7th Sunday of Easter
(B - cycle)  May  24,  2009

Last Sunday, President Obama gave the graduation address and received an honorary degree at the University of Notre Dame. As you know, controversy swirled around this event, because the President’s stance on abortion is the so-called pro-choice position. Much as I would like to avoid this painful issue, I feel I should give my opinions on the matter, and I stress the word “opinion”.

Before I start, I want to make clear my own position is pro-life. I believe that abortion is the taking of innocent human life and should be condemned. I don’t apologize for this position. I am proud of the Catholic Church for holding to its teaching on abortion despite pressure from our culture to do otherwise.

A part of the President’s speech that stayed with me was his story about a Catholic doctor who objected to some words on the Obama website when he was running for the Senate. The words in question characterized pro-life persons as “right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman’s right to choose.” The doctor said he wasn’t asking Mr. Obama to change his position on abortion, but to use “fair-minded words” in describing his opponents on this issue.

Mr. Obama did not change his position, but he changed the words on his website. The doctor’s reasonableness helped him to see how unfair it was to indict pro-life persons as sadists who want to inflict suffering on women. It made him appreciate better the moral and spiritual depths of this inquiry.

The doctor’s letter seems to me to be a model for conducting the abortion debate. It was reasonable.  It produced change. The whole context of the correspondence was mutual respect.

Sometimes, I think, we don’t put our best foot forward here. I’m talking not about goals, but about tactics. One tactic has been to demand that Catholics, judged by some to be insufficiently pro-life, be barred from receiving Holy Communion. I had a conversation recently with a bishop I highly respect, in which I said I don’t have the right to refuse anyone communion because I can’t see into that person’s heart and mind and determine if that person has a clear conscience. The bishop said, “I have never refused anyone communion for exactly that reason.” On the other hand, at least one bishop and some priests have said anyone who voted for Mr. Obama should be barred from communion. Such extremism is, I think, self-defeating. It leads people to conclude that our teaching is extreme and unreasonable.

Another tactic has been to ban pro-choice public officials and speakers from parish property, even if the speakers’ topic is not abortion, as if a person we judge to be wrong on this issue could never be right on another. I remember when I wrote editorials for The Catholic Transcript, I received my own doctor’s letter. I had praised a columnist for a proposal that had nothing to do with abortion. The doctor wrote me: “You didn’t do your homework. She’s pro-choice!” I knew that, but it seemed mean spirited to deny her praise when she deserved it.

I think the Church is not at its best when it is banning and barring. We want to turn people on to our belief, not turn them off. We will be convincing insofar as we are perceived as loving---the unborn children and their mothers, especially those who are unwed and poor---and even our opponents. May our efforts help to drastically reduce and virtually eliminate the terrible number of abortions in our country