Posted in category "Politics"
This week, Pope Benedict XVI received the U.S. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, her husband and members of her entourage at the close of his regular Wednesday General Audience in Rome.
Pelosi, a self-proclaimed “ardent Catholic,” has sparked criticism from some conservative U.S. Catholic bishops for her pro-choice views. She arrived in Italy on Sunday for an eight-day official visit.
As Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi is second in the line of succession to the U.S. presidency, behind only Vice President Joseph Biden, another Catholic who also disagrees with Church teaching on abortion and birth control.
Benedict’s willingness to meet Pelosi gave some pro-life Catholics agita.
By meeting Pelosi, Benedict signaled he wants lines of communication to remain open with the new American leadership, even though there is no meeting of minds over the issue of abortion.
Benedict and Pelosi each issued a statement following the meeting.
“His Holiness took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the church’s consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death,” the Vatican statement read, “which enjoin all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in cooperation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life in all stages of development.”
In a statement issued by her office Wednesday, Pelosi said it was “with great joy” that she and her husband, Paul, met Benedict. She said she had praised “the church’s leadership in fighting poverty, hunger, and global warming, as well as the Holy Father’s dedication to religious freedom and his upcoming trip and message to Israel.”
“I was proud to show His Holiness a photography of my family’s papal visit in the 1950s, as well as a recent picture of our children and grandchildren,” said the California congresswoman.
Pelosi’s statement did not mention the pope’s comments on abortion.
The pope’s statement can certainly be read as a rejection of Pelosi’s statements of last summer, when she suggested that the church’s position on abortion had been fluid and ill-defined; and that it’s acceptable for Catholics in public life to take a pro-choice position.
What was said–or unsaid–in that small room in the Vatican that fact remains each of these two Catholic leaders profess to care deeply about the welfare of children–those born as well as the unborn.
The pope cannot be a single issue Catholic–the way some U.S. bishops and pro-life Catholics are–if he is to attend to the Gospel’s work of justice for all, especially people in need.
Before she went to the Capitol to be sworn in as the first woman Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi attended Mass at her (and my) alma mater, Trinity College in Washington, DC. The late Fr. Robert Drinan was the celebrant, and he offered the Mass in honor of the children of Darfur and Katrina, praying there that “the needs of every child are the needs of Jesus Christ himself.”
“He challenged us,” said Pelosi of the homily, “by saying ‘Imagine what the world would think of the United States if the health and welfare of children everywhere became the top objective of America’s foreign policy! It could happen–and it could happen soon–if enough people cared.’”
“He continued,’Let us reexamine our convictions, our commitments, and our courage. Our convictions and our commitments are clear and certain to us. But do we have the courage to carry them out? God has great hopes for what this nation will do in the near future. We are here to ask for the courage to carry out God’s hopes and aspirations.”
“As he led us in prayer that day, Father Drinan said, ‘We learn things in prayer that we otherwise would never know.’”
Two weeks ago Bolivian citizens voted to approve a new constitution. Exit polls estimated about 60 per cent of voters had approved the document that is designed to give more rights to the indigenous minority and give the government more control over the economy. It would also allow the president, Evo Morales, to run for a second five-year term.
Mr. Morales is an Aymara Indian who leads the ruling party, the Movement to Socialism. The campaign pitted poor, heavily indigenous western areas where Mr. Morales is revered against whites and mixed-race mestizos in the natural gas-rich tropical lowlands.
The campaign to change the country’s constitution sparked a religious battle.
Pre-referendum campaign ads by evangelical christians showed Bolivia’s leftist president dressed in the garb of a traditional shaman. An image of Jesus Christ arrived to knock Mr. Morales off the screen, and a document labeled “New Constitution” appears amid flames. “Choose God. Vote No” the ad advises.
At the heart of fight is the new constitution’s stated goal of “refounding” Bolivia as a “socially-just state guided by indigenous beliefs–including elevating the female Andean earth deity, PachaMama, to the same stature as the God of Christianity. Bolivia’s previous constitution allowed for freedom of religion, but specifies Roman Catholicism as the sole state religion.
The new constitution recognizes broad new rights for Bolivia’s Indians, termed “originating indigenous farming peoples” in the document, and demands “decolonization” of all aspects of society.
For Christians, whose faith arrived in Bolivia with the Spanish Conquistadors almost 500 years ago, the fight is over fundamental values, which they say the new constitution shoves aside, and replaces with ultra liberal concepts, or worse, indigenous religions.
They contend the new constitution appears to opens the door to abortion and gay marriage, although it doesn’t speak directly to either issue.
The Catholic church hoped the constitution would define life as beginning at conception, and marriage as being between a man and a woman. The text doesn’t offer a clear definition on either point, instead offering broad statements such as one that “guarantees the exercise of sexual and reproductive rights,” language that has religious groups worried. “One of the problems with the constitution is that it’s full of ambiguity,” said Robert Flock, vicar general of the Santa Cruz archdiocese. The constitution “could open the door to a civil law allowing homosexual marriage if there was a public will to do that.”
The Catholic church disavowed the evangelical christian ads, but followed with its own detailed critique of the proposed constitution, handed out after Mass in cities around Bolivia prior to the election. While praising Mr. Morales’ focus on the poor, it raised concerns about his effort to concentrate power in his hands.
In a country that is officially 95% Catholic, the stance by church leaders carries significant weight. So much so that on the day before the referendum Mr. Morales–who has actively promoted indigenous beliefs, including appointing traditional medicine men to his government–publicly declared himself a Catholic, though believing “quite a bit” in PachaMama. 
Former Papal Envoy to the U.S., Archbishop Jean Jadot of Belgium, died last week at the age of 99. Jadot’s predecessor and successor as papal delegates to the U.S. received the red hat of a cardinal. Jadot never received one in recognition of his work here. In fact, he is the only Vatican diplomat assigned to the United States that was never made a cardinal. Why not a red hat? 
In 1973, Pope Paul VI sent Archbishop Jadot to Washington, DC to serve as the apostolic delegate to the United States. The pope told him he was chosen partly because he was not part of the Vatican bureacracy, and thus might not be as pliable in the hands of powerful American bishops; who to Paul VI’s view were often more businessman than pastor. Jadot was sent to press the American church to carry out the reforms of Vatican II, and find candidates for future episcopal appointments who were willing to do so.
Although largely undone by the conservative appointments of Pope John Paul II, Jadot had a hand in over 100 nominations, including such well known names as Roger Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles, Joseph Cardinal Bernadin of Chicago, Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle, Archbishop Rembert Weakland in Milwaukee, Archbishop Francis Hurley of Anchorage, and Bishop Walter Sullivan of Richmond, Virginia. All of these bishops have made an effort to outreach to Catholics on the margins, including gay people.
As a Washington Post article said in 1983, “Whatever their background, the new breed of bishops was less concerned with the ring-kissing and watered silk vestments that went with the office, and more with getting to know their people.”
Paul VI saw an evolving role for his nuncios after Vatican II. “Nuncios should travel,” Paul VI said, not so much as the representatives of Rome to secular governments, or even as legates between Rome and the world’s bishops. Instead, they should “show the Pope’s concern for the poor, the forgotten, the ignored.”
Although Archbishop Jadot strongly adhered to most of the church’s teachings, including its opposition to abortion, he was willing to leave some issues, like artificial contraception, to individual consciences. He also helped to lead a largely successful effort to push the American church to welcome minorities, widen the role of women, increase participation by the laity and relax some rules, like the automatic excommunication of divorced people.
In A Watchman for the House of Israel , his November 9, 1976 address to the general meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Jadot called attention to the situation of minorities in the American church: “How are we to give pastoral care to those who do not feel at home with our white, Western European ways of public worship and community living, to those who have not adapted and do not want to adapt to what we call our American way of doing things?”
He added, “I wonder if the majority of our priests and people realize our shortcomings in these areas and even our arrogance toward our brothers and sisters in the faith who are in some ways different from ourselves. I wonder if we can ever fully understand the legitmate frustrations that they feel.”
He could have been speaking about how gay Catholics feel treated by their church.
In his concluding remarks, the apostolic delegate called brief attention to two other areas of concern that the bishops would have to follow up on: “There are other problems either near or far on the horizon. I could mention the question of the role of women in society and in the church or problems that will come from the rejection of the traditional standards of morality in society, political and business life.”
Jadot concluded his address to “my brother bishops” by saying: “Let us be confident, courageous and open to the Spirit. Let us build the church of God by our foresight.”
After this address the apostolic delegate became the target of bitter animosity from conservative bishops and laypeople. He received a steady flow of anonymous hate mail telling him to get out of the United States and go back to Belgium. He was also being denounced at the Vatican. At one point, Jadot offered his resignation to Paul VI, who responded immediately by saying, “No. You are doing just what I want you to do.”
The anti-Jadot campaign was allegedly spearheaded by Cardinals John Carberry of St. Louis, John Krol of Philadelphia and John Cody of Chicago. Polish-American Cardinal Krol had the ear of John Paul II and eventually convinced him Jadot was “destroying the Catholic church in the United States.” Cardinal Cody was opposed to Jadot because he knew personally that Jadot had asked Paul VI to remove him. 
When John Paul II became pope, Archbishop Jadot was relieved of his position and given a minor post. The fact he was not honored with the customary red hat was the subject of a September 7, 2002 article in the Tablet by veteran Vatican reporter Robert Blair Kaiser.
“The Jadot I found in Brussels,” Kaiser wrote, “did not strike me as a man who was nursing any grievences. He knew he had done a fine job – for Paul VI and for the Church. He refused to speculate about why he did or did not become a cardinal, and had good words, moreover, for some in the Roman Curia. He said he liked Cardinal Gianbattista Re. “I trust him very much. He’s in the category of honest people.”
“I asked him how many cardinals he in put in that category.”
“Jadot hesitated, then laughed. ‘I don’t know all the cardinals,’ he said.”
But Jadot may have expressed his private feelings to his good friend and biographer, theologian Dr. John (Jack) Dick, the day his successor, Archbishop Pio Laghi, who appointed conservative bishops, was named a cardinal on May 29, 1991. That day, after lunch, Jadot said, “It is a slap in my face.”
Dr. Dick, now retired from the University of Louvain in Belgium, is completing a book about Jadot titled Paul’s Man in Washington. Perhaps the book will reveal things Jadot was too much of a diplomat and a gentleman to ever mention directly.
On the other hand, when it came time to select a new archbishop in Vienna in 1986, John Paul II picked Hans Hermann Groer, a Benedictine abbot, because he had met the man at a Marian conference and was impressed for one reason alone: his obvious devotion to Our Lady. (Cardinal Franz Konig got the news about Groer’s appointment on television.) A few years later, Groer had to retire after allegations that he had been seducing the young men at his monastery.
After opposing a United Nations declaration that called for the decriminalization of homosexuality last month, the Vatican issued its own call to eliminate criminal penalties for homosexuality.
“The Holy See appreciates the attempts made in (the declaration) to condemn all forms of violence against homosexual persons as well as urge states to take necessary measures to put an end to all criminal penalties against them,” the statement said.
“The Holy See continues to advocate that every sign of unjust discrimination towards homosexual persons should be avoided,” said Vatican spokesman Fr. Frederico Lombardi.
An explanatory note published in the official Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano said that if the resolution on sexual orientation aimed simply at ensuring no country treated homosexuality as a crime, “there would have been no reason for (the Vatican) to criticize that document.”
“The Catholic church maintains that free sexual acts between adult persons must not be treated as crimes to be punished by civil authorities,” said the newspaper. 
The Vatican specifically objected to the declaration’s use of the terms, “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” According to L’Osservatore Romano, these terms “imply that sexual identity is defined only by culture,” and their use in the declaration is part of an attempt to “equate same-sex unions with marriage and give homosexual couples the change to adopt or ‘procreate’ children.”
The paper argued that the declaration would endanger “other human rights,” such as “liberty of expression…thought, conscience and religion,” since it might limit religions in their freedom to teach that homosexual behavior is morally wrong.
Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican’s permanent observer to the U.N., warned the European-backed text could “create new and implacable discriminations.” “For example,” he said, “states that do not recognize same-sex unions as ‘matrimony’ will be pilloried and made an object of pressure.”
The Declaration on Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity was presented to the U.N. General Assembly on December 18, 2008. This non-binding declaraton, which was sponsored by France and backed by the 27-member European Union, received 66 votes in the 192-member U.N. General Assembly. Aside from the Holy See, opponents included China, Russia, the United States and the 56-member Organization of the Islamic Conference.
Sponsors of the European text point out that homosexuality is still punishable by law in 93 countries and by death in seven of them, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and Nigeria.
An opposing Arab-backed statement, read out at the United Nations by Syria, said the European text could lead to “the social normalisation, and possibly the legitimisation, of many deplorable acts including paedophilia.”
Fr. Lombardi told Reuters that the Vatican did not support the Arab-backed statement, either.
The Vatican’s tilt toward leniency didn’t rub off on the Archbishop of Santo Domingo, Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez. 
The cardinal fumed that “killing children (abortion) or promoting marriages between all kinds of people, men with men, women with women,” leads to nowhere. The countries that choose to experiment with these things “will sink morally,” he added.
“I don’t thank the U.N. for anything, nothing, since today it is making such a great effort to spread this immortality throughout the entire world,” Cardinal Lopez Rodriguez continued. Calling on Domincans to “defend our country,” the cardinal exclaimed, “To those who want to come and bring that immorality here, get out! We are not interested.”
Those comments weren’t the cardinal’s first anti-gay press foray.
According to El Nacional, back in November 2007, the Cardinal, arguing that fidelity should be at the core of education efforts to stem pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases “explained that for those reasons the Catholic church was opposed to promiscuity between ‘heterosexuals and maricones’ because sex had to be of the moment and between a man and a woman.”While discussing gays coming to Santa Domingo, Rodríguez remarked, “They should stay in Europe or the United States, we don’t need that social trash, we don’t need it.”
I wonder if the maricones Cardinal Rodríguez has met among his clergy and in the Vatican appreciated being called “social trash.” I doubt it.
Proposition 8 was a California constitutional amendment that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Much to the utter shock of many people, especially gay people in California that took tolerance for granted, the measure passed on election day. The people who voted for it in the largest numbers were black Christians who also pulled the lever for Democratic presidential candidate Barak Obama. Obama won, but so did Proposition 8. 
The California dioceses and California Catholic Conference weighed in against the measure, and the Knights of Columbus provided over $1 million for media and public relations efforts. Against this flood one gay priest spoke out against it, Father Geoff Farrow. Who said all the good men were gone from the priesthood?
Shock, anger, bitter disappointment, hostility, disillusionment, grim resolve…Quo Vadis, lesbian and gay Catholics? Walk away from Rome, or walk back to your people?
Two of the Roman Catholic dioceses in California have made an effort to extend an conciliatory hand to homosexual Catholics and others who support gay marriage, and worked for the defeat of Proposition 8.
Shortly after the vote, when name-calling and tempers on both sides were starting to rise, Archbishop George H. Niederauer of San Francisco made an appeal for public civility, gently chiding everyone that “tolerance, respect and trust are two-ways streets, and tolerance, respect and trust often do not include agreement or even approval. We need to be able to disagree without being disagreeable.”
“While we argue among ourselves,” he continued, “the people who need our help with hunger, unemployment, homelessless and other problems wait for us to turn together toward them. More particularly, we Catholics in the Archdiocese of San Francisco need to minister to the needs of all Catholics in this local church. Whoever they are and whatever their circumstances, their spiritual and pastoral rights should be respected, together with their membership in the church. In that spirit, with God’s grace and much prayer, perhaps we can all move forward together.”
On December 3, 2008, about a month after the passage of Proposition 8, Cardinal Roger M. Mahoney, and all six of the auxiliary bishops signed a letter titled – A Pastoral Message to Homosexual Catholics in the Archiocese of Los Angeles.
“As bishops of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles,” the letter begins, “we are addressing this message first of all to homosexual members of our church. Given the controversy generated by the passage of Proposition 8, we want to reassure each of you that you are cherished members of the Catholic Church and we value you as equal and active members of the body of Christ.” 
“The passage of Proposition 8 in the state of California does not diminish in any way the importance of you, our homosexual brothers and sisters in the church. Nor does it lessen your personal dignity and value as full members of the body of Christ. The church’s support of Proposition 8 was our effort to resist a legal redefinition of marriage.”
“We were disappointed that the ballot information about Proposition 8 stated that the purpose of the initiative was ‘to ban gay marriage.’ From the very beginning, this was not our purpose.”
“Proposition 8 was never intended, directly or indirectly, to lessen the value and importance of gay and lesbian persons. Your intrinsic values as human beings and as brothers and sisters continues without change. If we had ever thought that the intent of this proposition was to harm you or anyone in the state of California, we would not have supported it. We are personally grateful for the witness and service of so many dedicated and generous homosexual Catholics. We pledge our commitment to safeguard your dignity.”
“We welcome thoughtful and civil dialogue with you so that we can deepen our realization that all of us cherish God’s creative life which we equally share. We are committed to find ways to eliminate discrimination against homosexual persons and to help guarantee the basic rights which belong to each of us.”
Read the whole letter here.
The remaining California Dioceses of San Diego, Orange, Fresno, San Jose, Oakland, Sacramento, San Bernadino, Monterey, Santa Rosa, and Stockton have apparently declined to offer any post-Proposition 8 reconciliation.
Archbishop Niederauer and Cardinal Mahoney did go out on a limb to reach out and reassure gay Catholics. Their statements were disingenuous in spots, but for the most part I believe they are sincere.
I hope one of them is willing to offer Fr. Geoff a pastoral position, if he needs to leave Fresno.
I belong to a parish I adore. My pastor is a good man. I have a tremendous respect for him: his kindness, warmth and integrity. He makes everyone feel welcome and at home. You are happy to come to church every week.
The people of the community fit the same mold. It is a place where you strive, because you feel happy and loved, to live the values of the faith and try to do right every day.
But a situation came along this year to beckon me to live my faith in a prophetic way.
I recently made a commitment to be part of a community lead by a Roman Catholic Womanpriest. I am a little scared, but also very resolute in my commitment to my priest, her ministry and the community she is undertaking to bring to life. It is an honor for me to be part of this group.
The dual feelings of joy and apprehension are not new. It is worship on the shadow’s edge; gathering in discretion, hoping not to invite persecution at the hands of religious authorities, but understanding it is always a possibility.
The last time I experienced faith on the margins was in the early ’80s, when Dignity groups were tossed out of church facilities. Instead of going away quietly, gay Catholics found new moorings in liberal protestant churches and nondenominational facilities. Forced out of the gay ghetto, Dignity and CCL members expanded relationships with other reform and renewal-minded Catholics. There are now several hundred “gay-friendly”Roman Catholic parishes with supportive family and friends, and discreet, but out, gay and lesbian parishioners.
The priest of my new community was ordained in Boston on July 20, 2008. “The organization calling itself Roman Catholic Womanpriests is not recognized as an entity of the Catholic Church,” said Cardinal Sean O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston. “Catholics who attempt to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the women who attempt to receive a sacred order, are by their own actions separating themselves from the Church.” 
The Womenpriests organization says their ordinations are legitimate because Catholic bishops in good standing ordained their first members to become female priests and bishops. That means the women being ordained can claim apostolic succession, or direct descent from Jesus’ apostles.
“Why is Rome so upset about us? Because they know the ordinations are valid,” said Bridget Mary Meehan, the spokeswoman for Roman Catholic Womenpriests.
The organization has not released the name of the bishops it says ordained the first women priests and consecrated the first women bishops, saying they would face sanction by the Vatican, but says it will release the names once the male bishops die.
The Boston ordination ceremony was presided over by Dana Reynolds of California and Ida Raming of Germany.
“We know only too well in how many ways Vatican church leaders refuse to acknowledge the equality in Christ that God has established between men and women, and how they constantly try to reimpose the precedence of men over women, which is unchristian,” Bishop Raming said. “We give witness to the whole world that it is not male gender which is the prerequisite for a valid ordination, but faith and baptism, the foundation of our dignity and equality.”
“I’m feeling such joy, I could rise up,” said one of the newly ordained priests, Judith A.B. Lee, said in an interview after the ceremony. She pointed out that she was wearing a cross from Dignity, an organization of gay Catholics. “I am a priest for the poor and for those who live at the margins, and we deserve the full sacraments of the church,” she said.
San Francisco’s archbishop has appealed to Catholics on both sides of the same-sex marriage issue to be civil to each other.
“We need to stop talking as if we are experts on the real motives of people with whom we have never even spoken. We need to stop hurling names like ‘bigot’ and ‘pervert’ at each other. And we need to stop it now,” he said. 
In a December 1, 2008 open letter that was posted on the Archdiocese of San Francisco’s website, http://sfarchdiocese.org, Archbishop George H. Niederauer said: “Tolerance, respect and trust are always two-way streets, and tolerance, respect and trust often do not include agreement or even approval. We need to be able to disagree without being disagreeable.”
He called on “churchgoers” to “speak and act out on the truth that all people are God’s children and are unconditionally loved by God.”
“Whoever they are, and whatever their circumstances, their spiritual and pastoral rights should be respected, together with their membership in the church,” he wrote. “In that spirit, with God’s grace and much prayer, perhaps we can all move forward together.”
Do ”intrinsic moral evil” and “objective disorder” qualify as uncivil, hurtful and mean-spirited terms good Catholics should take pains to avoid?
Lori and I celebrate our 21st anniversary today.
Our love and respect for each other has grown over the years and we are still very much in love.
Like other gay couples, we have have said “I Do” to each other several times. We started off with a domestic partnership in New York City on April 8, 1993; a marriage with a nondemoninational minister in Hawaii on August 27, 1998; and a wedding in Massachusetts with a justice of the peace on August 15, 2008. We celebrate all of them with a fancy dinner and nuzzling, but our biggest anniversary, even beyond our legal wedding, is the day of our first date – November 14, 1987.
The amount of “I Dos” we have experienced started to border on the humorous to both us and our families. “How many times are you going to do this,” Lori’s mother asked after our Massachusetts wedding announcement. “Until we get a toaster,” I quipped back. Lori’s younger brother and his wife and daughters surprised us with a beautiful toaster after our vows in front of the justice of the peace. 
Like other couples, we want the emotional, cultural and one day, I hope, religious affirmation of our commitment of a life together until death do us part. We also want all the legal protections and economic benefits of marriage. And yes, there is a seriousness, dignity and closeness that comes with the commitment of marriage.
On the front page of the October 30, 2008 edition of the Wall Street Journal was the article, “Why Just One Wedding Isn’t Enough For Some Gay Couples.” A lot of what other couples go through resonated in our own relationship.
“Daniel McNeil and Patrick Canavan joke they’ve been married four times–to each other. The “I dos” started with a Washington, DC church wedding in 1998. Since then, the two men, both 46 years old, have chased evolving laws across the U.S. to secure a civil union in Vermont, a domestic partnership in the District of Columbia and in August, a marriage in California.”
“Mr. Canavan met Mr. McNeil, a bubbly former Franciscan brother and math teacher, in 1994 at a retreat for gay and lesbian Catholics. They moved in together and got engaged but wanted to demonstrate their commitment publicly. In October 1998, the grooms, in tuxedos, held a Catholic wedding ceremony at an Episcopal church congenial to gay marriages in Washington. The pair picked readings from the Bible and exchanged rings blessed by their Catholic priest, before family and 200 friends. They went to Spain on their honeymoon.”
“It was probably the best day of my life,” Mr. McNeil recalls, speaking of the marriage.
“When California allowed same-sex marriages in May, Messrs. McNeil and Canavan jumped at the chance. In early August they flew to San Francisco with their son and daughter for a ceremony with a few close friends in City Hall. The children acted as witnesses.”
“Mr. McNeil says the wedding felt more like a 10th anniversary. It doesn’t confer any additional rights for the couple back home in Washington. But Mr. McNeil says he now feels emboldened to check the “married” box on things like insurance and health forms.”
Lori and I are starting to say “wife” in describing each other instead of “partner” or “spouse.” It’s still a little uncomfortable, but as we say it we are getting used to it. I checked “Married” for the first time in filling out forms at a new dentist.
We are also in the process of adding each other as the beneficiary to our pensions. As unmarried partners, we would not have been able to claim this benefit. The additional monthly check will help the surviving parter to be more financially secure – peace of mind and assurance we are happy and grateful to have as we grow old together.
An estimated 54% of Catholics voted for Obama for President. 46% did not. They voted for the McCain/Palin ticket or someone else. Catholics called the election again, as they have done for the past eight or nine. 
In spite of 50 dioceses issuing “pro-life” voting statements, every anti-abortion initiative was voted down, and the presidential election went to Barak Obama.
Here’s why I think McCain lost Catholic voters:
1. The economy
2. The economy
3. The economy
4. The $700 billion bailout (however necessary) of banks and other financial institutions
5. Doubts about Sarah Palin, combined with John McCain’s age
6. President Bush’s unpopularity
7. Ethical issues surrounding the mortgage crisis
8. Unhappiness with the overall direction of the country
Catholic voters voted for change. What can the bishops learn from this?
Focusing solely on abortion and to some degree, same-sex marriage, is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic when the passengers are heading for the lifeboats. They are not the primary concerns of most Catholic voters. The economy is.
The bishops have not regained, and may not for decades, the prestige and respect they lost in the clerical sex abuse scandal. Making pronouncements from on high is not an effective strategy. Meeting people where they are is.
Many liberal Catholics, myself included, are not pro-abortion. But because conservative politicians are unattractive on many other levels, I can’t vote for them on single issue platforms. Instead, I prefer to vote for candidates that promote alternatives to unwanted pregnancies. This is another way of addressing the same problem: abortion.
“Unwed mother” no longer carries the social stigma it did decades ago. When teenagers get pregnant, they don’t automatically give up their baby for adoption or end up in an unwanted marriage. Or get an abortion. Many of them want to have and keep their baby. The problem is – they have no money or resources to do so. Abortion becomes necessary.
Catholic bishops and Catholic conservatives can stop a lot of abortions by pushing elected representatives to fund programs for single mothers (and fathers) to get financial support for housing, food, pre-natal care, health care, education/job training, and child care.
Quo Vadis, bishops? Are you serious about making an impact on abortions, or do you just want to hear your own voice?
Quo Vadis, bishops? Be realistic. People aren’t going to give up sex. Kids and adults take chances and use nothing or don’t use birth control and get pregnant. Then what? If the woman doesn’t have the resources to give birth and raise the child, what does she do?
Abortion is a moral issue. But it is also an issue of resources.
Will U.S. bishops continue to focus on sex, and make thundering statements about “intrinsic moral evils” and huff and puff and threaten liberal Catholic politicians, and leave it go at that?
Will they also come after conservative Catholic politicians and their allies–threaten them with the loss of communion, status and photo-ops–if they do not do everything in their power to help pregnant girls and women who want to keep their babies and not be consigned to a life in poverty?
Or, will they stop the threats, roll up their sleeves, and live Pro-Life by example.
I suggest every bishop, starting with the 50 who made Pro-Life statements in this election, dedicate a portion of their endowments to support all unwed women who want to keep their child. Bishops can use this money to fund diocesan social service programs, and act as a “safety net” for when the government falls short.
A focus of the annual diocesan parish tithe should be directed to funding programs for these women and their children.
When serious money is on the table, I’ll know they’re serious.
Yesterday morning conservative Archbishop Charles Chaput and I were both a little glum.
Archbishop Chaput is an articulate and forceful anti-abortion spokesman. I am just-married, same-sex marriage advocate.
Over morning coffee and papers we were greeted with some good news and some bad news. 
- Democratic candidate Barak Obama, and his Catholic vice president, Joe Biden, won the presidential election.
- Colorado voters had soundly defeated a ballot measure that would have defined life as beginning at conception. The constitutional amendment would have defined a person to include “any human being from the moment of fertilization.”
- California voters banned same-sex marriage. The referendum called for the California constitution to be amended by adding the phrase that “Only marriage between a man and woman is valid or recognized in California.”
- California voters failed to approve a measure that would require doctors to notify parents or guardian 48 hours before performing an abortion on a minor.
- Arizona voters banned same-sex marriage.
- Florida voters banned same-sex marriage.
- Washington State voted to permit doctor-assisted suicide.
- South Dakota defeated a ban on abortion.
- Arkansas voters approved a ban on couples, who live together without being married, from adopting or fostering children. This impacts straight couples, but was primarily aimed at gay and lesbian couples.
Now what? We need to mourn, and find fresh resolve. St. Benedict points a way: Orare et laborare. Pray and work. Pray and work. Start with prayer, and then work.
And when the work seems too hard, arduous, demeaning, and hopeless; pray for strength and grace and a sense of humor to get over the rough spots. And then work.
