Catholic Voters and Abortion Politics

October, 2020

Lincoln – Not being raised Catholic, and not having much interest in a religion based on dogma that its leader is infallible, I nevertheless respect many Catholic institutions and individuals. That includes the Jesuits, for example, for their dedication to teaching and scholarship, and the social and political outreach work of a few recent popes.   

But when internal Catholic arguments spill over and threaten American political institutions, and twist our body politic into contortions for a single legal decision that is surely counterproductive to its own purported goal, my even limited admiration ends.  

That decision, of course, is to overrule Roe v. Wade.  

Thomas M. Kelly, professor of systematic theology at Creighton University in Omaha, a Jesuit institution, explains the internal contradictions within the anti-abortion debate:

Catholic countries of Latin America and Muslim countries of North Africa and the Middle East, which outlaw abortion, have the highest abortion rates in the world....  What has been shown to reduce abortions is universal access to health care, contraception (which over 95% of Catholics use) and social safety nets for poor and single women, especially those without family networks.

Meanwhile, Donald J. Trump has appointed three Supreme Court justices who will, he says, repeal Roe.  The three have also demonstrated hostility toward universal health care programs.  In celebration of his latest appointment, the president brought many people to the White House during a pandemic, which became a coronavirus super-spreader event.  Among those was the president of the University of Notre Dame, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, a native Nebraskan, who at the behest of the White House went unmasked and promptly caught the virus.  

Another Catholic university president, Patricia McGuire* of Trinity University Washington, took him to task:

Truth be told, the academic attendees parked more than their masks at the door. Bad example comes in many forms, including complicit silence in the face of official wrongs. This is an administration that has deliberately and with malice waged a deadly war against medical and public-health evidence about the pandemic, dishonoring doctors and epidemiologists by mocking their advice and excluding them from decision-making roles, even going so far as attempting to silence them. The unmasked presence of the academic leaders in the Rose Garden gave tacit consent to the silencing of those who have tried to save lives by providing correct information.

The Covid-19 pandemic has imposed harsh and unforgiving sacrifices on people not as famous or powerful as those gathered in the Rose Garden. As I looked at the photos of that elite group, I could not help but think of the millions of school children unable to sit in their classrooms because of the pandemic. I thought of the thousands of high-school and college seniors denied the joys of real graduations. I thought of the deep and pervasive grief coursing through the families and communities of the 210,000 dead, so many dying alone without the comforting touch of loved ones, with survivors bearing the uniquely awful pain of not even being able to gather for funerals. I thought of the courage of so many front-line health-care heroes, the nurses and doctors sometimes forced to wear makeshift PPE because of a lack of adequate supplies. I thought of the grand weddings made small, the laid-off waiters of shuttered restaurants, the desperation of parents who are essential workers risking their health in low-wage jobs to keep food on the table, racing home at odd hours to help their kids keep learning at kitchen tables where computers and internet access are spotty or rare.

So where does this leave the so-called pro-life voters?  It seems to me they have become pawns for all kinds of bad causes, none of which is actually pro-life.  It is the worst of all worlds.  Not to mention that the repeal of Roe would only multiply these conflicts, into the legislatures of the fifty states.  

May the coming election provide a way forward.  

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* Patricia McGuire herself is not unfamiliar with visits to the White House.  I remember her well from meetings many years ago in the EOB, when she advocated for disadvantaged students and I came over to the offices from the Department of Education.  When she learned that my hometown was Lincoln, Nebraska, she asked about her good friend Larry Arth.  Larry Arth was a graduate of Pius X high school, chairman of Ameritas Life Insurance Co., and active in charity work.  He and I had been classmates at UNL, where we were both in Navy ROTC and took summer training cruises together.  Sadly, he passed away in 2008.  

P.S. See also the positions of Catholic theologians writing in the Omaha World-Herald.