She Was Just Begging for This – Part I

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, High Priestess of the Church of Obama

Here’s the beginning of a badly-needed fisking of Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s article, Without a Doubt: Why Barack Obama Represents American Catholics Better Than the Pope Does.

Tomorrow Pope Benedict XVI and President Barack Obama meet for the first time, an affair much anticipated and in some circles frowned upon by American Catholics in the wake of Obama’s controversial Notre Dame commencement speech in May.

What circles are these?  Can she name one American Catholic who thinks Pope Benedict and President Obama should not meet?  A ridiculous assertion.

 Conservatives in the church denounced Obama’s appearance as a nod by the premier Catholic university to a conciliatory politics that heralds the start of a slippery moral slope.

“Conservatives in the church” (sic) apparently means “bishops.”  Not one bishop in this country supported Notre Dame in their decision to award Obama an honorary degree.

In truth, though, Obama’s pragmatic approach to divisive policy (his notion that we should acknowledge the good faith underlying opposing viewpoints) and his social-justice agenda reflect the views of American Catholic laity much more closely than those vocal bishops and pro-life activists.

His call for respecting opposing views in his Notre Dame commencement address was a call to respect his support of infanticide.  The man voted against a law that would have made it a crime to leave a born-alive “botched” abortion (in other words, a baby) alone to die in a closet.  (If that is “social justice,” I’d prefer to be treated unjustly.)  Now, perhaps Kennedy Townsend thinks that the condoning of infanticide is a respectable position to hold, but she shouldn’t project her immoral views on the Catholic laity.

When Obama meets the pope tomorrow, they’ll politely disagree about reproductive freedoms and homosexuality, but Catholics back home won’t care, because they know Obama’s on their side. In fact, Obama’s agenda is closer to their views than even the pope’s.

There is no evidence for this at all.  The majority of Americans, let alone American Catholics, identify themselves as pro-life, just as the majority of Americans, let alone American Catholics, oppose homosexual marriage.  (I’m sure the pope will be polite, though.  He will graciously accept the Betamax copy of “The Bells of St. Mary’s” that President Obama will give him.)

It’s fitting that Obama’s visit comes just days after the publication of “Charity in Truth,” a Vatican encyclical that declares unions, regulation of capitalism’s excesses, and environmentalism to be ethical imperatives. The document gives moral credence to Obama’s message and to progressive politics writ large.

So when the pope agrees with Obama, he gives the president’s message moral credence, but when he disagrees, then the pope is to be ignored?

But that’s besides the point because—as you may have guessed—”Caritas in veritate” is not quite as simple as Townsend Kennedy would have you believe.

First, I’d like to admit that the pope is far more full of praise for unions than I would have liked.  This will require some thought, some effort on my part—effort that Kennedy Townsend is not willing to undertake when she dismisses the pope’s teachings on matters which contradict her beliefs.  But there’s a line from the encyclical that tells me that we shouldn’t automatically associate the pope’s praise of unions with unions as they exist currently in the United States.  (The encyclical, after all, is addressed to Catholics everywhere.)

The Church’s traditional teaching makes a valid distinction between the respective roles and functions of trade unions and politics.

As the majority of unions in America are completely controlled by the Democrats, I am not sure that I need to alter my beliefs all that much.  Anyone who cannot see the difference between the UAW and Poland’s Solidarity movement is not much brighter than your average Kennedy.

The encyclical never uses the word “capitalism,” so it’s difficult to assess the truth of Kennedy Townsend’s claim that the pope called for more regulation on “capitalism’s excesses.”  Here’s the only thing close to that:

The continuing hegemony of the binary model of market-plus-State has accustomed us to think only in terms of the private business leader of a capitalistic bent on the one hand, and the State director on the other. In reality, business has to be understood in an articulated way. There are a number of reasons, of a meta-economic kind, for saying this. Business activity has a human significance, prior to its professional one. It is present in all work, understood as a personal action, an “actus personae,” which is why every worker should have the chance to make his contribution knowing that in some way he is working ‘for himself.’(Emphasis mine.)

That seems like an endorsement of capitalism to me.  As far as regulating its “excesses,” I can’t find that word used anywhere in the encyclical except in regards to consumerism.  But this is nothing new.  Greed, envy, and pride are three of the seven deadly sins for a reason.

Finally, we come to environmentalism.  Kennedy Townsend claims that the pope has called it an “ethical imperative.”  Here’s what he actually said, in a little more detail:

In order to protect nature, it is not enough to intervene with economic incentives or deterrents; not even an apposite education is sufficient. These are important steps, but the decisive issue is the overall moral tenor of society. If there is a lack of respect for the right to life and to a natural death, if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology. It is contradictory to insist that future generations respect the natural environment when our educational systems and laws do not help them to respect themselves. The book of nature is one and indivisible: it takes in not only the environment but also life, sexuality, marriage, the family, social relations: in a word, integral human development. Our duties towards the environment are linked to our duties towards the human person, considered in himself and in relation to others. It would be wrong to uphold one set of duties while trampling on the other. Herein lies a grave contradiction in our mentality and practice today: one which demeans the person, disrupts the environment and damages society. 

To the pope, a respect for nature is a respect for all of nature, period.  All of it, including and especially human nature.  An environmentalism that has no respect for man and no respect for human life is completely at odds with Catholic teaching.  It is our duty to protect the environment in our role as stewards of the earth, but that is a far cry from what “environmentalism” has come to mean.  “Conservation” would be the more appropriate word, and again this is nothing new, and nothing that conservatives would oppose.

So far, I’ve covered only a quarter of Kennedy Townsend’s article.  I’ll continue tomorrow, if I can bear it.

————————————————-

(Special thanks to Kit, for aggravating me on a Sunday.)

Share on Facebook