{"id":69,"date":"2008-08-19T12:53:53","date_gmt":"2008-08-19T12:53:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2008\/08\/while-cardinal-george-the-pres.html"},"modified":"2008-08-19T12:53:53","modified_gmt":"2008-08-19T12:53:53","slug":"while-cardinal-george-the-pres","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/08\/while-cardinal-george-the-pres.html","title":{"rendered":"Archbishop Chaput: More on the Politics of Abortion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Archbishop<\/span>While Cardinal George, the president of the U.S. bishops conference, is otherwise occupied (see below), Denver’s indefatigable archbishop, Charles J. Chaput, is continuing to take the lead (it seems to me) as the most visible and outspoken member of the American hierarchy.
\nChaput is at it again today with a strongly-worded post at the First Things blog, where in an essay called “Vote for Real Hope and Change”<\/a> (the archbishop doesn’t disguise his intentions!) he takes aim at Obama’s campaign slogan “Yes, we can” and says it might better be reversed to “No, we can’t,” as in no we can’t allow abortion, and no policies to “reduce the need” for abortion are sufficient:<\/p>\n

Obviously, we have other important issues facing us this fall: the economy, the war in Iraq, immigration justice. But we can’t build a healthy society while ignoring the routine and very profitable legalized homicide that goes on every day against America’s unborn children. The right to life is foundational. Every other right depends on it. Efforts to reduce abortions, or to create alternatives to abortion, or to foster an environment where more women will choose to keep their unborn child, can have great merit–but not if they serve to cover over or distract from the brutality and fundamental injustice of abortion itself. We should remember that one of the crucial things that set early Christians apart from the pagan culture around them was their rejection of abortion and infanticide. Yet for thirty-five years I’ve watched prominent “pro-choice” Catholics justify themselves with the kind of moral and verbal gymnastics that should qualify as an Olympic event. All they’ve really done is capitulate to Roe v. Wade.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(He also gets a late-but-good lick at the Oba-messiah trend, saying, “The last thing we need in 2008 is the kind of bogus hope rooted in mystical good feeling.”)
\nAs noted in previous posts<\/a>, he has taken on pro-Obama Catholics <\/a>(like Doug Kmiec et al) and he has a book coming out just in time for the election’s silly season, “Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life.” <\/a>
\nChaput is taking some novel approaches to arguing his case. Matt Boudway over at dotCommonweal prompted an interesting discussion here<\/a> about Chaput’s challenge to Catholics who believe they have “proportionate” reasons for voting for Obama:<\/p>\n

What is a “proportionate” reason when it comes to the abortion issue? It’s the kind of reason we will be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them face to face in the next life–which we most certainly will. If we’re confident that these victims will accept our motives as something more than an alibi, then we can proceed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is there anyone else out there who matches Chaput–especially now that St. Louis’s Burke has gone to Rome?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While Cardinal George, the president of the U.S. bishops conference, is otherwise occupied (see below), Denver’s indefatigable archbishop, Charles J. Chaput, is continuing to take the lead (it seems to me) as the most visible and outspoken member of the American hierarchy. Chaput is at it again today with a strongly-worded post at the First…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bishops","category-catholic","category-church","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nArchbishop Chaput: More on the Politics of Abortion - 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\/2008\/08\/while-cardinal-george-the-pres.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Archbishop Chaput: More on the Politics of Abortion - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"While Cardinal George, the president of the U.S. bishops conference, is otherwise occupied (see below), Denver’s indefatigable archbishop, Charles J. 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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\/69","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=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}