{"id":509,"date":"2009-05-29T10:50:05","date_gmt":"2009-05-29T10:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/05\/kmiec-george-smackdown.html"},"modified":"2009-05-29T10:50:05","modified_gmt":"2009-05-29T10:50:05","slug":"kmiec-george-smackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/05\/kmiec-george-smackdown.html","title":{"rendered":"Kmiec-George Smackdown!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fellow pro-lifers, Catholic conservatives–and since the 2008 campaign political antagonists–Doug Kmiec and Robert George faced off in a “discussion” (not a debate) last night at the National Press Club in Washington.<\/p>\n

The discussion was titled “The Obama Administration and the Sanctity of Human Life: Is there a common ground on life issues? What is the right response by ‘Pro-Life’ Citizens?” It was sponsored by the Catholic University Law School, and PoliticsDaily’s Melinda Hennberger was there and called it “The Catholic Thrilla in Manila.”<\/a> <\/p>\n

\n

The crowd also buzzed over Kmiec’s argument that Obama was committed to reducing the number of abortions – and that “he’s already demonstrated he’s listening” to pro-lifers by supporting funding for adult stem-cell research and by affirming, in his Notre Dame speech, that he supports conscience-clause laws that protect the jobs of pro-life health care workers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“It’s wrong to make the perfect the enemy of the good,” Kmiec said in summing up. “And wrong not to recognize the good heart” of a good man like Obama.<\/strong><\/div>\n
<\/strong><\/div>\n
George was more forceful in his presentation, and he talks faster. “One does not treat an interlocutor with respect if one does not speak plainly,” he began, and by that measure, he proceeded quite respectfully. “I find myself at odds, deeply at odds, with the Obama administration” on life issues, he said. And for all who agree on those issues, “our goal must be to frustrate at every turn” the president’s efforts. If there is any common ground to be found, he added, it is the government who should “find common ground with us<\/em> in this great struggle” for human rights.<\/strong><\/div>\n
<\/strong> <\/div>\n
snip…<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n

But afterwards, many in the audience grumbled that the discussion had been unsatisfyingly polite: “I’m from New York, and I like a good argument,” said a priest who didn’t want his name used. “It’s no fun kicking somebody if they don’t know they’re bleeding.”<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So maybe more vanilla than thrilla. Still, not such a bad thing in today’s public dquare. <\/p>\n

Check it out<\/a>. CSPAN has the video<\/a>. The Witherspoon Institute has the text of George’s remarks<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fellow pro-lifers, Catholic conservatives–and since the 2008 campaign political antagonists–Doug Kmiec and Robert George faced off in a “discussion” (not a debate) last night at the National Press Club in Washington. The discussion was titled “The Obama Administration and the Sanctity of Human Life: Is there a common ground on life issues? What is the right…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,7,3,4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-politics","category-pop-culture","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\nKmiec-George Smackdown! - Pontifications<\/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\/pontifications\/2009\/05\/kmiec-george-smackdown.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Kmiec-George Smackdown! - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Fellow pro-lifers, Catholic conservatives–and since the 2008 campaign political antagonists–Doug Kmiec and Robert George faced off in a “discussion” (not a debate) last night at the National Press Club in Washington. 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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\/509","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=509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}