The Blog from the Core - Tuesday, March 15, 2005

"How the Catholic Left and Pro-Abortion Democrats Are Preparing for the 2006 and 2008 Elections"

Thanks to Margaret for forwarding this e-mail from Deal Hudson.

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March 4, 2005

How the Catholic Left and Pro-Abortion Democrats Are Preparing for the 2006 and 2008 Elections

The following is a list of the strategic initiatives being launched by the Catholic left in response to the Republican gains in the Catholic vote (from 37% in '96 to 47% in '00 to 52% in '04). Some of these efforts are coordinated, but most of them are predictable reactions to the prospect of mass-attending Catholic voters staying in the Republican Party.

1. Overturn the Legacy of John Paul II. Left-wing Catholics and dissidents tell themselves that the papacy of John Paul II is a temporary set-back. They view the Catholic Church inevitably going "beyond" its dependence on the authority of bishops and the teaching of the Magisterium. Much of the comment surrounding the pope's recent illness reveals this attitude. The effort against John Paul II will be led by Catholic academics from name institutions, such as Boston College, whose opinions, seconded by friendly bureaucrats and clerics, will be repeated through conferences and the media.

2. Question the Priority of Life Issues in Catholic Social Teaching. The new generation of politically involved Catholics has realized that Catholic social teaching is a powerful tool for measuring public policy. This presents a problem for the older generation of activists who ignored the priority given to the life issues in favor of promoting a program of welfare dependence for the poor and minorities. These activists and their journalist counterparts are already busy insisting that issues such as abortion, euthanasia, or cloning are no more important than others (and a matter of "individual conscience."). Since no leading Catholic in the Democratic Party is pro-life, Catholic activists in the Democratic Party are forced to make this argument, or seek to reform their Party.

3. Revive the "Seamless Garment" as a Political Paradigm. There has been much debate back and forth over what the late Cardinal Bernadin intended by his famous "seamless garment" interpretation of Catholic social teaching. No doubt it's a concept that can be applied in various ways, but there is little doubt how it will be employed over the next four years. Since it's a phrase that still resonates through several generations of Catholics, the "seamless garment" argument, like the documents of Vatican II itself, is one that pro-life activists should understand correctly and be ready to claim for their own.

4. Demonize Catholic Republican activists. The volunteers who worked in the 2004 campaign have already been characterized as "uncivil" in manner, "fundamentalist" and "extreme" in religious belief, and "unconcerned" about the poor and minority groups. This will continue over the next fours years, and any academic or pundit who repeats the charge can be sure it will be picked up and passed on by sympathetic secular and Catholic media.

5. Leading Pro-Abortion Democrats Reach Out to Pro-Lifers. We have already heard messages along this line from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator John Kerry, and new DNC chairman Howard Dean. It's going to be hard sell, especially when the Democrats are mounting an all-out attack against Bush's first Supreme Court nominee for fear of overturning Roe v. Wade. Dean's comment is apropos: "We have to remind Catholic Americans that the social mission of the Democratic Party is almost exactly the social mission of the Catholic Church." Dean, of course, is ignoring the issues that Mass-attending Catholics will not ignore — abortion, embryonic stem cell research, same sex marriage, euthanasia, and human cloning.

6. Showcase a Pro-life Candidate. A February 16th poll was released showing that Pennsylvania State Treasurer Bob. Casey, Jr., son of the late Governor, would beat Senator Rick Santorum by five percentage points. A Santorum-Casey battle in 2006 would give the Democratic Party proof that they support pro-life candidates. The illusion, however, would be short-lived since Santorum would likely beat Casey, a poor campaigner, against the backdrop of the Democratic Party assault on Bush's Supreme Court nominee.

7. Build a Virtual Fence Around Parishes before Elections. In 2004 there was a significant amount of active resistance at the parish level to Catholic volunteers working for the Republican presidential candidate. It was the first time that a true grassroots campaign had been mounted by Catholics in a national election. It's safe to say that in the next two elections parish staff will be encouraged to keep volunteers from distributing campaign materials. I wouldn't be surprised to see some kind of new directive issued by the USCCB to empower parish staff in this regard.

8. Use the Echo Effect to Change Image of Democrats. There are 213 diocesan newspapers in the United States and Canada reaching an audience of 6,637,512. Those papers carry articles and stories distributed by the Catholic News Service (CNS) as well as the syndicated columns of several notable left-wing Catholics. Do not underestimate the echo effect that can be generated by these publications and their overall influence on the image of the Catholic Church that appears in the secular media.

9. Attach the Myths of Vatican II to Bishops' document on "Faithful Citizenship." It was not lost on the Catholic left that pro-life Catholics successfully used documents such as the "Doctrinal Note" (2002) on the political participation of Catholics issued by Cardinal Ratzinger and "Faithful Citizenship: A Catholic Call to Political Responsibility" (2003) issued by the USCCB. The attempt during the election to dissemble Ratzinger's "Doctrinal Note" was quashed by the timely op-eds written by prominent archbishops. Now the focus has turned to "Faithful Responsibility" of the U.S. bishops: By artful use of quotations, the document will be presented as a warmed over version of "the individual conscience trumps all," so often presented as a teaching of Vatican II.

10. Use Catholic Groups to Revive Catholic Left in Democratic Party. At least two new outside organizations have been established to create a political network to deter the surge of Catholic support for Republicans. Both bear the name "Faithful Citizenship." Already-established Catholic organizations — some officially in the Church, some not — are using their regular meetings and publications to decry the Catholic support for Republicans in the 2004 election. The buzz coming out of these meetings is that the old guard of the Catholic left has to encourage a more aggressive attitude in combating the grassroots efforts of Catholics among Republicans.

Many important issues are at stake here, none more important than the need for politically active Catholics to know and promulgate the authentic meaning of Catholic social teaching. That teaching gives priority to the life issues. It distinguishes between those principles that apply without qualification and those that are applied using prudential judgment. This is the distinction that the Catholic left will to gloss over in the attempt to provide cover for the pro-abortion candidates they continue to support.

The Window is edited by Deal W. Hudson and published by the Morley Institute for Church & Culture.

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Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 03/15/05 05:50:22 PM
Categorized as Political & Religious.

In Hoc Signo Vinces

Vide.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 03/15/05 05:25:41 PM
Categorized as Blogosphere Stuff.

Incompetent Bushitler Lets Nonexistent Iraqi WMD Get Looted

So says the New York Times. Sort of.

In an article, Sunday, by James Glanz & William J. Broad, Sunday:

In the weeks after Baghdad fell in April 2003, looters systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from Saddam Hussein's most important weapons installations, including some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms, a senior Iraqi official said this week in the government's first extensive comments on the looting.

The Iraqi official, Sami al-Araji, the deputy minister of industry, said it appeared that a highly organized operation had pinpointed specific plants in search of valuable equipment, some of which could be used for both military and civilian applications, and carted the machinery away.

Dr. Araji said his account was based largely on observations by government employees and officials who either worked at the sites or lived near them.

"They came in with the cranes and the lorries, and they depleted the whole sites," Dr. Araji said. "They knew what they were doing; they knew what they want. This was sophisticated looting."

The threat posed by these types of facilities was cited by the Bush administration as a reason for invading Iraq, but the installations were left largely unguarded by allied forces in the chaotic months after the invasion.

Dr. Araji's statements came just a week after a United Nations agency disclosed that approximately 90 important sites in Iraq had been looted or razed in that period....

But... but... but... I thought Adolf McChimpy LIED about WMD............

(Thanks, Charles.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 03/15/05 07:30:19 AM
Categorized as Media & Political & War.

The March of the Homonazis Continues

Thanks to Margaret for calling to our attention this insightful column, yesterday, by Jeff Jacoby:

.... Massachusetts rolled out a new marriage license shorn of any reference to bride and groom. Couples getting married were now to be officially identified as ''Party A" and ''Party B." The department of public health proposed a similar rewrite of the state's birth certificate, replacing ''mother" and ''father" with ''Parent A" and ''Parent B." To that, Governor Mitt Romney objected, though it is probably only a matter of time until a court orders him to make the change.

Meanwhile, others have gone far beyond Massachusetts in embracing the brave new world of unisex marriage. Last month, lawmakers in Ontario enacted Bill 171, stripping the statute books of all references to gender in connection with marriage. No longer do Ontario's laws use words and phrases like ''husband," ''wife," ''widow," ''widower," or ''persons of the opposite sex." And it is not just family and marriage laws that have been de-sexed. Bill 171 eliminates the traditional language of matrimony from more than 70 provincial statutes, including the Gasoline Tax Act and the Public Libraries Act.

What is underway here is not simply a tweaking of legal terminology. The crusade for same-sex marriage has never been aimed merely at adjusting the familiar boundaries of married life to make it more inclusive. The real target is the significance of marriage itself — the idea, fundamental to human happiness and all successful societies, that the purpose of marriage is to bring men and women together for their mutual welfare and for the protection and well-being of any children they create or adopt. It is that deeply ingrained belief that the marriage radicals are determined to do away with. One purpose of the official marriage Newspeak is to make such thoughts increasingly unthinkable....

What? No "Party C"? Why on earth not?