-shaw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/05\/obama-supporters-russell-shaw.html","title":{"rendered":"Obama supporters: Russell Shaw wants an apology"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"Russell<\/span>Our Sunday Visitor’s Russell Shaw, a longtime conservative Catholic journalist and observer–and often trenchant critic–of the American scene says Obama supporters should apologize<\/a> for saying Catholics could support Obama because the president has, and will, do nothing but expand abortion, Shaw writes:<\/p>\n

\n

“Dialogue? So far as is known, Mr. Obama has had one half-hour meeting with anybody qualified to speak for the Catholic Church–the president of the bishops’ conference, Cardinal George of Chicago. Even admirers concede the administration is tone-deaf on Catholic concerns.<\/p>\n

So are Catholics who said Obama and the Church would have a lot in common saying they’re sorry? No way. Apology aversion won’t allow that.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Response: One, dialogue is a two-way street, and declaring someone the worst thing since, well, fill in the blank, is hardly going to smooth that past. <\/p>\n

Also, it’s been just over 100 days since Obama took office in the midst of perhaps the greatest crisis in American history, when you look at the dmoestic and international messes Bush left. Bush–not to mention his GOP predecessors–had two terms to do, well, not much, on abortion. <\/p>\n

And look at the other folks Shaw thinks should be apologizing:<\/p>\n

\n

“Consider all those journalists and think tank talking heads who helped sell America on the need for the war in Iraq and then, without so much as a word of apology, turned on George Bush for getting it wrong. Think of all those members of Congress — of both parties — who were looking the other way while the economic bubble expanded and now are busy demagoguing the bubble’s collapse at somebody else’s expense. And on and on and on.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Huh? Russell Shaw is a pretty straight-shooter, so I’d hope he has first demanded an apology from President Bush and his team for those things, at the very least. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our Sunday Visitor’s Russell Shaw, a longtime conservative Catholic journalist and observer–and often trenchant critic–of the American scene says Obama supporters should apologize for saying Catholics could support Obama because the president has, and will, do nothing but expand abortion, Shaw writes: “Dialogue? 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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\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}