Sarah Posner on Four Catholic Men v. Obama

At Religion Dispatches today, Sarah Posner tells a strange story with verve and aptly spare details: this is the curious story of a handful of powerful centrist Catholic media commentators who had previously professed to be supporters of the Obama administration, but who have now chosen to join the U.S. Catholic bishops in their attack on the Obama administration over the HHS guidelines.

This curious story is as Posner notes, the story of strategically placed, powerful beltway insiders who purport to speak for "us Catholics." But who represent an extremely limited segment of the Catholic population as beltway insiders who are also happen to be all men.  Posner notes that, one after the other, Michael Sean Winters, E.J. Dionne, Mark Shields, and Douglas Kmiec solemnly intoned (as if all of this was orchestrated) hat the president had lost "the Catholic" vote after his administration resisted the U.S. Catholic bishops' pressure to reject the contraceptive coverage guidelines for HHS.

And here's why, in Posner's view, these strategically placed, powerful beltway insiders (who are all men), who claim to speak for all Catholics, are so angry at the Obama administration: 

Obama's greatest sin, in this view: violating the religious beliefs of the Catholic hierarchy. Not the beliefs or practices of lay Catholics, or the Catholic and non-Catholic employees of Catholic institutions. 

From the moment that Mr. Winters broke the news of the Obama administration's decision (and how it outraged him), I've been struck by his (and his colleagues') persistent insinuation--it's overtly spelled out in Winters's piece announcing the HHS-decision news--that the president of the U.S. is somehow obliged to give special consideration to the Catholic bishops that she or he is expected to give to the leaders of no other religious body in the land.  In Winters' following statements, I was struck from the outset, and I remain struck, by the rather bizarre notion that the president should adopt vis-a-vis Archbishop Dolan and the USCCB the attitude of a deferential Catholic schoolboy sent to Father's office for instructions on good behavior: 

NCR has learned that the President called Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. bishops' conference, this morning to tell him the news. Wouldn’t you have liked to be on an extension to listen in on that conversation. The president looked Dolan in the eye in November and said he would be pleased with his decision. I am guessing that Dolan is not pleased. He is not alone.

"Wouldn't you have liked to be on an extension to listen . . . ?"  Why, I wonder?  To hear the president receive the kind of shellacking a bad schoolboy should expect to receive from Father?  From Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. bishops' conference--since the more imperial titles we can roll off our tongue, the more outrageous we make the president's refusal to do what Father tells him to do sound?

And, "NCR has learned": what's that about, I wonder?  Who has been on the phone to Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. bishops' conference," gathering news scoops and instructions on how to write the news, instructions on what the bishops want?  

There are some strange--some very off-putting--assumptions running through how the powerful centrist Catholic men carrying water for the USCCB envisage the issues.  There are very strong insider-outsider assumptions that marginalize the testimony of the vast majority of their fellow Catholics, as if that testimony--and the graced experience and the lives--of those fellow Catholics don't count in the least.

What counts is us.  As powerful, strategically placed men who speak on your behalf.  Who have access to the bishops and other powerbrokers that you don't have.

And what counts is them.  What counts is the bishops, since it's about their religious freedom and their views on contraception.

Not yours.  You might as well go to hell in a handbasket for all these powerful men who profess to speak on your behalf care.  Even when you are 98% of the Catholic population.

Posner wonders if the ultimate weapon Winters et al. have used from the outset to try to bully the Democratic party into submission to the Catholic bishops is a weapon with any real clout at all.  This is their claim that "Catholics" are going to abandon the Democrats in the coming elections.

And I think she may well be right in wondering this--though it's also clear to me that these highly placed Catholic powerbrokers are playing a very dangerous game designed to give the "pro-life" Republicans an advantage in states with large populations of Catholic swing voters.  They and the bishops are overtly working to place "pro-life"  Republicans in office.

And if they do succeed in getting their "pro-life" Republican candidates elected, I hope still to have breath in my body to remind them of what they've accomplished, as we see the real "pro-life" agenda of the Republican party roll forth following the elections.  And as we see the colossal anti-life suffering that ensues for the entire world.