Linking Anti-Abortion Activism to Homophobia: Right-Wing Catholics Undermine Pro-Life Cause

In my posting two days ago about Archbishop Raymond Burke’s recent remarks in D.C., in which he repeatedly linked same-sex marriage and abortion as the premier evils that faithful Catholics must combat at this point in history, I said that I’d follow up with more discussion of the abortion issue. I also noted that I’d do so with reference to Michael Sean Winters’s recent discussion at America of the connections between the abortion issue and health care reform.

Winters frames his reflection on abortion and health care as a response to Burke’s recent statement to FOX news that the Baucus bill provides a “mandate” for abortion, and is thus unacceptable to Catholics. Burke also states that the bill “provides for the provision of abortion.”

Winters tries to make sense of both contentions, noting as he does so that both are unclear. His response to the “mandate” claim is far more charitable than mine. I would say simply that it’s an outright lie, and I think anyone concerned about truth in this discussion needs to note that from the outset. There is no “mandate” for abortion anywhere in the Baucus bill, and even to struggle to engage the semantics of this politically motivated lie is to give Burke’s claim a legitimacy it simply does not deserve.

As for the claim that the Baucus bill “provides for the provision of abortion,” Winters notes that the only sense in which that claim might be considered anywhere near truth is that the bill does not outlaw abortion—as it cannot, since Roe v. Wade remains law. The Hyde amendment does not permit federal funds to be used to pay for an abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is at stake. There is no suggestion in the Baucus bill that it would revoke the provisions of the Hyde amendment.

What remains to be determined is whether a public option, if this reaches the table, would provide for abortions with federal funds. Winters argues that the Hyde amendment ought to be extended to a public option. I seriously doubt that any public option that might reach a vote is going to include provisions for direct payments for abortion with federal funds.

As Winters notes, the only other possibility that appears to be now on the table, vis-à-vis the question of abortion, is that abortion would be subsidized indirectly through tax credits if a public option prevails. The Baucus bill envisages the government providing tax credits to those who would then choose to purchase policy riders that might include the option of abortion. As Winters notes, the moral distinction on which this option relies is the direct-indirect distinction: it would subsidize abortion only indirectly if at all. It would not use taxpayer moneys to fund abortions in any direct way.

And as Winters also notes, there is significant evidence suggesting that many women who choose to have abortions do so because of economic pressures that would be diminished considerably by the provision of universal health care. “Health care reform is pro-life per se,” Winters’s observes, because it helps prevent the economic quandaries in which many women find themselves when they cannot afford adequate health coverage for their themselves and families, and are pregnant.

Winters’s distinctions are good and necessary ones. They’re fine ones. But here’s what I would like to say in response—and my response also addresses the thread of comments following Winters’s posting.

These distinctions—in fact, the entire discussion—leaves me cold. Increasingly, when I listen to my centrist Catholic brothers and sisters engage Catholics of the right, including Archbishop Burke, on these issues, I feel as if I am listening in on a conversation taking place on another planet. This is not a planet on which I live. It is not a planet whose rules make sense to me.

I do care about abortion. I think that in an ideal world, no one would be forced to have to deal with excruciating decisions about whether or not to end a pregnancy. I also think that in the real world in which most of us live, that decision unfortunately confronts many people. And I doubt seriously that dictating to those people what they must do in the situation confronting them—or dictating to society at large—is going to provoke the kind of moral awareness that people need in order to make momentous moral decisions like whether or not to have an abortion.

If our goal is to provoke people to see that abortion is not a value-free practice, but one with profound ethical implications, then we have failed lamentably and we continue to fail lamentably to convince many people to recognize those ethical considerations. The approach we have taken, we Catholics (and our right-leaning evangelical brothers and sisters), is entirely counterproductive. Rather than convince people that values are at stake in the question of abortion, we are causing them simply to shrug their shoulders and walk away from the discussion (which is not a discussion at all, and that's a huge part of the problem).

Something is totally awry in the way many Catholics have chosen to approach the issue of abortion in the public square. Something is awry if our goal is to convince others to examine the life issues that we believe are inherent in this discussion. Something is wrong with our approach to this issue at the most fundamental level possible, when our first and foremost reaction is to suppress discussion, coerce and command, and threaten anyone who disagrees with us.

It strikes me that there are some serious unacknowledged problems, some stumbling blocks, to the sane discussion of abortion, which impede that discussion from its very outset, causing it to be a mostly ineffective and intramural Catholic (and right-wing evangelical) discussion/non-discussion that has no ability to reach most sane people in our society. Not where they live and move and have their being. I’m surprised, frankly, that my centrist brothers and sisters don’t appear to see those stumbling blocks, and that they continue discussing these issues with their brothers and sisters on the right (though, strangely enough, not with their brothers and sisters on the left), as if the discussion is a good-faith discussion in which those on the right seriously want to parse difficult issues and arrive at common ground.

I’ve talked previously about some of these stumbling blocks. We cannot discuss abortion sanely as my Catholic brothers and sisters of the right insist we must discuss it if we're going to discuss it at all, when we exclude from the conversation questions about the varied, far from uniform witness of our tradition about abortion, which contains more moral options than the single option the right now provides us with. We cannot have sane discussions of abortion when we simply dictate from the outset that life begins at conception and that this question will be off the table, or we’ll take our marbles and boycott the discussion. We cannot discuss abortion sanely when we take that approach, because our own tradition is not uniform about a human life starting at conception, and because some of our leading classical theologians, including Aquinas, held otherwise.

The teaching that a human being is fully present at the moment of conception is a very recent teaching. We may try to establish it by fiat if we wish, but we will be largely unsuccessful when we seek to do so, because thinking people will think about these issues, and will want to discuss them, before they make up their minds about them. Our non-negotiable, rule-by-fiat, no-discussion approach has the opposite effect than the one we claim we want, when we say that our goal is to convince people to take abortion and the moral implications of abortion seriously.

We also cannot discuss abortion sanely with anyone outside our little club if we fail to look at the political connections between the anti-abortion movement and the anti-feminist movement. It is undeniable that opposition to abortion has arisen within Christian churches in direct proportion to the emergence of women to full personhood on the stage of global human history. Resistance to abortion is, in many quarters, resistance to women’s full personhood and to the rights of women. And we undermine our efforts to convince people of the seriousness of abortion as a moral issue when we do not admit this, and when we do not eradicate misogyny altogether from our moral arguments against abortion.

And finally, it is also undeniable that a significant proportion of those who now argue that abortion is one of the premier evils of our time—including Archbishop Burke—have chosen to link the anti-abortion movement to homophobia, to resistance to gay rights, to movements to crush and dehumanize gay people. If for no other reason, as a gay person who also happens to be Christian, I cannot listen to Archbishop Burke’s arguments about how I should take abortion seriously as a moral issue, when he links that argument to arguments that deny my full humanity and combat my human rights.

If the Catholic church hopes to convince society at large that abortion is something to take seriously on moral grounds, it needs to rethink its current political choice to link resistance to abortion to homophobic causes. That linkage is unwise. It is dangerous for religious groups that hope to make a compelling case in the public square that abortion is a serious moral issue.

It is unwise and dangerous because an increasing number of people in the developed world do not buy into homophobia. They do not do so precisely because of their respect for human rights—because of their respect for the same human rights that, in the mind of the Catholic church, form the basis for opposition to abortion. Human beings have a right to life, the Catholic church wants to teach us.

But human beings who happen to be born gay also have rights, and those rights include the right to live with decency, not to be attacked, lied about, shunned and shamed. To the extent that the Catholic church participates in such actions—and it does; it is going out of its way to do so in Maine and many other places in the U.S. today—it totally undermines its credibility as a moral teacher regarding abortion and other life issues.

Let me put the point even more bluntly. Archbishop Burke has become a political operative, a shameless political pawn, for a group of right-wing Americans who have no intent at all of respecting gay human beings. The archbishop’s analysis of the twin evils of abortion and same-sex marriage is political, first and foremost. His opposition to health care reform is primarily political. As with other Republicans, he wants at all costs to turn back health care reform, even if doing so means that poor women will continue to have no health care coverage and will be faced with difficult decisions about whether to continue a pregnancy.

When the Archbishop Burkes of the world talk about abortion, I do not intend to listen. I cannot do so. I cannot do so because who they are and what they have chosen to embody militates against the message they claim that they want to impart to me.

And I remain astonished that so many of my Catholic brothers of the center seem not to see what is really at stake in these discussions, that they seem willing to live with the gross homophobia as part of the price one must pay for opposing abortion, that they appear untroubled by the appalling misuse of money by Catholic officials to mount nasty attacks on gay human beings. The appalling misuse of money to attack gay people by the same Catholic officials who have misused funds again and again to cover up clerical sexual abuse of minors, silence victims, and to mount lawsuits against those calling for justice.

When the walls are imploding under the weight of such massive corruption, how can we continue talking about moral issues as if we're in a well-constructed and stable house?

The graphic shows results of an August 2008 Pew survey.

Joan Walsh on Race and the Media: Political Analysis in Light of Joe Wilson's Outburst

And a final comment as a gloss to what I wrote Monday about the way in which discussions of racism in American society constantly get sidelined, because we don’t want to discuss the core ideological issues around which many of our political and cultural debates revolve. We don’t intend to discuss these issues openly and frankly, that is.

Joan Walsh has a clear, helpful statement about the problem at Salon yesterday. As she notes, the president has to downplay the issue of race, because if he does otherwise, he will play into the hands of his right-wing opponents who want to play the race game while pretending that no such game exists. If Mr. Obama adverts to race as a significant analytic category for politics and culture, he will instantly be accused of inventing racism that is just not there—except when those charging him with racism want to pull the race card out of their bag of tricks to try to shove right-center voters inclined to the Democrats for economic reasons in the Republican direction for racial reasons.

Walsh also agrees with Darren Hutchinson, who recently noted the diversionary role of race in media analysis of political issues. To the extent that we focus on race (or the manifold other culture war issues of gender and sexual orientation that the right keeps pushing to the forefront), we ignore what’s behind it all: economic injustice whose primary agents benefit when we remain mesmerized by culture-war issues and ignore the rapacity of those who keep enriching themselves as we fight about race, gender, and sexual orientation.

And yet race deserves consideration, because racism is there in our society, and it’s potent—and potently harmful to all of us. Walsh concludes that Obama is right, and Hutchinson is right, as are those who push for open discussion of racial issues. As she notes,

I still believe, however, that we have to call out racism when we see it, and that the media's recent interest in the topic is a good thing, overall, not merely an example of its weakness for sensationalism. If race is now "catnip" for the media, I'd argue that's an improvement over the days when it was a hugely uncomfortable issue for pundits and reporters, routinely handled badly when handled at all.

To see debates on CNN or MSNBC about whether and how race plays a role in the way Obama's opponents demonize and dehumanize him – to see media understand that racial stereotyping and marginalization can occur even without the use of racial slurs or outright discrimination -- is a big step forward. Also: To have white pundits and politicians willing to decry racism, while black scholars and politicians downplay it, seems like racial progress in itself. It's a two-steps-forward, one-step-back march to social justice. I'd say this debate is part of getting there.

And I agree. I’ve pretty much ended up where Walsh ends up here—and that was the point of my posting about these issues on Monday.

The graphic for this posting is from the World Council of Churches's statement on the 2001 UN Conference on Racism (see here). It illustrates the interconnections of racism, misogyny, and economic injustice.

Blue Dogs Doggedly Determined to Protect Health Industry: Update on Mike Ross Story

Though Arkansas Congressman Mike Ross has been constantly in the news lately, I haven’t blogged about him since my posting back at the end of July, which noted that the health provider and insurance industries were dumping huge funds into the coffers of blue dog Democrats working to subvert a plan for universal health care in the United States.

I haven’t blogged again about Ross and his role in blocking universal health care coverage because I really don’t have anything new to say about these issues. I find the behavior of the blue dogs vis-à-vis the health care debate (and about human rights issues in general) despicable. If there were viable political alternatives to blue dog Democrats in places like Arkansas, I’d pull the lever in a heartbeat for their opponents.

But as my remarks about Andrew Sullivan’s piece on the new American diaspora a moment ago indicate, we don’t have such clear political options in many cases in our American political context. We have choices between more or less draconian alternatives, neither of which represents an option for a more humane, more human rights-centered society.

And so I often remain silent about stories even in my own back yard, when speaking out seems pointless, when speaking out doesn’t open doors for viable political alternatives. I pass over those stories for ones that engage my passion more, in which there seem to be threads of hope running through an otherwise bleak political landscape.

Fortunately, though, while I’ve been silent, others have been dogging Ross’s steps, and there’s a lot to report about him in recent weeks. Marcus Stern reports at Pro Publica yesterday on an “eye-popping” real estate deal Ross and his wife—who is a pharmacist like Ross—made in 2007 with USA Drug company. The Rosses sold commercial property in tiny Prescott, Arkansas, their hometown, to USA Drug for $420,000—considerably more than its assessed and appraised value.

Other considerations attached to the deal brought Mike and Holly Ross over a million dollars. Two weeks later, Stephen L. Lafrance, owner of USA Drug, dumped $2300 into Mike Ross’s campaign fund.

Ross admitted to reporters early in August that he and other blue dogs held the health care reform bill “hostage in committee” earlier this year—ostensibly to make the bill better. Yet his cozy ties to the pharmaceutical industry, whose representatives have been fighting tooth and nail against health care reform, are undeniable and easily tracked. Stephen Lafrance, to whom Ross sold property at great benefit to himself and his wife, and a donor to Ross’s campaign, is on record stating,

Universal health care will ruin our health care in America. There'll be long lines, they won't be able to get treated, potential doctors will be afraid to go into medical school, there will be an outflux of doctors -- in my opinion. It's not broke and don't fix it.

Blue dog Democrats holding health care reform bills hostage to make them better? I don’t think so. They’re playing the Republican game of trying to block health care reform at all costs. Because they’re beholden to those who benefit economically (and grossly so) from the inequitable, patchy health care delivery system as it now exists.

And even as he fights universal health care coverage, Mike Ross represents a district whose voters are solidly behind a public option (and here). Despite the expressed wishes of his constituents, “Mike Ross is fighting hard for what the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry want,” in the view of Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake.

What has democracy come to mean in these United States, when a clear majority of voters can elect a Democratic president and Democratic Congress who have promised to deliver health care reform that assures universal health care coverage to all citizens—and that Democratic president and the Democratic Congress then ignore the will of the voters and do the bidding of the discredited opposition party? And, of course, above all, do the bidding of the economic lords pulling the political strings in this nation now, no matter which party is in office, and no matter what a majority of voters want . . . .

Mid-Week News Roundup: Catholic Gender Gap and Schism, Gay American Diaspora

There are a number of excellent articles online in the past several days, which touch on themes central to this blog. Colleen Baker has an outstanding statement yesterday at Enlightened Catholicism about the gender gap in Catholic church participation.

As Colleen notes, though male participation in church services is lower than female participation in most churches, in Catholicism, the gender gap is pronounced: in the U.S., the gap is double what it is in other churches. (And I suspect it is higher still in Europe.)

Colleen notes several different window-dressing responses to this phenomenon on the part of the institutional church—e.g., the attempt to scapegoat gay priests for sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy. But she thinks these window-dressing approaches are not going to work. They won’t work because the ultimate problem is rooted in a lack of respect for the “dignity” of men doing ordinary things like working, marrying, and raising families.

I agree with Colleen. Many studies show that male participation in church life began to drop off in Europe in the 19th century, when leaders of many churches appeared to cast their lot with wealthy ruling economic and social elites, and turned their backs on working families. To the extent that churches gave the impression that they were for owners and against workers, they began to lose adherents—working men, in particular.

During this period of rising disaffection with the church among working folks, many European men began to conclude that the church simply did not have their best interest—their dignity as workers and human beings—at heart. And evidently the churches have not been successful in altering that perception, no matter how hard they have tried to create a “muscular Christianity” designed to convince real men that the church is congenial to their interests.

I also highly recommend Frank Cocozzelli’s article on the politics of schism in the Catholic church in the latest issue of Public Eye. Summaries of the article are also at Talk to Action and Street Prophets (here and here).

Cocozzelli notes the deliberate attempt of some contemporary leaders of the Catholic church, including Pope Benedict himself, to drive dissidents out of the church, to create a leaner, meaner church of true believers. And he relates this attempt very convincingly to a political agenda designed to serve the interests of economic elites.

As I’ve done on this blog, he notes that the influential right-wing American activist group called the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) was founded by leading American Catholic neocons to split Protestant churches with a strong legacy of social justice teachings. It’s not difficult to show that IRD has worked very hard to use wedge issues like gay rights to try to divide the Anglican/Episcopal, United Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, primarily in order to mute the witness of these churches re: issues of social justice in the public sphere.

And so movements to “purify” the Catholic church theologically, to silence theologians who raise critical questions, to return to a Latin Mass, to embrace anti-semitic right-wing schismatic groups like the Society of St. Pius X (the SSPX or Lefebvrites), have a decisive political intent. This is to return the Catholic church to its pre-Vatican II stance of support for right-leaning authoritarian regimes that give free reign to the haves, and keep the have nots in their place.

Running against that strong current in Catholicism is, of course, a clear and persuasive body of social teaching that critiques the unbridled market and challenges owners and managers to treat workers like persons and not things. And so one of the objectives of political and economic groups working to create schism in the Catholic church around theological and moral issues is to undercut the Catholic church’s important legacy of social teaching, and to silence Catholics, including some Catholic church leaders, who dare to articulate that legacy clearly in the public sphere.

I think Cocozzelli is right on the mark with this analysis. Anyone who seeks to analyze the liturgy wars or issues like perpetual adoration of the Eucharist in the Catholic church without adverting to the political backdrop against which these battles are being fought will not see the real and full significance of what, at first glance, appear to be parochial, in-house battles between Catholics about issues with no political significance.

I also appreciate Andrew Sullivan’s statement yesterday at his Daily Dish blog about the new American diaspora. Sullivan notes a growing tendency of highly qualified and accomplished American citizens to relocate abroad.

To be specific: many gay American couples, including couples in which one partner or the other lives with HIV, are choosing to leave the U.S. and live overseas. Why? Same-sex couples in civil unions are, in general, regarded as married couples, for all intents and purposes, in most other developed nations around the world nowadays.

In the U.S., not only do many of us have no access to the rights and privileges of either marriage or civil unions, many of us live in areas in which we have no legal defense against being fired, denied housing, or turned away from hospital visitations to our loved ones, solely because we are gay.

I live in such an area. I know first-hand the constant anxiety these possibilities create for me and others. Though I have a partner who works full-time at an institution with a stated non-discrimination policy, that same institution does not grant partner health benefits to same-sex partners. I live with no health coverage because we cannot afford to pay for health coverage.

Life for many gay citizens of this nation is a daily struggle against strong odds created solely by prejudice, and as Andrew Sullivan notes, the election of Mr. Obama and a Democratic Congress has not given us hope for progress in the foreseeable future. We have long known that under a Republican-dominated federal administration, we will see our humanity assaulted and our rights eroded.

We did not anticipate seeing this happen under a Democratic administration, despite our dismal experiences under the last several Democratic administrations. And now we’re seeing once again that, when push comes to shove, we are still regarded as sub-human, even by those who tell us they are fierce advocates for our rights.

I’ve said before and I will say again on this blog: if I were younger and able to uproot myself with more ease, I would definitely move someplace, anyplace, that treats me and my sort more humanely. I would definitely advise younger gay folks in the U.S. to think seriously about relocating to one of the many countries in which life is not such a struggle for gay people, simply because we are gay.

We have too much to contribute, to keep wasting it in places that do not welcome us and affirm our humanity. When those who assault our humanity continue to take what we have to offer—our talents, our hard work, our money—and then kick us to the curb without shame or compunction, it’s time to find places that value us and our gifts more.

Bishop Harry Jackson on "Disproportionately Educated" Gays and the African-American Community

And in the curioser and curioser world that Christian homophobes seem intent on creating for themselves (and the rest of us, if we give them political power)--a world in which all pornography including Playboy centerfolds is ipso facto gay pornography, because gays are, well, bad, and pornography is bad--gay folks are also "disproportionately educated".

And that makes them bad. And racist. Because it seems they're getting that education to set themselves apart from African Americans, to lord it over their black brothers and sisters.

Gay: bad. Education: bad. Educated gays: bad and racist.

And so lack of education is good? Ignorance is a virtue?

Being authentically black is about being uneducated and proud to be uneducated?

I wonder who's the real anti-black racist here.

Teaching Homophobia: Lori Kasten on a Christian School's Homophobic Indoctrination of Her Daughter

Here's a fascinating story that I hope readers won't miss. It deserves attention for all kinds of reasons.

First, it raises disquieting questions about the use of taxpayer funds in places like Florida to support church-based schools that teach homophobia. Second, it raises questions about why any school, especially a "Christian" one, would feel the need to begin indoctrinating children in homophobia at the age of four. That ravenous need to teach prejudice even to such tiny children surely says a lot more about those doing the indoctrinating than about the children they're indoctrinating.

And, finally, the story causes me to ask about the manifold ways in which schools have the ability to teach homophobia not merely unconsciously, by presenting children only and repeatedly with symbols of heterosexual people and heterosexual relationships, but overtly, as in the case discussed in this posting. Have things gotten so bad out there that schools are actually teaching children directly and intentionally now to be homophobes?

It would appear that this is the case in Florida. I applaud Jodi Kasten for telling this story and challenging the indoctrination of her four-year old girl. The voices that usually clamor for attention when these issues are raised are predictably from the other direction.

Archbishop Burke on Twin Evils of Gay Marriage and Abortion: The Lamb Continues to Be Only A Lion

Archbishop Raymond Burke is back in the news—the American news. As I’ve noted before, the former archbishop of St. Louis was sent to Rome last summer to head the Vatican’s Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest judicial office in the church beneath the pope himself. Many commentators have suggested that Burke was sent to Rome in accord with the ancient maxim, Promoveatur ut amoveatur: let him be promoted in order to remove him from the scene.

As it follows this maxim, the Catholic church has a history of handing out plum jobs to church officials who make a mess of their pastoral responsibilities. When court documents revealed the extent and longstanding duration of the sexual abuse crisis in American Catholicism in 2002, and when those documents showed the unsavory role that Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston had played in hiding and moving around priests abusing children, Law was nudged out of his pastoral responsibilities in Boston. Only to be promoted to the cushy post of Archpriest of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome . . . .

The maxim about promoting folks in order to remove them doesn’t apply, unfortunately, to women removed from positions of ministry in the Catholic church. When Ruth Kolpack lost her job as a catechist in Beloit, Wisconsin, earlier this year as a result of her views regarding women’s ordination, church authorities offered her no golden parachute, despite her many years of ministry. Nor has Sister Louise Akers landed a plush job in the Vatican following her recent dismissal by Archbishop Daniel Pilarcyzk from all positions of ministry in the Cincinnati diocese. Akers’s crime? Supporting women’s ordination.

The church is not in the habit of handing out plum jobs to silenced theologians, either—Roger Haight was not given a comfortable sinecure in Rome, with palatial quarters and a handsome salary (both of which Law receives), when the Vatican silenced him at the beginning of 2009. Nor do priests who come out publicly as gay usually receive anything but scorn from the institutional church, in response to their honesty. As Fr. Geoff Farrow reports on his blog, in contravention of canon law, his bishop gave him neither financial support nor health insurance when he came out as gay in 2008 and the bishop booted him. As he notes, a priest accused of pedophilia would have received those benefits.

Unlike what happens to women, lay ministers, and gay priests who have the courage to admit they are gay when they’re unjustly dismissed by Catholic officials, the Burkes and Laws of the Catholic church do well for themselves. The church stands by its men, even (or especially), it seems, when they woefully foul their pastoral nests and damage numerous folks in the process.

Though Cardinal Law has tended to stay in Rome following his promotion-removal, Archbishop Burke now spends his time hopping back and forth across the Atlantic, where he has an important, albeit unofficial, political position in the American Catholic church. He has become something of a darling of the Catholic right in the U.S., where he keeps his hand in by pontificating as frequently as possible about “the” Catholic position on American political matters.

Burke was in the U.S. back in March to attend the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, an event sponsored by Republican political operatives that does all it can to suggest that the Republican party has the endorsement of the Catholic church. This was on the heels of an embarrassing interview Burke gave to American Catholic anti-abortion activist Randall Terry (and here), in which Burke appeared to give official sanction to Terry’s extremist antics, which include skits depicting President Obama ordering doctors to stab babies, and which continue unabated even as I post this piece.

Last November, Burke sought to influence Catholic voters to vote Republican by characterizing the Democratic party as “grievously anti-life” and unworthy of Catholic support. Burke has repeatedly sought to use the Eucharist as a political weapon to try to swing Catholic voters in a Republican direction, as he calls for communion bans on Catholic Democrats running for office. During the last election cycle, he pontificated from Rome about how the Democratic party is in the process of turning itself into the “party of death,” and continued his campaign to encourage bishops to deny communion to selected Democratic candidates like Joe Biden.

And now Burke is back in the U.S. again. Still pontificating. This time about truth and charity. Well, about truth, his version of the truth, the version of truth comfortable to the posh Republican businessfolks who hang onto his pronouncements.

Burke is in the U.S. now to be given an award, the “Service to the Church and Our Nation” award, by the Morley Institute’s InsideCatholic.com news site, headed by the former in-house guru for all things Catholic in the Bush administration, Deal W. Hudson. Predictably, the good archbishop, whom InsideCatholic banquet attendees describe variously as warm, kind, humble, gentle, simple, and quiet—a lion speaking with the voice and face of a lamb—used his platform at the D.C. awards banquet to make a wide range of political observations that play to his Catholic-right audience.

Deal Hudson’s summary of the banquet address (to which the next-to-last link points) says that Burke “returned again and again to the scandal of Catholic politicians who support abortion or same-sex marriage,” insisting that such politicians should be denied communion and Catholic burial—in what Hudson opines was “an obvious reference to the Kennedy funeral.” The lion with the voice and face of a lamb also used his InsideCatholic forum to take a swipe at Catholic supporters of health care reform, noting (Hudson’s summary) that endorsing universal health coverage because it achieves “some desirable outcomes” while it “includes abortion” is “false reasoning.”

The InsideCatholic banquet was not Archbishop Burke’s sole forum on this trip to the U.S. According to Michael Sean Winters at America magazine, he also gave an interview to FOX news, in which he stated that the health care reform bill prepared by Senator Baucus contains a “mandate” for abortion—a claim Winters flatly dismisses. Winters says that Burke told FOX that the Baucus bill “provides for the provision of abortion, so it’s simply not acceptable.”

As Winters notes, the only sense in which that statement might be parsed as true is that the health care reform bill does not outlaw abortion outright, something it cannot do with Roe v. Wade on the books. Winters goes on to discuss the “nettlesome policy issues” created by the interface of health care reform, abortion, and Catholic teaching. In a subsequent posting following up on Winters’s discussion of those issues, I want to discuss the abortion question and health care reform more closely.

For now, though, I want to return to Archbishop Burke’s claim that abortion and same-sex marriage are necessarily linked for Catholic voters, as a kind of diptych of non-negotiable truths on the basis of which “true” Catholics will cast their votes. When I hear the leonine archbishop with the voice and face of the lamb talking about abortion, I have to admit, I have a tendency to stop my ears—just as I do when I hear Mr. Hudson, with his history of sexually assaulting a co-ed student at Fordham University, talking about the sanctity of marriage.

To say that the Catholic church in the U.S. is developing an image problem for its anti-abortion politics—and this problem is growing because of the lamentably unwise, unjust, and uncharitable stance the church has chosen to take regarding gay people—would be an understatement. The church’s draconian anti-gay politics are undercutting its attempt to make a persuasive argument in the public square about the sanctity of life.

The image problem the Catholic church is creating for itself by its anti-gay money laundering in places like Maine and its use of gay people as political cannon fodder to distract attention from mishandling of clerical abuse cases in places like Connecticut, is becoming a substance problem. The homophobic image the church is building for itself in Maine and Connecticut and many other places in the U.S. evacuates its pro-life teachings of any compelling substance, for many Americans, both Catholic and non-Catholic.

And pushing the lion-like Republican archbishop with the voice and face of a lamb center-stage to babble to his rich constituents about the twin evils of gay marriage and abortion is not going to help matters. Not for many of us. I’m surprised, frankly, that my centrist Catholic brothers and sisters continue to listen. I long ago stopped doing so, when I realized that the lion was only a roaring lion seeking to devour. There never has been a lamb there.

Ask the good people of St. Louis who jubilated when the leonine lamb got sent packing to Rome after his pastoral shenanigans in their diocese.