In the New York Times, Peter Steinfels comments on Catholic anti-abortion politics and the controversy surrounding President Obama’s upcoming appearance as Notre Dame’s commencement speaker:
But the wording of the [2004 Catholics in Political Life] statement was less important than the feeling behind it—a feeling that the anti-abortion cause was not being loyally supported by Catholics themselves.
In 2008, that sense of betrayal turned white hot, what with a majority of Catholic voters and even some Catholics well-known for anti-abortion views supporting Mr. Obama, whose stance on the issue has been relentlessly described as “radical” and “extreme” by anti-abortion organizations and the Republican Party.
Increasingly, conservative Catholics appear to be making a specific form of anti-abortion politics, condemning the administration root and branch, a test of Catholic identity—and the number of bishops leading the charge is growing. No wonder that Notre Dame, a venerable symbol of American Catholic identity, has become the battleground.
The problem, at least to the editors of America magazine, is that “it is not adherence to the church’s doctrine on the evil of abortion that counts for orthodoxy, but adherence to a particular political program and fierce opposition to any proposal short of that program.”
Read the entire article here. And read related here & there posts here and here.