“Both Kerry and [President] Bush support the war in Iraq and [Pope John Paul II] does not. The pope has made that very, very clear. But does it get any attention? No,” said Raymond L. Flynn, head of the San Francisco-based group Your Catholic Voice and a former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican and former mayor of Boston.
One reason, Flynn said, is that antiabortion groups are “far better organized” than Catholic organizations that focus on promoting peace, fighting poverty or abolishing the death penalty.
Another reason, in the view of many Catholics, is that abortion is a more important and clear-cut issue. “Abortion is a foundational piece. If you don’t have life, the other rights don’t matter,” said Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, who heads a bishops’ task force on Catholics in public life. “Abortion is always wrong. The death penalty and war are not always wrong.”
McNeirney agreed that the church teaching on abortion is “more categorical” than its teaching on the death penalty. According to the official catechism of the church, the death penalty is justified under certain narrow circumstances — if it is “the only possible way of effectively defending human lives” against a criminal, a situation that in modern times is “very rare, if not practically non-existent.”
Still, McNeirney argued that Catholic governors such as Jeb Bush of Florida who have approved numerous executions are “morally worse” than politicians such as Kerry who vote for abortion rights legislation but are not “personally participating in the killing.”
It might be useful, in discussions like this, to throw the burden of proof back on the questioner. Okay, why not make protection of the life of unborn human beings a priority? What’s wrong with that? What’s your objection? Explain. Specifically. Why is that a bad thing to do?
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