The ever awesome Ramesh Ponnuru
George Weigel does a nice job of responding to the “Catholic brief for Obama” by Nicholas Cafardi, M. Cathleen Kaveny, and the inevitable Douglas Kmiec, but is perhaps too embarrassed on their behalf to point out every shoddy aspect of it. I feel no such constraint. I will underscore one of Weigel’s points and add a few more.
1) The authors cannot get through the subject of their first sentence without telling an untruth. “George Weigel and his fellow McCain advisors. . .” As Weigel points out, he has not advised McCain formally or informally.
2) The opening paragraph ends, “Center for Disease Control statistics reveal that prosperity directly affects the abortion rate far more significantly than Republican rhetoric pledging to outlaw abortion–” Really? The CDC has done a study on the effects of Republican rhetoric?
3) “–a feat John McCain has failed to accomplish with nearly three decades in Congress.” Are the authors seriously holding it against McCain that he has not single-handedly been able to, among other things, reverse a Supreme Court decision? No, they’re not: They’re just taking a cheap shot at him and moving on.
4) “In terms of health care, McCain makes no provision for the uninsured. . .” Not true. Perhaps the authors have not heard that McCain would grant families a $5,000 tax credit to purchase health insurance? If the authors want to maintain that Obama’s plan is superior to McCain’s because it would insure more people, they can do so without making things up. But they go cartoonishly further.
5) “. . . and proposes that the insured pay more.” No, he doesn’t. The vast majority of people would come out with more money after McCain’s tax reform.
6) The authors say nothing about Obama’s support for taxpayer funding of abortion, which the abortion lobby itself suggests will result in many, many more abortions; nothing about his stated commitment to make passing the “Freedom of Choice Act” the very first thing he does as President; nothing about his opposition to providing legal protection against homicide for all infants; nothing about his opposition to parental consent and notification laws (which have demonstrably reduced the number of abortions); nothing about his opposition to federal funding for pro-life crisis pregnancy centers that help make it possible for pregnant women in need to avoid resorting to abortion; nothing about his support for the industrial production of “research embryos” by cloning. . . well, you get the picture.
All in all, these three professors have given the sort of intellectual performance you would expect of an unscrupulous politician.
Adam of the Theotokos podcast takes on the arguments used by Nicholas Cafard
4 comments
“The authors say nothing about Obama’s support for taxpayer funding of abortion, which the abortion lobby itself suggests will result in many, many more abortions; nothing about his stated commitment to make passing the “Freedom of Choice Act” the very first thing he does as President”…
And the Obaminator wouldn’t be elected, if practicing Catholics demanded responsibilities from the self-complacent, negligent, lack of Catechesis from the USCCB.
As a foreigner in my trips to USA I was baffled by the routine sacrilegious Eucharist receivers (unlike in Latin countries, where a big portion of churchgoers don’t receive, because they KNOW are in grave sin).
I guess is the Protestant influence in your country, that many think that one can be a self-styled “Catholic pro-abortion” (sic), like so many scandalous lawmakers.
I’m going to repeat a statistic I dug up like a broken record all over St. Blogs: scholar Michael New, who crunches the numbers on abortion laws, estimates that passing FOCA (which will eliminate all pro-life laws on the books nationwide, and which Obama promises to sign first thing!) will increase the number of abortion in this country by 125,000. So just by putting Obama in office, we will see abortions in this country increase by just about 10%. Let’s be crystal clear on that point. 10% increase in abortions.
I don’t think even the Obamessiah-craziest of the bunch will argue that his brilliant social policies will turn around and cut the abortion rate by more than he will increase it by signing FOCA.
how can anyone who is normal and good watch this and still defend politicians,judges and a world that allows this? http://www.obamamustsee.com
How can these supporters of Obama claim that Obama’s socialist ideas are in keeping with Church teaching? Who the devil has convinced everyone that the Church is in favor of having all the hospitals run by the Government? The same Government that pays to kill the unborn and is starting to eliminate unhappy sick people? Obama’s plans have nothing to do with Christian charity and everything to do with Government control. Obama will extend Government control over education – which is directly in contradiction to Church teaching. He will extend Government efforts to undermine the family by forcing us to pay for Government child care, forcing us to pretend that a man can marry a man and by drafting our daughters into the military – all utterly repugnant things.