Last night over supper, my husband remarked that the secular papers had picked up on something Cardinal Ratzinger had written that apparently said it was okay for Catholics to vote for pro-choice candidates -- for example, this article from the WaPo: (registration)
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's arbiter of doctrinal orthodoxy, has given Roman Catholic voters leeway under certain circumstances to vote for politicians who support abortion rights, U.S. Catholic officials said yesterday.
I hadn't seen it; I generally only consult the Washington Post to find out what Rex and June are up to. Now that I've read the article, it seems to need a touch of something.... perhaps a dash of fisking? (For starters -- "U.S. Catholic officials"? "Officials"? Is the word he's groping for perhaps... bishops, or perhaps their spokesmen?)
But I'll leave that to someone with more talent, or someone who at least has her dinner menu under control. As hubby and I talked, I had a vague recollection that something the Cardinal had written a little while ago had been seized upon by the dissenters so beloved of the papers, spun like crazy, and was probably trickling down in that spun form to the Post. So we got into talking about "proportionate reasons", and what could possibly be as proportionate as abortion (My suggestion: "What if someone ran who was pro-life, and anti-human cloning, and had the right position on stem cells, but was running on some kind of pro-concentration camp platform?")
My husband was still stuck on why in the world the Cardinal would write such a thing, given the political climate and our poor reporting in this country and dismal catechesis. The only thing I could think of was that perhaps the Cardinal just didn't realize how this would further scandalize many weak Catholics in the US.
It really bothered my husband, in that he has had the impression for a while that to some members of the hierarchy, abortion just isn't really a big deal. They would pay lip service to the sinfulness of abortion, but in practice, treated pro-life concerns as just something to wedge in the schedule between shaking hands with the Youth Baseball League and the charity dinner. Something like the recent Voters' Guide released by the bishops' conference, in which abortion is buried in the middle of a whole list of legislative concerns. Yes, health care is important, but the debate on how to make sure people have access to health care is a matter for prudential judgement -- it's not something on the same level as the legal murder of children in the womb.
So dear husband told me, you know, you and the other bloggers really should get on this and you know, it has taken me almost twenty-four hours to recover from my shock that my husband had actually instructed me to blog!
At the same time, I didn't feel up to the task, because I haven't been blogging or following blogs as much lately, and I had this vague sense that someone smarter than me would probably have already covered this.
Well, I am delighted to report that somebody has, in great detail: Mr Jimmy Akin, on
What Ratzinger Said.
For starters, this carefully worded document wasn't intended for a general audience. It was addressed in confidence to Cardinal McCarrick, and was leaked. I wonder by whom?