Washington D.C., Sep 13, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).-
As both the Biden and Trump presidential campaigns court Catholic voters, both campaigns have made efforts to suggest they represent a commitment to Catholic social teaching. But there are marked differences between the candidates’ approaches on issues Catholics say are important to them in the voting booth, especially abortion.
President Donald Trump has received praise for the U.S. bishops’ conference (USCCB) for some of his policies, and criticism for other policies.
Trump’s administration has enacted conscience protections for health care workers, expanded protections against taxpayer funding of abortion providers and promoters domestically and overseas, halted federal funding of research using aborted fetal tissue, and worked to end a government mandate that doctors perform gender-transition surgeries upon request.
The administration has offered legal relief for Catholic organizations opposing the government’s contraceptive mandate, including the Little Sisters of the Poor.
At the same time, Trump’s administration has also resumed federal executions after a 17-year moratorium, cut down on the number of refugees the U.S. allows each year, has separated migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, and has begun the deportation of Chaldean Christians from the Detroit metro area—all of which earned criticism from the USCCB.
Trump has also been criticized for issues of personal character, an issue the Biden camp says should be front and center in the campaign.
Patrick Carolan is Catholic outreach director for the group Vote Common Good, which is campaigning for Joe Biden.
Catholics should heed the advice of Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego, Carolan said, that “a person’s character is what’s as important as any of these issues when considering who to vote for.”
Carolan shared an anecdote about a friend he said is Catholic and voted for Trump in 2016.
After watching Biden’s friendly interaction with a stuttering boy at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, Carolan said, his friend remembered Trump’s apparent mocking of a disabled reporter in 2015. He reconsidered his preferred candidate, Carolan said.
“Because in those two instances, Joe Biden is definitely more Christ-like than Donald Trump. Not that either of them are Christ-like,” Carolan told CNA, before emphasizing again that he was “not suggesting that Joe Biden is Christ-like.”
Catholics may blanch at Biden’s support for abortion, but the administration will not be as extreme on the issue as critics are charging, Carolan said.
“Despite what the Republicans say, Biden’s not somebody who thinks that women should be able to have abortions even when they’re giving birth,” Carolan said. A Biden administration, he said, would be “willing to have discussions” on policies that reduce abortions.
Amid the 2020 campaign, however, pro-life Democrats have decried the party’s “extreme” support of abortion in its 2020 platform. Biden has not responded to their call for a platform that would welcome pro-lifers to the party.
While Biden was criticized during the Democratic primary by some abortion advocates, the candidate supports pro-abortion policies that would expand even upon those that existed during the Obama administration.
Biden says he would “work to codify Roe v. Wade,” the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision that legalized abortion, “as amended by Casey.” The Court’s 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision upheld Roe, but said that state laws could regulate abortion so long as they did not pose an undue burden on women seeking abortions.
Biden supports taxpayer funding of elective abortions in the U.S. through the repeal of the Hyde Amendment; a position Biden adopted last year under pressure from liberal groups. He also opposes the Mexico City Policy, which bars U.S. foreign assistance from funding foreign groups that perform or promote abortions.
And Biden’s health plan would offer public funding of abortions on a mass scale, something that President Obama promised he would not do when the Affordable Care Act passed Congress. Biden says he would set up a public health insurance option which, among other things, would cover contraceptives and abortions.
Biden also says his Justice Department “will do everything in its power” to stop state abortion restrictions, such as parental notification requirements or ultrasound requirements.
Recently, Biden’s selection of Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) as his running mate reignited pro-life concerns about abortion policy in his administration.
Harris has been an outspoken proponent of abortion. She grilled judicial nominees on the issue while on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as California attorney general, she supported legislation to force pro-life pregnancy centers to inform clients where they could get abortions.
Harris also has connections to Planned Parenthood. Her presidential campaign communications director, Lily Adams, is the daughter of former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards. And following Harris’ selection as the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Planned Parenthood spent five figures on a video ad calling her “OUR Reproductive Health Champion,” according to the Washington Post.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that laws protecting the right to life are of primary importance in civil societies.
“The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation,” the Catechism says.
Despite the Catechism’s teaching, Carolan told CNA that abortion should not be the primary issue that Catholics consider in the voting booth, adding that the abortion rate is falling no matter who is in office—and has actually declined faster during Democratic administrations.
“We have to have a discussion about abortion, but it can’t be framed in black-and-white, like some people try to make it. And it’s not the only issue,” Carolan said.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, the abortion rate (number of abortions per 1,000 women of childbearing age) rose sharply after 1973, the year the Supreme Court struck down state bans on abortion and ruled that there is a right to abortion. The rate jumped from 16.3 to 29.3 between the years 1973 and 1981. It has then declined steadily since to a 2017 rate of 13.5 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44.
Fr. Frank Pavone, founder of Priests for Life, who supports Trump’s re-election, told CNA that the abortion rate, ratio (number of abortions compared to number of live births), and absolute numbers of abortions have all declined, but the drop is due to “complex” factors including increased education on abortion, fewer abortionists and clinics, the rise of pro-life pregnancy centers, sexual mores, and state restrictions on abortion.
Federal and state abortion restrictions will push the number of abortions and the abortion rate down, and not increase it, he said.
Pavone pointed a report published by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute that reviewed more than 20 studies in peer-reviewed journals; the institute concluded that birthrates of women on Medicaid increased when the Hyde Amendment took effect in the 1970s, and that the policy “routinely” saves around 60,000 lives each year and has resulted in more than two million lives saved since 1976.
In conclusion, “the more the abortion industry is funded, the more abortions will occur,” Pavone said.
Regarding Biden’s promise to codify Roe, the abortion rate, numbers, and ratio “skyrocketed” after the Roe decision in 1973, Pavone said, and thus “[i[t stands to reason that a codification of Roe would not lead to a decrease in those numbers.”
Carolan says that a proliferation in free or affordable contraception could also reduce abortions. He pointed to a Colorado program, funded by a grant from Warren Buffett’s family, that provided no-cost intrauterine devices (IUDs) to health clinics throughout the state. According to state officials in 2017, it had resulted in a 64% decline in the teen abortion rate in eight years, state health officials claimed in 2017.
“Of course that opens up another issue then about birth control with the Catholic Church, but those are issues that we have to have discussions about and think about,” Carolan said.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says contraception is a moral evil, explaining that any “action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible’ is intrinsically evil.”
Carolan emphasized to CNA that in his view, and the Biden campaign’s, other pressing issues such as the separation of immigrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border, and the environment, are just as important as abortion.
“Every day 15,000 children die of starvation, of hunger diseases. You think God cares less about those children than those who die of abortion?” he asked.
The U.S. bishops’ conference has said that while Catholics should weigh numerous issues in the voting booth, abortion is a priority.
In a 2020 letter, the bishop’s conference said that “the threat of abortion remains our preeminent priority because it directly attacks life itself, because it takes place within the sanctuary of the family, and because of the number of lives destroyed.”
The bishops’ letter adds that “we cannot dismiss or ignore other serious threats to human life and dignity such as racism, the environmental crisis, poverty and the death penalty.”
Religious freedom has also been at the center of presidential political debates.
Carolan downplayed the issue, telling CNA that “religious freedom” is a “word that’s misused, and it can be used for almost anything.” He claimed that “religious freedom” has historically been used to justify causes ranging from slavery to churches conducting same-sex marriages before Obergefell.
“We need to stop spreading the myth that our religious freedom is being violated,” Carolan said, noting that there is “not a war against Catholicism.”
During the campaign, Biden has said that he would reinstate the Obama administration’s rules for religious nonprofits on the HHS contraceptive mandate—thus potentially forcing Catholic groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor, who say the rule violates their religious conscience, to go back to court.
Biden also says he will undo the Trump administration’s “broad exemptions” for religious groups to nondiscrimination laws—thus possibly opening the door to a flood of litigation against religious groups.
[…]
The Diocese of Chicago has the temerity to dismiss this man who is operating with the best interests of children in mind, while leaving in place the false messiah, Fr. Pfleger, whose Masses are an abomination, who spreads race hate, and who has been accused of smoking marijuana, drinking alcohol and sexually abusing multiple underage males?
Somebody should have a nice big beautiful millstone sent to diocesan offices as a gentle reminder.
PARENTS,STAND AND FIGHT THESE TYRANTS AND DONT GIVE UP….
The cruelty and stupidity of the people running Catholic institutions are on display daily. A principal is fired for lifting the mask mandate at his school after the state order was overturned in Court and, apparently, two days before the archdiocese did the same thing. How many dissenters from Church teaching has Fr. Marren employed at Queen of Martyrs? But a man refuses to impose the medically worthless and psychologically damaging mask rule and is given the boot by this dictator who surely had the support of the epicene tyrant who rules over Chicago Catholics in the manner of Justin Trudeau. Finally, let all the nitwits who show up here and elsewhere declaiming on the moral obligation to wear masks refute the John Hopkins study that proved conclusively that these humiliating face covers do nothing to protect people from Covid or anything else.
It would appear that once more, the cowards of the hierarchy win. They cant seem to bend low enough to accommodate the ruling class of leftists who are killing the church in slow degrees. And an effective school principal is told to hit the road. All that seems to matter is that you say yes to following orders. It would appear he would have to recant his very sensible decision position publicly. Isnt that what they do in dictatorial re-education camps?
Cupich, behind all this, of course, is mean and petty, not what one would hope for in any Catholic, let alone a Cardinal.
The Church has changed since I was in school; they wanted conformity but they respected people who could think on their feet. Is Common Core coming to a Catholic school near you?
Unlock the world and let the oxygen flow, and relevant learning return in earnest!
“The inmates are running the asylum.” -Rush Limbaugh
👏👏👏👏👏👏
No one should be surprised by this happening in the Archdiocese of Chicago, the pastors in place are tied at the hip to Cardinal Cupich who has consistently been dictatorial. Having lived in the area 30+ years, you can see those priests who have “belittled” themselves and given up their rights to the Cardinal and no longer see those who have pushed back against him, they are suspended or removed. Some like Fr. Phleger can get away with anything simply because the Cardinal agrees with his thinking and approves. This is not about pastoral leadership this is about an agenda to change the Catholic Church and Archdiocese into what He wants it to be not what God intended for it.
Of course Jacob Mathius warrants dismissal. As a principal of a Catholic school he sets an example. Unfortunately, he seems to have forgotten the story of the Good Samaritan where the question is posed “Who is my neighbour?” And the answer is “anyone you are in a position to help.” Masks and other anti-covid measures are for the benefit not of self but of one’s neighbours. It boggles the mind that self-centered people, such that are currently rampant in Ottawa, are given any credence at all.
Please, M. Peringer, must we focus on your straw men? You lead me to suspect you have no argument.
But the issue before us isn’t the generosity of truck drivers in Canada. It’s the efficacy of masking, combined with the magnitude of the threat to high schoolers posed by COVID.
And the fact is, masking’s ability to prevent the spread of COVID is negligible. In fact, young children, because of their shallow lung capacity, are actually harmed by masking since it reduces their ability to absorb sufficient oxygen.
And COVID’s threat to high schoolers is, at most, minimal.
We may certainly disagree in good faith, M. Peringer, but your attempt to characterize those whose views differ from yours as morally inferior seems desperate and, frankly, a little pathetic.
Are you a doctor?
By all means, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, stick to your discredited talking points. Trying to reason with the willfully blind is a futile exercise.
Masks used by most people are useless in preventing a virus from entering or exiting the human mouth or nose; nothing more than theater at best, A study recently released by Johns Hopkins is more than adequate to dissuade anyone who thinks otherwise.
I have heard this smug argument too many times and regard it as trash. Helping your neighbor does not include jumping every time the govt says to do so, especially when their mandates fly in the face of SCIENCE. I recall the Chinese dragging women out for abortions when they violated the one child per family rule. The reason? To help ones neighbors of course by tamping down the consequences of a “too large” population. Were they supposed to cooperate too? With the vaccine, people are also asked to put their own bodies on the line. Many of us have done so with some trepidation, but this was a calculated risk. With the low transmissibility of covid among children, masking is a red-herring, an absurd intrusion into children’s lives , if not an obscene exercise in govt overreach. “Helping my neighbor” is now entering year 3 of my life and I, like many others, have reached my limit. I am not the slave of the government, nor of the visibly frightened Cardinals.
Raymond, we know only N95 masks work if they are properly fitted. I’m in the agricultural processing business and every employee goes through 1 to 2 masks per day. However, the majority of masks used are cloth and they are WoRTHLESS! OSHA has known for 2 years they don’t stop transmission of the virus. It is posted on the boxes. So your comments are truly without merit.m
Cupich’s Chicago isn’t much different than Capone’s.
Once again Cupich, the Godfather or the Church Mafia (or perhaps Fairy Godmother?) bullies and cancels a Church employee for daring to speak truth.