Catholic liberals & abortion

...He would still be welcome...

...and William Proxmire, who is willing to stand up to the abortion industry as well as the Pentagon...

...I approach the subject with the perspective of an ex-Catholic, one who left the church about sixteen years ago, well before abortion became a major political issue...

...This may be the ultimate idolatry...

...If more liberals were to study embryology books, they would understand that the debate can be resolved without reference to theology...

...In the late 1960s he began saying that, although ideally the state would ban abortion in order to protect human life, there was clearly a trend toward the state's permitting abortion in certain circum-stances...

...Many Catholic Democrats discourage protests against the party line...

...People in the pro-life movement have been surprised, even scandalized, by this state of affairs...

...It was the mission of monks in the Dark Ages to preserve a love of learning...

...Logically, of course, the tables can be turned...

...Robert Drinan, S.J., House Speaker Thomas O'Neill, Jr., Senator Edward Kennedy, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Senator Patrick Leahy, and others...

...More is touched by Norfolk's loyalty, but cannot give up his own integrity or sense of humor: "And when we stand before God, and you are sent to Paradise for doing according to your conscience, and I am damned for not doing according to mine, will you come with me, for fellowship...

...As a Catholic, I accept the premise that a fertilized ovum is a baby...

...Others have joined the pro-choice ranks, with no equivocation and apparently no regrets...

...But instead of accepting all of the Democratic candidates who come down the pike, liberals should start asking them some questions about consistency...

...Lindy Boggs come to mind...

...Abortion seems to us such a great wrong that Catholic liberals should oppose it resolutely, whether they approach it as Catholics, as liberals, or simply as humans...

...Democratic pressures to stay in line and support abortion...

...On the other side was Mayor Daley of Chicago, who, while paying his respects to Cardinal Cody, pronounced that "there are more important questions for the citizens of America than abortion...

...Some of these reasons have almost nothing to do with the abortion issue as such...

...But the pleas of pro-life liberals are often drowned out by anguished cries of indecision from some of their colleagues and pro-choice speeches of others...

...The Drinan formula is essentially escaptist...

...It doesn't really matter whether it's a king, a dictator, or a tsar, but it has to be someone . . ." Lader made it clear that he had in mind a special group of people...

...Actually, Father Drinan has had several positions on government policy toward abortion...

...Such facts include the time when the embryonic heart starts beating (three to four weeks of age), the time when the fetus has a clearly human form (seven to eight weeks), and the fact that abortion usually tears apart the body of a tiny embryo or fetus...

...We are not like these other Catholics-old-fashioned, rigid, obsessed with abortion, neglectful of thy teaching...

...Anyone who is on liberal mailing lists receives fundraising letters, from groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Organization for Women, supporting legalized abortion and attacking the right-to-life movement...

...Catholic philosophy and ethics seem to me sound and admirable in most respects...

...Many Catholics need to keep apologizing for their church-if not directly, then by being the first to attack any church official who questions liberal dogma...

...This helps explain the instinctive defensiveness of Catholic liberals in the presence of Protestant, Jewish, and secular liberals...

...A more positive approach was suggested by the late Lyndon Johnson when he was Majority Leader of the Senate for the Democrats and had to deal with a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower...

...but others have not...

...Instead of doing this, some Catholics engage in their own theological games, citing medieval theologians who thought that a male fetus became human at forty days, and a female fetus became human at eighty days...

...But these are negative and barren approaches...

...Question the infallibility of the ACLU and the Democratic party at least as much as you question the infallibility of the pope...

...In conclusion, a few words of advice to Catholic liberals from one who wishes them well: • If you are going to be a Catholic, be a Catholic...

...Others blamed the bishops for almost everything except bad weather...

...Constitution...

...Conservatives who respect life should be pressed hard on these questions...

...The Nation, the New Republic, the New York Times, the Village Voice, and others keep up a steady drumbeat of support for the pro-choice position...

...Robert Drinan, S.J., former member of the House of Representatives and now president of the Americans for Democratic Action...

...In a devastating article in Worldview of March, 1977, James Hitchcock showed how this was done in the presidential campaign of 1976...

...Some Catholic liberals are attracted to a pro-choice position because of their interest in ecumenical ventures and their fears that Catholic opposition to legalized abortion endangers ecumenical progress...

...After the salute, of course, it is essential to ask conservatives about consistency...

...Often their efforts have been intellectually dishonest...

...There is room under the pro-life tent for everyone, and liberals are greeted with special warmth...

...Some pro-abortion leaders have played upon this defensive-ness by suggesting that the right-to-life movement is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Catholic hierarchy...

...Yet many do not oppose it for a variety of reasons-emotional, political, intellectual...

...Eleanor Smeal, President of the pro-choice National Organization for Women, is a Catholic...

...How about the neutron bomb, the MX missile, Trident submarines...

...and don't apologize...

...Marylanders know that their state's Religious Toleration Act was passed under Catholic leadership in 1649 and later repealed by Puritans, who then passed anti-Catholic laws...

...The abortion issue was an albatross for the Democrats...

...they want to belong somewhere...

...The "Call to Concern" circulated by the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights says that "we believe that abortion may in some instances be the most loving act possible.'' This seems to me a sort of madness-as does the contention of some theologians that personhood begins at birth...

...It seems to me that Catholic liberals-whether speaking as Catholics, as liberals, or whatever-should challenge this irrational theory at every turn...

...I have been blessed with the gift of faith...

...Catholic-baiting by NARAL started long ago...

...When the state withdraws, in effect it decides it will protect the lives of humans who have been born, but not the lives of the unborn...

...It may also be strong in those who wear their Catholicism so lightly that they scarcely know it is there...

...If only the innocent are allowed to speak on issues of life and death, then all such debates must be left to children...

...Both groups, for quite different reasons, had a stake in keeping Catholics as a safe delivery vote within the Democratic fold...

...For starters, the participants could simply leave their respective churches...

...but most liberals hate to agree with them on anything...

...If you are going to be a liberal, be a liberal-but, please, not one of the knee-jerk variety...

...Father Drinan's middle position has had enormous influence on the views of Catholic liberals...

...But as one critic noted, this position still involved discrimination...

...Ferraro...

...Both discouraged the possible independent-mindedness of the "single-issue voter...

...it just is not done...

...It was, in fact, a conscious policy of NARAL founder Lawrence Lader...

...All of this leads to viewing things Catholic with respect and affection, but with a certain detachment...

...We need more free speech in this country- not less...

...the 1980 platform adopted the second as well...

...Geraldine Ferraro (D.-N.Y...

...A former Lader colleague, Dr...

...Catholic liberals who overcome the temptation to go along for fellowship must still face the other side of the coin: the problem of making common cause on an issue with Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, and other boogeymen...

...The church's defense of human life today-against the violence of abortion and of nuclear weapons-is a magnificent continuation of that tradition...

...Some are so politicized that liberalism has almost become their substitute for religion...

...We do not have the excuse of biological ignorance, and pretending that we do seems to me the worst kind of evasion...

...Yet it seems to me that people should be willing to view the consequences of their actions...

...Johnson's approach was simple and effective: ". . . we prod him into doing everything we can get him to do, and when he does something good we give him a 21-gun salute...

...He explained to Nathanson: "Not just all Catholics...

...But it may be especially urgent in those who are hanging onto their religious faith by their fingernails...

...Some liberals delight in attacking conservative right-to-lifers for their inconsistency in supporting capital punishment and militarism-as though mistaken positions on those issues disqualify them from defending the unborn...

...Another lawyer, Rep...

...This point is basic to the entire debate over abortion, but is often neglected by Catholic liberals such as Rep...

...The church/state problem is a large part of the underbrush surrounding the issue...

...Yet those who revere the Scriptures should remember that Christ accepted the company of many sinners: liars and prostitutes, adulterers, people who broke the Sabbath observance, possibly even reactionaries...

...and there are many others at the grass roots...

...There are, of course, liberal Catholics on the other side...

...The 1976 Democratic platform adopted the first position...

...Those who accepted this theory (many did not) were simply following the faulty biology of Aristotle...

...Henry Hyde, is truer to his profession when he tells the House that "it is the duty of this legislature to intervene on behalf of defenseless human life...

...More scandalous than sectarian divisions among religious people is the spectacle of religious support for abortion...

...No, it's got to be the Catholic hierarchy...

...If that is not so, I do not know why we need this building or why we need law libraries...

...All of the contributions were from Catholic dioceses, which could hardly be surprising to the few people who knew that this group was established to act for the bishops...

...Biology does not deal with the theological concept of "ensoulment...

...Robin Chandler Duke, President of the National Abortion Rights Action League, was "born Catholic" and received a convent education...

...BUT THE church/state argument involves much more than this...

...The purpose of the law, says Hyde, "is to protect the weak from the strong...

...Many pro-abortion victories have been due largely to Catholic leaders in the courts and in Congress: Justice William Brennan, the late Judge John Dool-ing, Jr., Rev...

...This is a natural human tendency...

...There is a great deal to be proud of in your tradition, and you should not underestimate it...

...It allows people to avoid messy reality, to wash their hands of the abortion issue, to feel that they can retain their own moral purity while allowing the deaths of the unborn...

...They can ask whether liberals who support the violence of abortion should be respected on other issues...

...Pro-life activists, by contrast, are careful to stress the non-religious grounds for opposition to abortion, even when they also oppose abortion for religious reasons...

...They are like scraggly trees and bushes obscuring one's view of a house...

...Last year's election returns provided a strong pragmatic argument against the pro-abortion stance of the Democratic party...

...It helped defeat Jimmy Carter, Birch Bayh, Frank Church, John Culver, Elizabeth Holtzman, Warren Magnuson, George McGovern, Gaylord Nelson, John Brademas, Bob Eckhafdt, Frank Thompson, Al Ullman, and others...

...Although the federal courts are now rejecting this position, it still carries weight among liberals who think that religious belief is the primary (or even the only) reason for opposition to abortion...

...Most liberal publications and organizations support legalized abortion-often vehemently...

...51-52) Whether intentionally or by accident, Lader's strategy also capitalized on the anti-hierarchy attitudes of many Catholics...

...They should remember a scene in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, in which the Duke of Norfolk pleads with his friend Sir Thomas More: "Oh, confound all this . . . I'm not a scholar . . . frankly I don't know whether the marriage was lawful or not...

...One need not defend such things -they are indefensible-in order to say that Catholics are too sensitive about them...

...Secondly, we have to convince liberal Catholics to join us, a popular front as it were, and if we tar them all with the same brush, we'll just antagonize a few who might otherwise have joined us and be valuable showpieces for us...

...First of all, that's too large a group, and for us to vilify them all would diffuse our focus...

...This calls to mind another scene from A Man for All Seasons, when Thomas More says to William Roper: "We must just pray that when your head's finished turning, your face is to the front again...

...How can the possession, increase, and deployment of nuclear weapons be justified under any circumstances...

...yet my problems with Catholic theology are basic...

...We defend the right to choose, we give to the ACLU tithes of all that we possess, we castigate our narrow-minded Catholic friends . . ." Catholic liberals want to be good liberals...

...Historians could just as well speak of Bloody Henry and Bloody Elizabeth as of Bloody Mary...

...Undoubtedly some people reacted the same way to opponents of the Vietnam war who displayed photographs of children hit by napalm...

...Nathanson, Aborting America, 1979, pp...

...Why can't we have more candidates like Mary Rose Oakar, who supports the right to life as well as a high "quality of life...

...Don't be ashamed of it...

...Always lurking in the background, prompting the guilt at which Catholics excel, are memories of the Inquisition, Galileo's heresy trial, Bloody Mary's repression of Protestants, and other aspects of Catholic history that are less than edifying...

...If the main objective is to have all ecumeni-cists sound like utilitarian humanists, there are far easier ways to accomplish that than by holding endless interfaith dialogues...

...It is difficult to understand why Drinan abandoned his first position, especially since as late as 1967 he said that "the right to be born and the right to exist constitute the cardinal principle and centerpiece of Anglo-American law...

...Either in print or in person, a liberal may encounter sneering references to pro-lifers as "so-called right-to-lifers" or "friends of the fetus...

...And I do not know anyone weaker or more voiceless or more defenseless than an innocently inconvenient human life...

...Attacks on the Catholic hierarchy by NARAL, instead of antagonizing the liberal laity, may have attracted them...

...I suppose that it does, though I wonder what ecumenical progress is leading to, and what good it is, if it results in everyone's believing less and less about the things that really matter...

...Mary Rose Oakar, and Rep...

...Rather than having the state decide who should live and who should die, he suggested, it might be better to have the state withdraw from the abortion field altogether and leave the matter to individual conscience...

...At the same time, years of contact with liberal politics and with essentially secular people have given me another perspective that is useful in understanding the abortion issue...

...Last year liberals re-ceived similar mailings from candidates such as John Ander-son and George McGovern...

...The flyer listed contributions of $500 or more to only one group-the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment...

...told the House of Representatives in June, 1979: ". . . this country is based on a separation of church and state...

...THERE ARE also strong political pressures for liberals to stay in line...

...That is what the law is for...

...Perhaps the Catholic historical memory of religious repression is like the American remembrance of the atom bomb...

...They are paralyzed by indecision, unable to take sides and thus effectively removed from any role in the dispute...

...Victories of the pro-abortion forces have not been caused by a Catholic plot, but a conspiracy nut could make a case for that suspicion...

...MARY MEEHAN is a Washington-based writer whose work has appeared in Inquiry, The Washington Post, and other journals...

...Liberals should also consider the possibility that contact with conservatives can be educational...

...But damn it, Thomas, look at those names . . . You know those men...

...As a prominent lawyer, he was in an excellent position to make this point, and certainly his talents would have been welcomed by what was then a small and struggling pro-life movement...

...they want to be accepted...

...No one should underestimate the social pressures for liberals to stay in line on the abortion issue...

...He concluded that "pressure on Catholics to fall into line politically came from two opposite wings of the party": The most articulate were clergy, many of them relative newcomers to politics and still flushed with the enthusiasm of untarnished idealism, who wanted the Catholic vote to be determined by position papers emanating from groups like Network and the Center for Concern...

...Surely their ancestors were not the only offenders...

...Pro-abortionists argue that laws restricting abortion amount to an establishment of religion that is forbidden by the First Amendment to the U.S...

...And since this is the case, restricting or banning abortion cannot fairly be called an establishment of religion...

...Bernard Nathanson, quotes Lader in the early days of NARAL...

...The left wing of the Democratic party is strongly committed to legalized abortion and to federal funding of abortion...

...These include many rank-and-file Catholics, some of the clergy, and a surprising number of liberal-Catholic politicians...

...Henry Hyde (R.-III...

...A liberal is likely to hear friends object to pictures of aborted children as something "in poor taste" or a "cheap shot...

...Largely because of the contraception dispute, many Catholic liberals had stopped listening to their bishops by the time the abortion issue came along...

...According to this theory, apparently, a fetus of eight months, born alive but prematurely, is a person, while a fetus aborted at eight months is not a person...

...Juli Loesch, founder of an anti-nuclear weapons and anti-abortion group called Prolifers for Survival, says that it is the pro-choice people who rtiake metaphysical statements about "potential life" and -"meaningful life" and "personhood," while pro-lifers stick to "grubby little facts...

...A 1977-78 fundraising flyer of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) was titled "Who Finances the Anti-Abortion Movement...

...What is the point of poking fun at medieval theologians and at the same time using their factual error (long since remedied by science) to support indecision on the abortion issue...

...Senator Thomas Eagleton, Rep...

...Liberals are embarrassed to be found in conservative company...

...An Anderson fundraising letter for the National Abortion Rights Action League referred to right-to-lifers as "anti-choice zealots," "the reactionary, right-wing axis of anti-choice forces," "extremists," and "bullies...

...don't be half-hearted...

...We Irish remember Oliver Cromwell...

...It stands to reason that the conservatives have to be right about something, if only because of the law of averages...

...Yet it is biology, not faith, that tells us that a fertilized ovum is the earlest form of human life...

...Historically every revolution has to have its villain...

...Thomas Eagleton, who has suggested that a Human Life Amendment should ban capital punishment as well as abortion...

...But it should not take pragmatic arguments to convince Catholic liberals they should ignore...

...Perhaps it should be your work, in unhappy and despairing times, to protect a love of life.appy and despairing times, to protect a love of life...

...Most did not...

...Liberals could learn a great deal from him, if they would take the time to listen...

...Do not be intimidated or discouraged from speaking out on serious issues by mistaken arguments about separation of church and state...

...By failing to list contributions to the largest anti-abortion group, the non-denominational National Right to Life Committee, and to other non-Catholic groups, NARAL left the impression that the movement is solely Catholic-financed...

...for example, in speaking against abortion, is making what may be the most eloquent civil-rights speeches of our day...

...it contributed to a political disaster of major dimension's...

...First use is a haunting memory, even when the guilt belongs to one's ancestors...

...The scheme worked in 1976, but fell apart in 1980...

...Like the Pharisee in the temple, they say, "Oh, fellow liberals...

...Similarly, segregationists in the 1950s used the epithet of "nigger lovers" to dehumanize both black people and white civil rights activists...

...Thus Rep...

...Only if the underbrush is cleared away can one obtain a clear view...

...These liberals have not taken the easy way out advocated by Rev...

...Can't you do what I did, and come with us, for fellowship...

...I have no right to impose my beliefs on them...

...It decides to allow private killing of an entire class of human beings...

...he moved from advocacy of restrictive laws (1965), to support for government neutrality (1970), to voting for government funding of abortion (1974...

...but it need not deal with that concept in order to reach conclusions about when human life begins...

...A number of liberal Catholics have joined NARAL's cause with a certain righteousness...

...andformer Rep...