Tuesday, November 07, 2006

2006: A Referendum on the Sanctity on Unborn Life

As I write this, Rick Santorum (R-PA) has just conceded defeat to Democrat Bob Casey. Meanwhile an MSNBC news headline says that pro-choice ex-Democrat Joe Lieberman is "hanging on," due to the fact that he is the favored candidate of Republican voters. Casey is pro-life. The Republican opponent of pro-choice Lieberman rightly described him as "Ted Kennedy plus support for the Iraq War."

I am someone who earnestly holds to the seamless garment position, where war and poverty and abortion and hatred of prisoner & stranger are evils to be struggled against in a seamless witness. I believe that the term seamless garment was coined by the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin in an address in 1984. I believe that this is the ethic espoused by the late pope John Paul II.

The purpose of this post is to point a finger at pro-life activists, mostly for calling yourselves "conservative" and then going along with the worst excesses of a "conservative" party, starting with the war. I got lots of campaign mail from my (okay, New York) Republican incumbent House member, and none of it mentioned abortion. Most of it, IMNSHO, was a mockery of the positions held by the late pope John Paul II. My Representative's literature encouraged racist fears of immigrants and jingoistic saber-rattling at Kim Jong Il.

If honestly pro-life people were more involved in the political process-- I'm not saying you have to leave the Republican party-- you could help bring the party back, bring it closer to the vision of JPII and likely electoral success. When you and your leaders become allies with folks like Delay and Cheney, you do the unborn a disservice. Persons of good will-- those to whom JPII's encyclicals were often addressed-- may have actually listened to either JPII or their conscience and could see what you could not. Their conciences may have led them to vote against the candidates you were supporting.

No comments: