Palin: "A Natural Choice" for Catholics?

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

The Catholic Right, Part Sixty-eight

Is Governor Sarah Palin really "a natural choice" for Catholics as Fidelis's Brian Burch suggests? The answer is obviously, "No."

As I discussed in my last post in this series, the Catholic Right is doing everything it can to disparage Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee Joe Biden - a Catholic who attends Mass regularly - by painting him as a someone out of sync on social issues important to his co-religionists. Now, these same folks are attempting to portray Palin, the self-styled pit-bull/hockey mom, evangelical/former Catholic, as a better Catholic than Biden.

Let the scrutiny begin!

One of the foremost issues where Senator McCain's running mate and the Vatican parts ways is the Iraq war.  Not so long ago Palin told a group of ministry students that our invasion of Iraq is "a task from God," but Pope Benedict believes that "nothing positive comes from Iraq."

On economic issues Palin echoes the "Whigish" libertarian ideas of which the Catholic neocons are so fond but which directly conflict with Papal encyclicals such as Rerum novarum or Quadragesimo Anno -- the two Vatican pronouncements that outline the rights of labor and the necessary role of legislation to ensure those rights.

Palin - although baptized a Catholic, at twelve she left the Church and became "rebaptized" a Pentecostal - is firmly in the creationist camp. This is clear contrast with Catholic teaching which accepts that evolution is "more than an hypothesis."

It does not seem to bother the theoconic crowd (who incredibly claim that most government regulation of business can be mostly done away with by making us all more virtuous, accomplished via a transformation of our pluralistic society to one based upon Catholic orthodox ethics) that Palin lied about her supposed objections to Congressional earmarks that would have funded the infamous "bridge to nowhere."

And yes, Palin opposes universal healthcare; something the overwhelming majority of American Catholics support.

Outside of a handful of issues such as abortion, stem cell research and LGTB civil rights, Palin has little in common with the Vatican and substantially less with the majority of American Catholics. But this narrow band of commonality will nevertheless be the pretext on which Catholicism will be defned, for political purposes as almost solely about abortion.

Some such as Bishop Charles Chaput of Denver are downright belligerent about it. Chaput has said that Senator Biden should refrain from Communion because of his stance on abortion rights and Bishop Joseph F. Martino, of the Diocese of Scranton (Biden's birthplace) has made it clear that he would deny Senator Biden Communion because, in his words, "I will not tolerate any politician who claims to be a faithful Catholic who is not genuinely pro-life."

Republican oriented organizations such as the  The Catholic League and Fidelis as well as talking head Rush Limbaugh, have rushed to distort Senator Obama's opposition to the redundant "born alive" bills  (pending in the Illinois State Senate while he was a member of that body), describing his actions as "infanticide." As Media Matters for America has established, the then-state senator opposed the legislation because Illinois law already prohibited the conduct that these bills purported to address.

When members of the Catholic hierarchy and their allies resort to such tactics, they cease being a legitimate voice in a ongoing debate and instead become transparently factious entities seeking to unduly influence the American political process. Such behavior is the difference between contributing to the national discourse and trying to dominate it.

But many Catholics take a dim view of the politicization of a holy sacrament. The British Catholic magazine  The Tablet noted for example:

Senator Biden has certainly been pro-life in urging outside intervention to stop genocide in Bosnia and Darfur, issues on which conservatives tended to be more restrained. He supports such pro-life causes - although not usually seen as such - as universal health care and measures to improve the lot of the American poor, among whom infant mortality runs at rates more usually seen in the developing world.

In short, Chaput, Martino and other such strident clergymen have a severely limited understanding of "pro-life issues."

According to a report issued just this past August by the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2007 there were 45.7 million Americans with no healthcare insurance. That means that in this great country of ours, there are 45.7 million people who face bankruptcy from the unbearable costs from catastrophic illness; and tens of millions of women with no pre-natal care for expectant mothers.

As I wrote this piece I searched in vain on for any evidence of just one demand by Bishops Chaput or Martino that universal healthcare be provided to all Americans. If they have publicly advocated for universal health care, they must have hidden it well, since my research turned up nothing from either of these otherwise high profile prelates. When I linked their two names to "universal healthcare" all I could find were endless pronouncements on banning abortion and euthanasia.

Columnist Marie Cocco, both a Catholic and a liberal, recently provided a better, truer frame of the thorny issue of abortion. Cocco put it this way when discussing the choice made by seventeen year-old Bristol Palin and her family:

The decision on what to do about such matters should be left to a woman, her doctor, her family and her God. No one -- absolutely no one -- who supports keeping abortion legal would interfere in any way with Bristol Palin's decision to carry her pregnancy to term. In fact, organizations such as Planned Parenthood would provide her with proper prenatal care if she needed it.

But some believe that subjects such as a teenager's sex life, a rape victim's traumatic pregnancy or even a married woman's right to get her birth-control prescription filled should be decided not in the privacy of family conversation but in the cacophony of politics.

Who are these cruelly intrusive people? Those in the anti-abortion movement.

Yes, those in the anti-abortion movement, especially the Catholic Right.

The Catholic Right: A Series, by Frank L. Cocozzelli