{"id":98,"date":"2008-09-24T08:36:08","date_gmt":"2008-09-24T08:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2008\/09\/how-do-you-create-a-true-cultu.html"},"modified":"2008-09-24T08:36:08","modified_gmt":"2008-09-24T08:36:08","slug":"how-do-you-create-a-true-cultu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/09\/how-do-you-create-a-true-cultu.html","title":{"rendered":"How do you create a true “Culture of Life”?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here are some possible answers, and some food for thought–or debate.
\nOne comes from Thomas Reese, Jesuit priest and political scientist, writing at the WaPo’s “On Faith” blog on “Abortion: Rhetoric or Results?”<\/a> Reese has the best roundup I’ve seen on studies of what works–or doesn’t–in effecting change on abortion rates. He starts with the recent Pew Forum surveys<\/a> showing opinions on abortion have remained relatively stable since 1995, with support for keeping abortion legal in all or most cases has fluctuating between 49% and 61% while support for making abortion illegal in all or most cases has fluctuated between 36% and 48%. Currently the numbers are 54% for keeping it legal; 41% for making it illegal. As Reese says, “Neither side is convincing the other.” So how is a “culture of life” created?
\nA second insight comes from Dan Gilgoff’s God-o-Meter interview with for Reagan\/Bush official and pro-lifer, Doug Kmiec, who has been much in the news, here<\/a> and elsewhere. In the interview<\/a>, Kmiec talks about his rationale for supporting Obama. But two things struck me in particular, and they are of a personal (perhaps personalist) nature. One was Kmiec’s reaction at a sit-down between Obama and religious leaders in Chicago last year. Obama’s characteristic openness and graciousness made an impression–and beyond simply coming off as a “nice guy,” he offers a way forward by the example of his own approach.<\/p>\n

He opened by saying that everything he was going to tell us was on the record, that we could repeat it anywhere we liked. There were cameras outside the building but he said he knew those gathered in the room were not supporters and might be antagonists and that they might be uncomfortable being seen with him. So he said he’d maintain the confidence of anything they said in that meeting and also the maintain the confidence of whether they participated in the meeting. Comparing that to the existing political administration that has thrived on secrecy and closed circle of advisors, it was marvelously refreshing.
\nThe second thing was that I was deeply impressed with the sense in which he got tough questions and not once was he angered or flustered or provoked. He frequently would turn it around and ask three of four questions that would illustrate the division in his own turn of mind and would inevitably find something in agreement in which the exchange could end. I’ve seen a lot of public figures and most of them spend five or ten minutes talking to you and take a picture and leave. Senator Obama came at 1:30 and I remember looking at my watch and it was 5:30 and he showed no sign of inching toward the door. And there was no camera inside.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Obama has continued to go “into the lion’s den,” engaging his would-be opponents on their own turf–think of the Saddleback Forum–something McCain seems loathe to do.
\nThe second element of the interview is the effect of Kmiec’s personal involvement in helping pregnant women considering an abortion:<\/p>\n

My wife and I have become increasingly involved in counseling women in college who are confronting an unwanted pregnancy. They come to us in confidence and are going to have an abortion because ‘I can’t talk to my parents–it would disappoint them’ and they are often in great anxiety. And together my wife and I are able to calm those anxieties and take them apart one at a time. I’ve seen how effective this is, if you can provide some tangible assurance that they can continue in school, if you help them find a job or temporary housing, if you can put them in touch with parishes that have resources that assist them with maternity needs, they choose life. Not every time, but most of the time. I began to look at the ledger and said, ‘I’ve asked the Supreme Court five times to overturn Roe, and each time they gave me the back of the hand. I’ve testified before Congress against the Freedom of Choice Act and in favor of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban. I can’t count the times I’ve been before the Judiciary Committee and all of it pales in comparison with my wife’s and my experience.’
\nThere’s a Catholic notion of subsidiarity: that the government’s role is to help the person make the right direction. It’s not the government’s role to come in and displace the person but to help the individual help themselves. And the person speaking that language is not John McCain–it’s Barack Obama. He was the one talking about prenatal care and funding for maternity leave and rebuilding the adoption process so it’s far less costly. The other side was not saying any of those things. Late in the day I hear, ‘Well of course [McCain’s] interested in that too’ but most of the conversation I hear on the other side is “until we get the law changed, we can’t do anything on the topic. And the legal issue becomes like an iron curtain that falls in front of the social gospel, as if it cannot be touched until this flaw in the legal system is addressed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Powerful testimony to a “culture of life” that too often gets lip service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here are some possible answers, and some food for thought–or debate. One comes from Thomas Reese, Jesuit priest and political scientist, writing at the WaPo’s “On Faith” blog on “Abortion: Rhetoric or Results?” Reese has the best roundup I’ve seen on studies of what works–or doesn’t–in effecting change on abortion rates. He starts with the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic","category-church","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nHow do you create a true "Culture of Life"? - 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\/09\/how-do-you-create-a-true-cultu.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How do you create a true "Culture of Life"? - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here are some possible answers, and some food for thought–or debate. One comes from Thomas Reese, Jesuit priest and political scientist, writing at the WaPo’s “On Faith” blog on “Abortion: Rhetoric or Results?” Reese has the best roundup I’ve seen on studies of what works–or doesn’t–in effecting change on abortion rates. 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One comes from Thomas Reese, Jesuit priest and political scientist, writing at the WaPo’s “On Faith” blog on “Abortion: Rhetoric or Results?” Reese has the best roundup I’ve seen on studies of what works–or doesn’t–in effecting change on abortion rates. 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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\/98","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=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}