In their final-hour appeal to pro-life legislators to block this health care power grab in Washington, the bishops of the Catholic Church are coming out thousands of days late and millions of dollars short. In essence, they now need the forces of heaven to counteract their own past negligence.
It’s no secret that the Catholic Church hierarchy in the United States have been the happy bedfellows of the Democratic Party since waves of Catholic emigrants flooded American port cities a century ago. Not until the infamous Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 and the Democrats’ hardy embrace of the pro-abortion policy plank did the bishops even begin to waver in 100 percent support of their bedfellow party.
When one prominent Catholic politician after another came forward to sanction abortion, where were the bishops?
Ted Kennedy, youngest brother of the most prominent Catholic politician in history — John F. — became one of the first to renege on his earlier pro-life position. Young Ted Kennedy had written to a constituent in 1971 on the possibility of legalizing abortion:
While the deep concern of a woman bearing an unwanted child merits consideration and sympathy, it is my personal feeling that the legalization of abortion on demand is not in accordance with the value which our civilization places on human life. … When history looks back to this era it should recognize this generation as one which cared about human beings enough to halt the practice of war, to provide a decent living for every family and to fulfill its responsibility to its children from the very moment of conception.
When Ted Kennedy switched sides on abortion, however, there was nary a peep from Catholic bishops. There was no public excommunication. There was no outcry, even. In fact, Ted Kennedy went on to publicly defy Church teaching on abortion and other matters until his very death, which was then given headlines and a very, very public, full-fanfare Catholic funeral.
One can only marvel at the unacknowledged complicity of the Catholic bishops in where we find ourselves today. If they had only acted on the side of Christ and the popes 30 years ago, would prominent pro-abortion Catholics even still be elected to the offices from which they now wield so much power?
Nancy Pelosi is, perhaps, the worst modern example of a Catholic using the Church shamelessly as she perverts both doctrine and power. Pelosi was born into a Democratic Party political family and has been the direct, unquestioned recipient of money and opportunities that she never would have had if not for her claim to be a Catholic in good standing. She whips out her Catholic card at ever opportunity, even going so far as to lie on camera about the Church’s stance on abortion.
Last year, when queried during the presidential campaign regarding her unwavering support for the most staunchly pro-abortion candidate ever — Barack Obama — Nancy Pelosi told Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press that as “an ardent Catholic,” she had studied the abortion issue steadfastly. Her conclusion from all this “study” led Pelosi to conclude that the Church’s doctrine on abortion had changed through the centuries and was more-or-less extremely pliable. She stated forthrightly that Catholics could indeed endorse abortion.
Within days, some eight individual bishops did make forceful public statements denouncing Pelosi’s claims and stating once again, for the record, the Church’s absolute stance on the right to life, once conceived, as the primordial human right upon which all others rest.
It was too little, too late, of course. Since Pelosi’s statements were not immediately followed with her public excommunication, her lies were allowed to stand in the minds of voters. And the most staunchly pro-abortion candidate in American history took a majority of Catholic votes.
Now, the Catholic vote is no small thing. In fact, Catholics make up about 27% of the electorate. If the bishops had acted fully in accord with their own Church doctrines and immediately excommunicated Nancy Pelosi, it is indeed arguable that the 2008 election would have produced entirely different outcomes.
In 2009, another event begged the bishops’ bold intervention, but was all but ignored. Last May, Notre Dame, the flagship Catholic university in the United States, not only invited Barack Obama to speak at commencement, but then chose to award this openly avowed anti-life president with an honorary degree.
Here was the opportunity to stop Catholic support for President Obama dropped squarely in the robed laps of the U.S. bishops. They could have immediately told Notre Dame’s president, Father Jenkins, that if he did not withdraw the invitation, then they would forthrightly strip Notre Dame of its claim to represent the Catholic Church and would also instruct the faithful to stop donating to the institution and sending their children to college there. No such public remonstration was made by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, however.
Some 62 American bishops did speak out against the Notre Dame scandal, but they were speaking as individuals, which has far, far less clout than when the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) acts as a unified body. That the USCCB failed to do so simply emboldened the counterfeit Catholic forces in the Democratic Party.
As the U.S. bishops now attempt to sway the Democratic Party, which they largely have enabled and emboldened into its present-day power perch, it is an embarrassment to genuine Christians across the entire nation. If they had only been doing the jobs with which Christ ordained them, then it is quite plausible that we would not be where we are today — facing a choice between outright atheistic medicine and the overwhelming Judeo/Christian respect for human life that was the absolute norm in this country until 1973.
Woe be unto these bishops if their final-hour appeal does not stop this bill.
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