George Neumayr on Obama's style of Catholic

"Just as Jeremiah Wright's over-the-top sermons could not have come as a surprise to Obama, so Father Michael Pfleger's hyper-partisanship would have been known to him as well," says George Neumayr (Phony Pflegerism American Spectator June 6, 2008):

Obama has formed a "Catholic advisory committee." Among the national co-chairs of his committee are Sister Jamie Phelps, O.P., Professor of Theology at Xavier University, and Sister Catherine Pinkerton with the Congregation of St. Joseph, standard issue leftists both.

As long as priests and religious in the mold of Pfleger aim their partisan arrows at the right targets, Obama won't mind. He needs them to choose fidelity to the Democratic Party over fidelity to the teachings of the Church -- to treat the former as absolute and the latter as relative.

And if John McCain, as is likely, blurs the moral differences between the parties, Obama's task will become all that much easier. Look how little it takes to get a Douglas Kmiec to come over to his side. That McCain finds religious talk off-putting while Obama gravitates to quasi-religious rhetoric won't help matters either.

WHAT COMPLICATES Obama's project is that Pope Benedict XVI has asked the bishops to knock off the clericalism and restrict their political participation to "non-negotiable" principles that represent not personal opinions but moral truths.

Some bishops are following his lead, if only incrementally. They are taking steps to end open scandals, starting with the immediate one of Catholic politicians who support abortion.

A more spiritually serious Catholic Church is bad for the Democratic Party but critical to the common good. ...Read More

George Neumayr is editor of Catholic World Report and press critic for California Political Review).