President Obama’s Catholic Problem

Last updated on: April 29, 2009 at 6:31 am by Pia de Solenni

President Obama’s Catholic Problem 2009-04-29T06:31:05-07:00 Pia de Solenni

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In case you’ve been asleep or blissfully unaware, we have a newsflash. President Obama has a Catholic problem.

You see, many Catholics voted for him ostensibly because of the economy. (Looking at the voter data, I don’t think there was really a record turnout. There were perhaps only a million more voters than the previous election. The Obama campaign did an excellent job of registering new voters – mostly young people and blacks. And he didn’t win with a landslide. I think he won because a group of voters, namely value voters, stayed home. But the majority of Catholics who voted went for Obama.)

When it came to more fundamental questions of abortion, human embryonic stem cell research, and other critical social values issues, conventional wisdom suggests that people were overwhelmed by the economy. But now it turns out that President Obama is the abortion rights champion that he promised the pro-abortion crowd he would be before the election. Yes, this was all public record. You can probably find the clips on YouTube.

The promises of change and a political climate in which there’s room for everyone disappeared the President’s third day in office when he revoked the Mexico City Policy which prohibited federal tax money from going to fund abortion in other countries. There was no discussion, no dialogue, no compromise, nothing. He later lifted the ban on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research, announced plans to revoke the conscience protections that protect healthcare workers (including Catholics) from having to perform procedures that violate their conscience, like abortion, and he refused support for vouchers for low income children in DC that would give them access to quality private education like that which he can afford for his children and – oh, yes – that which is predominantly provided by Catholic schools. -All this in just the first sixty days of his administration.

Naturally, there was an outcry when he accepted the invitation to give the commencement address at Notre Dame this spring. (The outcry has more to do with the extension of the invitation rather than the acceptance of it.) His aggressive pursuit of policies which violate core values (held predominantly by Catholics) has given many people cause to be concerned.

For the President’s recent speech at Georgetown (where it appears no dialogue about these core issues took place), the President’s staff went so far as to request that the university cover/remove the “IHS” signs which refer to the person of Jesus Christ. Even worse, the university complied. (I can’t imagine a Jewish or Muslim institution doing the same, or even being requested to do the same.) CNS has a fairly in depth article complete with photos here.

So it’s really no surprise that the people that the administration has tentatively suggested for the role of ambassador to the Vatican have got the thumbs down from the Vatican. Catholic News Agency reports here on it. The problem? Well, it’s the Vatican’s standards. In its own words:

The Holy See has always set a very simple standard: the person [ambassador] should not be in opposition to fundamental teachings of the Church that belong to our common shared humanity. He or she may not believe in Catholic dogma if he or she is not a Catholic, but we could not accept someone who is in favor of abortion, or (human) cloning or same-sex unions equated to marriage.

Indeed, the President has a Catholic problem and it’s not just that he can’t find someone to fill an ambassador position. His tone of moderation and compromise means nothing when it comes to the values and beliefs of a significant portion of the US population and a significant portion of his voters. The only Catholics he has put forth in his administration are those who are also at odds with core teachings of the Catholic Church. His proposed revocation of the conscience protection regulations could effectively shut down the single largest healthcare provider in the US, an odd thing when he claims to want to expand healthcare access…

But Christians believe that God brings good even out of very bad situations. Perhaps some of the good that will come out of this is a renewed understanding of Catholic identity. We certainly need it.

In the meantime, the new administration could perhaps start to respect and engage US Catholics who, incidentally, are also supposed to be represented by the President.

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