1. Catholics ‘personally opposed’ to abortion? That’s a fallacy, By Mary Eberstadt, The Washington Post, May 24, 2022, Pg. A21, Opinion
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s pastoral letter, or notification, to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that she is barred from receiving Communion in the Archdiocese of San Francisco amounts to a depth charge beneath the surface of the Roman Catholic Church. It makes clear that the phrase “pro-abortion Catholic” is an oxymoron. Pressure will likely increase on Catholic bishops elsewhere to do what Cordileone has just accomplished: articulate what is indisputably church law.
Many people inside and outside the United States will reject that conclusion. They include inveterate anti-Catholics, abortion-first feminists and activists of all kinds who want the Catholic Church to stop being Catholic. Even so, the archbishop’s bracing stand for principle is a plus not only for the church but for all Americans regardless of belief. This is so for three reasons.
First, any clarification of facts is its own virtue.
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A second reason to welcome the archbishop’s intervention has nothing to do with religion and much to do with a political deformation that likewise needs correcting. Since the 1960s, liberals have claimed — without cause — to speak for all womankind on this issue when the reality is far more complex.
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Finally, the archbishop’s notification might mark the beginning of the end for another experiment run amok: the notion that Catholics can simultaneously rattle rosary beads in public while working overtime against bedrock teachings.
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For many years, some Catholics in public life have been enjoying illicit dual religious citizenship — pro-church on Sunday yet followers otherwise of a gnostic creed that deems abortion an untouchable totem.
Now, thanks to Archbishop Cordileone, the “personally opposed” option is less viable. Public figures who want simultaneously the political benefits of “choice” and the personal consolations of being Catholic might have to decide once more which of these two masters they will serve. A new kind of choice is upon them.
Mary Eberstadt holds the Panula Chair in Christian Culture at the Catholic Information Center in D.C. and is a senior research fellow with the Faith & Reason Institute.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/23/communion-pelosi-catholics-abortion/
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2. Roe Must Go for Precedent’s Sake, By Adam J. White, The Wall Street Journal, May 24, 2022, Pg. A15, Opinion
For decades, every argument about Supreme Court precedent has been a proxy war over Roe v. Wade (1973). Anytime the justices questioned a precedent, their opinions were read as clues for the future of Roe.
Now that Roe itself is at stake in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the script has flipped. Critics of Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked draft opinion charge that overturning Roe would condemn other precedents: Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), establishing the right to contraception; Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the right to same-sex marriage; even Loving v. Virginia (1967), the right to marry regardless of race.
Yet Roe v. Wade is in a class by itself. No modern Supreme Court precedent has less connection to the Constitution’s text; none stir greater moral and political disagreement. And if some take Roe as the epitome of precedent, that is one more reason to overturn it. The doctrine of precedent is too important to be defined by such a poorly reasoned and divisive case.
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Abandoning Roe would improve this part of our constitutional discourse. Precedents in other areas of law will be evaluated and debated in much more nuanced and open-minded terms without lawyers, judges and citizens looking over their shoulders at what Sen. Arlen Specter once called the “super precedent” of Roe. Cases would be taken more seriously on their own terms, and not as a proxy war for a court-made right to abortion.
Roe was a bad precedent, but precedent itself is a constitutional good. Abandoning the former will do justice to the latter.
Mr. White is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Last year he served on President Biden’s Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/roe-must-go-precedent-sake-abortion-pro-life-constitution-supreme-court-draft-alito-leak-loving-griswold-obergefell-11653338306?
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3. Who are the extremists? Democrats refuse to say if they’d put any limits on abortion, Polls show that most Americans reject extreme or absolute positions on either side of the abortion issue., By Jonathan Turley, USA Today, May 23, 2022, 5:03 AM, Opinion
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, like other Democrats, recently framed the right to abortion in absolutist terms.
Adams and others have argued that the decision to abort must be left entirely to the woman, without limitations. If adopted into law, that would mean a nine-month-old fetus could be aborted at will.
It’s an extreme position, but it’s one echoed by other Democratic politicians such as Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, who’s running for the U.S. Senate.
A late-term abortion without medical justification is thankfully unlikely. However, embracing an absolute right to abortion is legally significant in how a politician interprets the Constitution. Under this approach, a woman could abort a full-term, “viable” baby shortly before going into labor. It would seem to support what President Joe Biden recently described as the right “to abort a child.”
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This is not a political game of “gotcha.” Whether you allow limits (and what those limits may be) goes to a person’s underlying view of the constitutional right. The refusal to discuss the outer edges of this right reduces the debate to mere sound bites.
If a politician truly believes that the matter should be left entirely to the woman throughout the course of her pregnancy, he or she is going far beyond anything that the Supreme Court has maintained in prior case law.
Politicians would like to continue to rally supporters with absolutist statements while refusing to address the implications of those statements. However, if we are going to resolve the debate of the right to abortion, we need to first understand what our leaders mean in declaring their support for the right of abortion.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2022/05/23/abortion-without-limits-democrats/9835652002/
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4. Hong Kong Catholic cardinal denies charges over relief fund, By Zen Soo, Associated Press, May 24, 2022, 3:25 AM
Former Hong Kong Catholic leader Cardinal Joseph Zen and five others have denied charges for allegedly failing to register a relief fund aimed at financially assisting protesters who faced legal costs during the 2019 anti-government protests.
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Cardinal Zen’s arrest was condemned internationally, with the Vatican saying that it was monitoring developments.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hong-kong-catholic-cardinal-denies-charges-over-relief-fund/2022/05/24/b268584a-db32-11ec-bc35-a91d0a94923b_story.html
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5. Florida suspends abortion clinic after hospitalizations, By Associated Press, May 23, 2022, 8:58 PM
An abortion clinic that serves women from all over the U.S. South had its license suspended this weekend under an emergency order from Florida health officials after two women who underwent procedures at the clinic were hospitalized this year.
The state Agency for Health Care Administration ordered the suspension of the license for American Family Planning of Pensacola. It went into effect on Saturday.
The agency cited two cases, saying the clinic failed to monitor the patients at all times, didn’t provide medical records when patients were transferred for greater care and didn’t contact the patients within 24 hours after they left the clinic to assess their recovery.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/florida-suspends-abortion-clinic-after-hospitalizations/2022/05/23/8c77fe42-daa6-11ec-bc35-a91d0a94923b_story.html
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6. DC archdiocese mistakenly gives candid response on Pelosi Communion denial, By Jonah McKeown, Catholic News Agency, May 23, 2022, 5:43 PM
The Archdiocese of Washington’s communications office erroneously told a reporter Monday that media requests related to Nancy Pelosi’s denial of Holy Communion by her bishop “will be ignored.”
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, the local ordinary of U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, announced Friday that Pelosi may not be admitted to Holy Communion in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, nor should she present herself to receive the Eucharist, until she publicly repudiates her longstanding support for abortion.
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A reporter writing for the Washington Examiner had contacted the Archdiocese of Washington, led by Cardinal Wilton Gregory, for a comment on the matter, since Pelosi spends much of her time in the nation’s capital. The reporter received an emailed response from the communications office, apparently sent in error.
“Just sharing for you to know what comes in,” the email reads. “Email since Saturday, when I last checked the comms inbox has just been a couple of random people wanting to tell the Cardinal to bring down the hammer on Pelosi. Aside from Jack Jenkins at [Religion News Service], this is the only new media inquiry. It will be ignored, too.”
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/251339/dc-archdiocese-mistakenly-gives-candid-response-on-pelosi-communion-denial
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7. Archbishop Cordileone responds to criticism that he’s ‘politicizing the Eucharist’, By Catholic News Agency, May 23, 2022, 7:47 PM
San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone on Monday responded to criticism that he is “politicizing” the Eucharist by denying Nancy Pelosi Holy Communion, saying he would prefer the Democratic House Speaker remain in office “and become an advocate for life in the womb.”
“What does it mean to politicize the Holy Eucharist if one is following Church teaching and applying Church teaching?” Cordileone said in an interview with EWTN News’ Erik Rosales that aired May 23 on “EWTN News Nightly.”
“One would have to demonstrate that one is doing that for a political purpose,” the archbishop said.
“I’ve been very clear all along, my purpose is pastoral, not political,” he added. “I am not campaigning for anyone for office. As a matter of fact, my preference would be for Speaker Pelosi to remain in office and become an advocate for life in the womb.”
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/251341/archbishop-cordileone-responds-to-criticism-that-hes-politicizing-the-eucharist
___________________________________________________________TCA Media Monitoring provides a snapshot from national newspapers and major Catholic press outlets of coverage regarding significant Catholic Church news and current issues with which the Catholic Church is traditionally or prominently engaged. The opinions and views expressed in the articles do not necessarily reflect the views of The Catholic Association.
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