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Catholics question abortion focus { April 26 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41965-2004Apr25.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41965-2004Apr25.html
Catholics Question Abortion Focus
Some Want Church to Address Issues Such as Death Penalty
By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 26, 2004; Page A02
A question has been gnawing at Frank A. McNeirney since he read that some Roman Catholic bishops want to deny Communion to Catholic politicians, such as Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry, whose public positions are at odds with church doctrine.
"Does this only apply to abortion?" asked McNeirney, 67, of Bethesda. "What about the death penalty?"
After retiring as a trade magazine editor a dozen years ago, McNeirney founded a nonprofit organization, Catholics Against the Death Penalty, which has 1,200 members across the country. It's a mom-and-pop operation, run by McNeirney and his wife, Ellen, out of their home on a shoestring budget. They are the first to acknowledge that it has nowhere near the political clout or public visibility of the nation's antiabortion groups.
But McNeirney is not alone in questioning whether the church's political vision has become myopic, focusing too narrowly on abortion.
Some Catholic publications, educators and elected officials are also warning that church leaders may appear hypocritical or partisan if they condemn Kerry because he favors abortion rights while they say nothing about Catholic governors who allow executions, Catholic members of Congress who support the Iraq war or Catholic officials at all levels who ignore the church's teachings on social justice.
Answering questions at a news conference in Rome on Friday, a top Vatican official said politicians who unambiguously support abortion rights are "not fit" to receive the Eucharist, which Catholics believe is the body and blood of Christ. But the official, Cardinal Francis Arinze, was not asked about, and did not mention, politicians who disobey other church teachings.
The American Life League, a Catholic antiabortion group that has led the charge against Kerry, said Arinze's statement should encourage more U.S. bishops to follow the example of Archbishop Raymond L. Burke of St. Louis. In January, Burke issued a decree barring three Wisconsin politicians who support abortion rights from receiving Communion in his former diocese of La Crosse, Wis., and said he would deny Communion to Kerry if the Massachusetts senator came to town.
But Burke's decree did not apply to church doctrine on subjects other than abortion, and neither the American Life League nor any major Catholic lay organization has called for bishops to take politicians to task because of their stands on other matters.
"Both Kerry and [President] Bush support the war in Iraq and [Pope John Paul II] does not. The pope has made that very, very clear. But does it get any attention? No," said Raymond L. Flynn, head of the San Francisco-based group Your Catholic Voice and a former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican and former mayor of Boston.
One reason, Flynn said, is that antiabortion groups are "far better organized" than Catholic organizations that focus on promoting peace, fighting poverty or abolishing the death penalty.
Another reason, in the view of many Catholics, is that abortion is a more important and clear-cut issue. "Abortion is a foundational piece. If you don't have life, the other rights don't matter," said Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, who heads a bishops' task force on Catholics in public life. "Abortion is always wrong. The death penalty and war are not always wrong."
McNeirney agreed that the church teaching on abortion is "more categorical" than its teaching on the death penalty. According to the official catechism of the church, the death penalty is justified under certain narrow circumstances -- if it is "the only possible way of effectively defending human lives" against a criminal, a situation that in modern times is "very rare, if not practically non-existent."
Still, McNeirney argued that Catholic governors such as Jeb Bush of Florida who have approved numerous executions are "morally worse" than politicians such as Kerry who vote for abortion rights legislation but are not "personally participating in the killing."
"I'm pro-life in all respects -- for the unborn child and the criminal or the elderly person considering euthanasia," McNeirney said. "I think the church is very consistent in saying that ending human life is something that should be up to God, not man."
The weekly National Catholic Reporter, a leading voice of liberal Catholics, took issue in an editorial last week with "those among the Catholic laity and hierarchy . . . who argue that abortion trumps all other issues in the upcoming election."
The editorial reminded Catholics that there are "other issues -- war and peace, immigration, tax cuts, housing, the death penalty, economic justice, welfare reform, the federal deficit, civil liberties, education, health care, crime, and on and on."
"Are we permitted to consider these right-to-life issues?" the newspaper asked. "These issues -- it seems strange to have to say it -- matter too. In this election, in fact, they matter more than abortion, which is not on the table in any significant way."
Rep. Nick Lampson (D-Tex.), who attends Mass most mornings in Washington, said he fears the church is being polarized by single-minded efforts to make abortion illegal.
The "tragedy and travesty of single-issue voters," he said, is not only that they ignore other issues but also that they forget "there are other valid approaches" to the issue they care about most.
Lampson said he and many other Catholics in Congress believe that the most effective way to reduce the number of abortions is to promote adoption, strengthen families and improve health care for pregnant women. Despite a pro-abortion-rights voting record, he said: "I feel like I am a good Catholic. I feel like I have a good heart. I do not want to kill anybody, and I do not consider myself pro-abortion."
No priest has threatened to deny him Communion, Lampson said. But if it happened, "I don't know how I would react," he said. "I certainly would be deeply saddened and disappointed that someone had made a decision about what's in my heart."
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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