Obama And Notre Dame

With big issues like poverty, war, environment and education on the table and the real focus of most people, why does the Catholic Church focus on issues like abortion? Most people do not deal with abortions, and as a celibate male group, what insight do they have on women's reproductive issues and condom use? Talk about control issues.

All this comes into the national view with Obama at Notre Dame this weekend. Conservative Catholics are upset that someone who upholds the present laws on abortion [Roe v Wade] and has a "pro-choice" stance, is faithfully married and is a devoted father, could somehow not be morally fit to give a commencement address. Forget that he is President of the United States.

[Mind you, Notre Dame is a Catholic university with millions if not billions in endowment, yet charge student $45,000 per year to there. Very Jesus-like.]

Obama has ended the "torture era" in America. He is about to close the international symbol of torture in Guantanamo. His programs are aimed at helping the middle class, bringing more health care to more people and stresses family wages. He is trying to curb the divisive nature of partisan politics and. He is trying to end an unjust war.

“What’s playing out in Notre Dame this weekend,” says Douglas Kmiec, an anti-abortion Catholic and constitutional law professor at Pepperdine University who worked for presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, “is a lot of post-traumatic understanding on the part of partisan conservative voices that they’re losing the church -- that the hold that they had on the church hierarchy, and certainly the hold that they had on the laity, is gone.”

Catholics are increasingly coming to two conclusions, according to Kmiec: The GOP never delivered on its anti-abortion promises, and Obama is more in tune with their views – on the war in Iraq, harsh interrogations and social justice issues – than his Republican counterparts.

The Church would have you believe abortions are everywhere and are always wrong. Those who have them are evil. Well, it's a lot more complicated than that. And if contradicting Church doctrine should be a barrier for speaking at Notre Dame, George Bush was pro-death penalty [set a record for most deaths as Governor in TX] and started a war, both issues the Vatican opposes. Won't even mention the torture issue.

But why would hypocrisy influence a Conservatives stance anytime soon?

The Church has to realize that the day any religion becomes about a single political topic is the day it has ceased to become about the practice of faith and has become a political action committee. Maybe that is why they are losing their flock.

As for ND, I guess it takes the focus off football coach Charlie Weis' destruction of the program.

Source: Daily Beast