{"id":7398,"date":"2004-04-26T18:58:37","date_gmt":"2004-04-26T18:58:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/cardinal_g_on_the_question_of_the_day.html"},"modified":"2004-04-26T18:58:37","modified_gmt":"2004-04-26T18:58:37","slug":"cardinal_g_on_the_question_of_the_day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/cardinal_g_on_the_question_of_the_day.html","title":{"rendered":"Cardinal G. on the Question of the Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.catholicnewworld.com\/cnw\/issue\/cardinal.html\">Here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Since support for abortion on the part of Catholic politicians is objectively a scandal, bishops have responded by teaching publicly and speaking privately to Catholic office holders. Because these measures have not been particularly successful, the question now is whether sanctions of some sort should be applied. There are complications. On the part of the Church, the 1983 Code of Canon Law makes it quite difficult to apply public sanctions on individuals; on the part of society, sanctions by bishops against politicians may be pastorally unwise and publicly harmful. In this culture, victims always have the moral upper hand. Blacks can be victims, Jews can be victims, American Indians can be victims, gays can be victims, women can be victims, even Muslims living here in the United States can be victims. By definition, however, Catholics cannot be victims, except for those Catholics who like to portray themselves as \u201coppressed\u201d by the Church\u2019s teachings. They make the best victims of all.<\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, a response seems called for, and the bishops have a group of their number considering the range of responses possible. Because a line is being crossed in applying public sanctions, it would be pastorally wise for the bishops to act together. Some Catholics who would like to transform the Church into a vehicle for their particular preferences are impatient to have the bishops act exactly as they demand. No matter what the bishops do or don\u2019t do, however, each Catholic voter has to form his or her judgements, even in political issues, according to the faith. This is still a democratic state; voters get the government they elect, not one selected by bishops. In choosing whom to elect, voters should ask how a politician can compartmentalize faith and life and still be a person of integrity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here. Since support for abortion on the part of Catholic politicians is objectively a scandal, bishops have responded by teaching publicly and speaking privately to Catholic office holders. Because these measures have not been particularly successful, the question now is whether sanctions of some sort should be applied. There are complications. On the part of&hellip;<\/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-7398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Cardinal G. on the Question of the Day - 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\/04\/cardinal_g_on_the_question_of_the_day.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cardinal G. on the Question of the Day - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here. Since support for abortion on the part of Catholic politicians is objectively a scandal, bishops have responded by teaching publicly and speaking privately to Catholic office holders. Because these measures have not been particularly successful, the question now is whether sanctions of some sort should be applied. There are complications. On the part of&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/cardinal_g_on_the_question_of_the_day.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-04-26T18:58:37+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":"Cardinal G. on the Question of the Day - 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\/04\/cardinal_g_on_the_question_of_the_day.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Cardinal G. on the Question of the Day - Via Media","og_description":"Here. Since support for abortion on the part of Catholic politicians is objectively a scandal, bishops have responded by teaching publicly and speaking privately to Catholic office holders. Because these measures have not been particularly successful, the question now is whether sanctions of some sort should be applied. There are complications. On the part of&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/cardinal_g_on_the_question_of_the_day.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2004-04-26T18:58:37+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/cardinal_g_on_the_question_of_the_day.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/cardinal_g_on_the_question_of_the_day.html","name":"Cardinal G. on the Question of the Day - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2004-04-26T18:58:37+00:00","dateModified":"2004-04-26T18:58:37+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/cardinal_g_on_the_question_of_the_day.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/cardinal_g_on_the_question_of_the_day.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/04\/cardinal_g_on_the_question_of_the_day.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Cardinal G. on the Question of the Day"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. 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\/7398","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=7398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7398\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}