WASHINGTON
Calling the Obama presidency a new moment in U.S. history, Jesuit Fr. John P. Langan of Georgetown University warned April 27 of a current “three-way impasse” on abortion. He urged U.S. bishops seeking real change to act with caution, pastoral care and “civil respect for those with whom they disagree.”
“The bishops are certainly right to condemn the moral evil of abortion and to warn us against the individualism, selfishness and greed which have had such a devastating effect on American culture and family life as well as on our financial institutions,” he said.
“But if they think they make their witness more credible and more effective by developing a quasi-excommunication of the Democratic Party and by aligning themselves with politicians who think that combining pro-life slogans with American chauvinism and exercising American military power without regard to international criticism constitutes an adequate response to evil in the world, they are sadly mistaken,” he added.
Bishops who try to make abortion the sole or overriding political issue for Catholics are “marginalizing the church’s political influence,” he said.
Langan is Georgetown’s Cardinal Joseph Bernardin professor of Catholic social thought and rector of the university’s Jesuit community. He delivered a carefully nuanced analysis of the Catholic social teaching challenges facing the new Obama administration and the 111th U.S. Congress at a seminar on Capitol Hill, held at the Dirksen Senate Office Building and sponsored by The Catholic University of America’s Life Cycle Institute.
Read the full text at NCRonline.org
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
That's like Neville Chamberlain urging Britons to restore civility in anti-nazi efforts.
It would at least be slightly more honest if you didn't pretend to allow comments on your site. Just go to your dashboard, then settings, and disable them. It will eliminate the confusion.
No dialogue here, I suppose.
Post a Comment