American Papist Issues Challenge to Left-Leaning Catholics: "No More Claiming US Bishops Are 'Partisan' on Abortion"

Tom Peters has issued a challenge to certain left-leaning Catholics "in the interest of dialogue":

I challenge them to explicitly and totally repudiate the pernicious claim that US Bishops, when they speak about abortion, are engaging in "partisan politics." This same claim is similarly made about American Catholics when they, essentially, mimic the talking points of the US Bishops.

The claim that US Bishops, and those who agree with them, are "partisan" when it comes to abortion is deeply hypocritcal, because such a claim is, itself, a partisan charge made exclusively by liberals.

Tom then goes on to quote L'Osservatore Romano (which the Catholic left has recently taken to treating with magesterial authority) against them:

"Obviously the Holy See and L’Osservatore Romano have been, are and will be fully at the side of the U.S. bishops in their commitment in favor of the inviolability of human life in whatever stage of its existence.

Other interpretations have no foundation, especially those that have wanted to use the newspaper’s articles to make it appear that the teachings of the U.S. episcopate on the inherent evil of abortion were an exercise in partisan politics, supposedly in contrast with a different strategy of the Holy See."

(emphasis added)

So, will the Catholic left now be willing to abandon the claim that the Bishops are acting out of partisan interests or in a partisan manner now that L'OR has put that little calumny to rest?

(Hat tip: Opinionated Catholic)

President Obama names theologian Miguel H. Diaz U.S. ambassador to the Vatican

In the same week of his nomination of a Hispanic Catholic for the Supreme Court of the United States, President Obama has finally named Havana-born 45 year old Miguel H. Diaz, an associate professor of theology at St. John's University and the College of Saint Benedict in Minnesota, to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican. Eric Gorski (Associated Press) reports:

Board Chair of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good heralded for her fundraising, and "getting out the Catholic vote", for Obama

Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good proclaims itself to be

"a non-partisan, non-profit, 501c3 organization dedicated to promoting the fullness of the Catholic Social Tradition in the public square. Founded in 2004, our mission is to provide information to Catholics about Church social teaching as it relates to public participation in our society, and to advance the prophetic voice of the Catholic social tradition.

According to The Catholic Key, it turns out that Catholics in Alliance completely beholden to Obama:

Elizabeth Frawley Bagley is the board chair of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. As reported here earlier, Bagley is anything but nonpartisan. In fact, she has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the DNC and scores of pro-abortion Democrat politicians including Al Franken, Barbara Boxer, Claire McCaskill, Charles Schumer, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. She personally raised at least $350,000 for the Obama campaign and was a member of his national finance team according to an interview in the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror.

The former Ambassador to Portugal and Clinton State Department official is wife of RJ Reynolds tobacco heir and former DNC Finance Chair, Smith Bagley. ...

[O]ne day after the election, on November 5, Bagley sat for an interview on the internet broadcast Paltalk News. Host Gary Baumgarten introduced Bagley as the person "who was responsible for getting out the Catholic vote for Obama," - a claim she did not deny. In his synopsis of the show, Baumgarten also describes Bagley as "an official of the Barack Obama campaign."

Catholic News Agency: Catholics in Alliance "Abortion Reduction" Study Found to be Faulty - Social Welfare Policies Have Little Effect on Abortion

Surprise, surprise:

Washington DC, Feb 11, 2009 / 04:09 am (CNA).- Until recently, a Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good study of abortion data claimed that increased spending on welfare programs results in substantial reductions in state abortion rates but many pro-life laws do not. However, the study’s results have been revised following the discovery that incorrect abortion data was used and after criticism from a professor that the group’s conclusions did not follow from the data.

In August 2008, the group Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good announced the release of a study on the effects of public policy on abortion rates over a 20-year period. The group had commissioned Joseph Wright, who is a political science professor at Penn State University, and Michael Bailey, who is a professor of American government at Georgetown University, to conduct the study.

“The study of all U.S. states from 1982-2000 finds that benefits for pregnant women and mothers, employment, economic assistance to low-income families, quality child care for working mothers and removal of state caps on the number of children eligible for economic assistance in low-income families has reduced abortions,” the group reported in an August 28 press release. “In contrast, permitting Medicaid payments for abortions increased the abortion rate.”

The old version of the report was removed from the site in November 2008 after critics pointed out problems with the study.

***
The feedback of Michael J. New, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Alabama, was acknowledged in the new version of the report. Writing at the web site MoralAccountability.com, New said that the authors of the study discovered that they had used incorrect abortion data for the years following 1997.

***
“The new version provides evidence that welfare policy has no more than a marginal effect on the incidence of abortion,” he argued. “In fact, the new regression results indicate that none of the three welfare policies which the authors previously argued were effective tools for reducing the incidence of abortion have a substantial abortion reducing effect.”

***
He also criticized the report’s finding that parental involvement laws and other state laws restricting abortion have little impact on overall abortion rates.

“Since parental involvement laws only directly affect minors, Wright should have mentioned that analyzing their effects on the overall abortion rate is not a methodologically sound way to gauge their actual impact,” New wrote.

The argument that informed consent laws are ineffective, New claimed, fails to acknowledge the “substantial differences” in the effects of informed consent laws that have been enacted and those that have been nullified. By the report’s criteria, New argued, the results provide evidence that informed consent laws are effective.

***
However, Professor New also pointed out that events in the political arena were impacted by the first study.

In an essay at MoralAccountability.com, New accused Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good of misleading the public and referred to “plenty of peer reviewed studies” which find that public funding restrictions and parental involvement laws reduce the incident of abortion.

He claimed the study had a “substantial impact” on the pro-life debate in the 2008 Presidential election and gave “intellectual legitimacy” to those such as Doug Kmiec and Nicholas Cafardi who argued that pro-life voters should vote for Democrats to advance the pro-life cause.

In a Tuesday e-mail to CNA, Prof. New said that the research produced by Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good seems unwilling to acknowledge the “positive effect of pro-life laws such as parental involvement and informed consent laws.”

CNA asked New to speculate why welfare spending generally does not decrease the abortion rate.

He suggested that welfare “undermines societal mores against premarital sex” by enabling women to have more children out of wedlock. Welfare may result in more unplanned pregnancies and possibly more abortions, New said.

“Regardless of how generous welfare benefits are, women facing crisis pregnancies can find financial and medical resources at one of the thousands of crisis pregnancy centers across the country,” he added.

New noted the finding in both the current and previous versions of the group’s report that shows higher female employment is correlated with higher abortion rates.

***
New also mentioned a 2002 study which showed that Medicaid recipients have a higher incidence of abortion in states where Medicaid funds the procedure.

“In states that provide Medicaid funding for abortions, women with Medicaid coverage had an abortion rate more than four times as high as women without such coverage (89 vs. 21 per 1,000),” New summarized. “In contrast, in states that do not cover abortion services for women on Medicaid, the abortion rate among Medicaid recipients was only twice that of women without Medicaid coverage (35 vs. 16 per 1,000).”

While the Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good study reports an increase in abortion rates in states where abortions are funded by Medicaid, New charged: “they do not give this finding much attention in the write-up.”

“Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good continues to miss opportunities with their abortion research,” New told CNA.

“I think that they would be more effective if they would be more willing to publicly acknowledge the positive impact of pro-life legislation and try to constructively work with pro-life groups to promote social policies that will further reduce abortion rates. Instead Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good seems primarily interested in providing moral, political, and theological cover for supporters of Barack Obama and other Democrats who support ‘abortion rights.’”

[Read the whole thing]

(emphasis added)


UPDATED (12 February 2009)
Regular Guy Paul has something to say about the lies and those who chose to believe them:

It was a lie. The left told a convenient lie, and the Catholic left opted to accept it. As I said at the time, they knew it was a lie.

***
They would rather claim to believe lies than vote against abortion. And, having won, they offer nary a keystroke to argue against abortion. They claimed to believe this study. They claimed that Obama's pro-abortion promises were just pandering. They claim to be pro-life. They, like "Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good," are liars. They don't oppose abortion. They've made a negotiated peace on a non-negotiable issue. As I've called them before, they are turncoats in the culture war.

See also:
Prof. Robert George: Notion that Obama's Policies Will Reduce Abortion is "Delusional"

National Catholic Register: "Pro-Life Candidates Save Lives"

Archbishop Chaput: Kmiec Doing a "Disservice to the Church"

USCCB Sets Record Straight Re: Catholic Stance on Overturning Roe

Mark Stricherz: "Why the Democratic Abortion Strategy is Worse"

U.S. Catholic Bishops: "You Can't Reduce Abortions by Promoting Abortions"

Blackadder: "Would Overturning Roe Reduce the Abortion Rate?"

"Poverty and Abortion: A New Analysis"

Covering "The [Catholic] Convention for the Common Good"

The Convention for the Common Good was held in Philadelphia July 11-13, sponsored by Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Network, a national Catholic social justice lobby. Deal Hudson reported on the event for InsideCatholic.com and as he notes, it was predominantly a gathering of the Left:

Alexia Kelley, the founder of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, was the religious outreach director for the Democratic National Committee during the Kerry campaign. Network, a Catholic social justice lobby founded by a group of 47 Catholic sisters in 1971, which lobbies Congress on everything but abortion. Bill Donohue has written recently about both organizations as part of the Catholic Left "boxed in by abortion."

In my view, the Convention for the Common Good was going to be nothing more than an extended diatribe against President Bush, the Republican Party, and John McCain. . . . According to a recent college graduate who attended the conference all day on Saturday, my expectations were largely realized.

As Deal observes, a telltale sign of a conference's political alignment is from the materials they sell:

The booths outside the meeting contained no materials from either the GOP or conservatives. The non-profit Matthew 25 Project booth had a picture of Obama next to an open letter of support with a long list of signatures. She said the way the picture was hung next to Matthew 25:35 -- "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat" -- made Obama "look like he was Jesus."

Another booth offered literature on the gay, lesbian, and transgendered lifestyle. One booklet was entitled, A Catholic Defense of Same-Sex Marriage. A newspaper in the same booth, Bondings, published by New Ways Ministry of Mount Rainier, MD, had a full page list of "gay friendly" parishes throughout the country. My source never heard any mention of the nationwide debate over gay marriage at the conference. ...

The "Platform for the Common Good" is available on their website: "Vote the Common Good" -- the Platform Summary itself touches on many topics: "economic equity" between the "haves" and "have-nots"; "opposition to institutional racism, sexism and classism"; rehabilitation of the criminal justice system; third-world debt cancellation; "creative solutions" to drug trafficking, etc., etc., etc.

While it is asserted in the summary that "we must create the essential conditions for a consistent culture of life that respects and promotes life at all stages", the subject of abortion in the content of the platform itself is reduced to a single bullet point:

Promote policies that prevent and reduce abortions by supporting women and families. Ensure robust alternatives to abortion, including adoption.

While I wholeheartedly agree with this, it seems that a support for "the common good" would also entail working for the legal recognition and protection of the unborn and opposition those laws which attempt to legitimize abortion as a "right."

See also:

• The National Catholic Register reports on the same event, under the banner "New groups add broader Catholic views to politics". "Broader" views, indeed.
  
• How the Catholic Left Is Boxed in by Abortion, by William A. Donohue. InsideCatholic.com June 20, 2008.
  

Catholics Respond to "Call for Civility"

Back in November 2007 a "diverse group of prominent lay Catholics" called for "a more civil tone to political discussion in America's public square:

“Civility should be a guiding principle in our public life,” the statement says. “Civility and its potential impact on the fabric of the Catholic Church should be of concern to all faithful Catholics, both clergy and lay people.”

"The statement directly addresses controversies over Catholic politicians whose positions on various polarizing issues conflict or give the appearance of conflicting with Church teachings,” said Ambassador Thomas P. Melady. “Some voices have been shrill. The language at times has been offensive. The level of dialogue and conversation in too many instances has not met the standards that one expects in a country trying to establish worldwide standards for all democracies."

This past week, another group of influential Catholics released a formal response to the statement. Catholic News Agency reports:

"Rather than giving pro-abortion Catholic politicians a pass, we should vote them out of office and encourage them to repent,” said Austin Ruse, the president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) on Monday. Ruse made his comments as he and 95 other influential Catholics responded to the “Call for Civility” in politics statement released last November.

The November 2007 statement calling for more civility in politics was made after some pro-abortion Catholic politicians expressed their opinion that they should be treated more civilly by their fellow Catholics over their political positions.

The 96 signers of the response statement about political civility say that while not all of the signers of the November statement intended it, the net effect of the “‘Call for Civility’ would be to silence the pro-life and pro-family movements. We oppose this effort root and branch.”

• Catholic Laymen in the Public Square: A Catholic Response to the "Call for Civility" (Full text) January 21, 2008.
• A Catholic Call to Observe Civility in Political Debate Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. November 6, 2007.