Our Sunday Visitor’s Russell Shaw, a longtime conservative Catholic journalist and observer–and often trenchant critic–of the American scene says Obama supporters should apologize for saying Catholics could support Obama because the president has, and will, do nothing but expand abortion, Shaw writes:

“Dialogue? So far as is known, Mr. Obama has had one half-hour meeting with anybody qualified to speak for the Catholic Church–the president of the bishops’ conference, Cardinal George of Chicago. Even admirers concede the administration is tone-deaf on Catholic concerns.

So are Catholics who said Obama and the Church would have a lot in common saying they’re sorry? No way. Apology aversion won’t allow that.”

Response: One, dialogue is a two-way street, and declaring someone the worst thing since, well, fill in the blank, is hardly going to smooth that past.

Also, it’s been just over 100 days since Obama took office in the midst of perhaps the greatest crisis in American history, when you look at the dmoestic and international messes Bush left. Bush–not to mention his GOP predecessors–had two terms to do, well, not much, on abortion.

And look at the other folks Shaw thinks should be apologizing:

“Consider all those journalists and think tank talking heads who helped sell America on the need for the war in Iraq and then, without so much as a word of apology, turned on George Bush for getting it wrong. Think of all those members of Congress — of both parties — who were looking the other way while the economic bubble expanded and now are busy demagoguing the bubble’s collapse at somebody else’s expense. And on and on and on.”

Huh? Russell Shaw is a pretty straight-shooter, so I’d hope he has first demanded an apology from President Bush and his team for those things, at the very least.