{"id":7257,"date":"2004-05-19T22:25:48","date_gmt":"2004-05-19T22:25:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/dems_object.html"},"modified":"2004-05-19T22:25:48","modified_gmt":"2004-05-19T22:25:48","slug":"dems_object","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/dems_object.html","title":{"rendered":"Dems Object"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bunch o’ Democrats write letter.<\/a><\/p>\n

Forty-eight Roman Catholic members of Congress who are Democrats have signed a letter to the Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, D.C., saying that the threats by some bishops to deny communion to politicians who support abortion rights are “deeply hurtful,” counterproductive and “miring the church in partisan politics.”
\nThe letter is the first organized counter-punch by Democratic legislators since a handful of Catholic bishops set off an uproar in the church by declaring that they would withhold communion from politicians who favor abortion rights.<\/p>\n

The legislators who signed the letter, including about a dozen who are considered anti-abortion Democrats, said that the bishops are “allowing the church to be used for partisan purposes.” They also question why these bishops made abortion a litmus test while ignoring politicians who voted counter to the church by endorsing the death penalty and the war in Iraq. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The WaPo version<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the signers with a solidly antiabortion voting record, Rep. Bart Stupak (Mich.), said in an interview that bishops “are making these statements thinking they’re undermining the candidacy of John Kerry, when what they’re really undermining is the Catholic church.”<\/p>\n

Stupak added that he has been surprised by the partisanship of some bishops. <\/p>\n

“I’ve had some threaten not to give Communion to me, even though they don’t know my position, just because I’m a Democrat,” he said. “I’ve had cardinals refuse to shake my hand because I’m a Democrat, and then somebody whispers to them that, ‘No, no, he’s a good guy.’ ” <\/p>\n

Another antiabortion legislator, Rep. James R. Langevin (R.I.), said that “while I agree with [the bishops] on the pro-life issue, I don’t agree with them on denying Communion to those who in good conscience have come to a different position. . . . These are complicated, emotional issues that each of us has wrestled with, and it’s not helpful for the church to be punitive or to approach these issues in this heavy-handed way.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bunch o’ Democrats write letter. Forty-eight Roman Catholic members of Congress who are Democrats have signed a letter to the Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, D.C., saying that the threats by some bishops to deny communion to politicians who support abortion rights are “deeply hurtful,” counterproductive and “miring the church in partisan politics.” The letter is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nDems Object - Via Media<\/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\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/dems_object.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dems Object - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Bunch o’ Democrats write letter. Forty-eight Roman Catholic members of Congress who are Democrats have signed a letter to the Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, D.C., saying that the threats by some bishops to deny communion to politicians who support abortion rights are “deeply hurtful,” counterproductive and “miring the church in partisan politics.” The letter is…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/dems_object.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-05-19T22:25:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Dems Object - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/dems_object.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Dems Object - Via Media","og_description":"Bunch o’ Democrats write letter. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}