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Posted on 11/08/2007 7:00:30 AM PST by Alex Murphy
WASHINGTON, November 7, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - John Kerry lamented the fact that he lost the pro-life vote in the 2004 US presidential elections during a talk given at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life yesterday. The Catholic, former Democratic presidential candidate still did not, however, express any regrets about his pro-abortion position.
Kerry stated that he wished he had talked more about his personal view of what constitutes "Catholicism" earlier in the campaign, rather than waiting until the last three weeks.
The Senator acknowledged that the decision by four Catholic bishops to denounce him publicly and to deny him communion based on his pro-abortion stance had cost him dearly, and said that he "probably" should have done more to respond.
"President Kennedy's challenge was to prove that he was not so Catholic that he could be president. My challenge was to prove that I was Catholic enough that I could be president," he told the audience.
Reflecting an ongoing failure of the most US bishops to adequately communicate Church teaching on the issue, Kerry also claimed that the position of the four Catholic bishops was somehow "not a church position. And what we didn't do was make ... sure the Catholic position was in front of people as much as it should be."
In his attempt to articulate his "Catholic" position on abortion Kerry avoided any mention of Catholic doctrine, papal teaching, the Church Fathers or the Magisterium. The Senator's personalized "Vatican II" religion seemed most characterized by his reference to "your value system", "your beliefs".
The prominent Democrat may have had his views reinforced by other prominent Democrat pro-abortion Catholics such as Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi and now-deceased and very influential Jesuit Fr. Robert Drinan, none of whom have been seriously taken to task by local bishops.
The obligation to refuse to give communion to pro-abortion politicians has been reiterated recently by Pope Benedict XVI, who told the press earlier this year that in threatening to excommunicate such politicians the bishops of Mexico "did nothing new, surprising or arbitrary. They simply announced publicly what is contained in the law of the Church . . . which expresses our appreciation for life and that human individuality, human personality is present from the first moment" (see complete story at http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/may/07050901.html).
The former presidential candidate also employed two standard tactics used by pro-abortion politicians seeking to minimize the political damage caused by their position.
The first is to claim that they are really "against abortion" and want to "reduce the number of abortions" while simultaneously opposing any effort to criminalize it. The second is to call for "common ground" with their opponents. This approach has been used by Bill Clinton, Republican pro-abortion candidate Rudy Giuliani, and even Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the president-elect of Argentina.
"I think we have been guilty in the [Democratic] Party at times" of being pro-choice "without honoring the deeply held beliefs" of pro-lifers, said Kerry. "There are 1.3 million abortions in this country, and I don't think anybody would disagree that that is too many."
Kerry added that he thinks abortion should be "rare" and that he believes "very deeply that it's not a contradiction to be pro-choice and against abortion." He called on candidates to determine "how to use religion not as a weapon, but to use it to find common ground."
What a buffoon.
A Catholic in name only.
Question: What do John Kerry and Rudy Giuliani both have in common...?
Answer: Both feel pro-lifers should abandon every last principle and scruple to their names, and happily elect pro-abortion politicians to high office... "just because."
Such arrogance.
Seriously, who is he to claim that he is in a more appropriate place to teach Catholic moral doctrine than bishops and the pope himself?
I'm glad this man wasn't elected president.
Typical, sociopathic politician. Kerry hinted he had turned pro-life through some Catholic epiphany. But when pressed in public he feared offending “progressive” abortion advocates more than he feared offending pro-lifers, quickly calculating votes in his head. To call Kerry a sack of human garbage would be to elevate him.
Fixed.
Sorry, John, you failed.
Flip, flop. Flip, flop.
he's still doing it.
3 years later and he’s STILL trying to figure out how he lost.
Kerry is despicable.
Find “common ground” on abortion? This man is truly in love with himself.
Yeah, damn the luck, John. If only we could figure out a way to identify the gene which indicates which child will grow up to be Republicans, maybe we could get that 1.3 million abortions down to a number that you might find a little more acceptable.
Well, at least four bishops have publicly denounced Kerry. Too bad that they cannot publicly excommunicate him, forcing the rest to stop sheltering him.
If I remember right, back in the middle 1500’s there were some in Trent who had the power and the cahones to actually publicly throw someone out of the church.
But I guess everything is too political now, with too many supporting abortion in the “One and Only True Church”, that the Pope cannot exercise the power that he claims to have. Now the RCC weakly suggests that the reprobate is self-excommunicated, and can sneak into some parish where the Bishop is less Catholic to receive his dose of Grace for the sin of supporting the child slaughter.
We're agreed, then, that what we need is a more robust, muscular, and fully Catholic Church?
I think we can agree that all churches should be "more robust, muscular, and fully etc" about whatever they believe, and in how they grow and cull their congregations. Church teaching and discipline is waning IMO across the board. How else do churches move converts from milk to meat, and from repentance to obedience? If churches are supposed to be like hospitals (an analogy I often hear from my Evangelical friends), they're not supposed to be 100% newborn and infant nurseries.
But get a Bishop who's man enough to speak up clearly and pay up personally (Bruskewitz, Burke, Sheridan, Gomez, Chaput) and yow, the nattering, whimpering and howling that fills the air!
Pray out loud and often for clerical cojones.
What, is this guy depressed or something, this is worse than Al Gore. At least AG went out, got drunk, got over it, now he’s basking in all his global warming glory. Sheesh. Why is this even being discussed, so irrelevant
Such arrogance.
Seriously, who is he to claim that he is in a more appropriate place to teach Catholic moral doctrine than bishops and the pope himself?
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Spot on, MWS!
Next, Comrade Kerry will be saying that Pope Benedict XVI’s support of bishops who threaten to refuse communion to pro-abort politicians like Kerry is also “not a church position.”
This is because Kerry “Katholicism,” like the “Katholicism” of other politicians of his ilk, is to be understood in a secret “Pickwickian” sense beyond the intellectual reach of us lesser mortals - including the Pope!
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