Professor Douglas Kmiec
Posted on 01/13/2009 9:34:33 AM PST by NYer
.- In his first lengthy article explaining his position after the election of President Barack Obama, Professor Douglas Kmiec is accusing “right wing Catholic bloggers" of distorting his position, attacking him personally, and potentially poisoning the relationship between the Holy See and the future administration of President Barack Obama.
In the article entitled “A Tangled Web. The Election & the Blogosphere,” written for Commonweal magazine, Professor Kmiec explains that “as the author of a book whose title asked Can a Catholic Support Him? –and whose contents answered with an enthusiastic ‘Yes, we can!’- I have felt the animosity of those with an insatiable desire for political payback.”
“I’ve been subjected to unrelenting personal attacks launched from right-wing Catholic keyboards-blogs (and bloggers) so coarse and uncivil they make the insults of talk radio sound like actual journalism,” writes the law professor.
“Further –he argues- the lack of civility that rules the right-wing Catholic blogosphere has infected mainstream Catholic journalism as well. In a syndicated assessment of the 2008 election, one usually thoughtful conservative columnist employed the following descriptions of Catholic Obama supporters: ‘decadent,’ ‘tribal,’ ‘immoral,’ ‘certainly stupid,’ ‘mindless,’ and in need of basic ‘adult education.’ And those were all in a single paragraph! Such highly concentrated rhetorical venom is not calculated to invite discussion.”
“My online tormentors,” Kmiec continues, “like to claim that their beef with me is my alleged abandonment of the prolife cause or willful misstatement of church teaching. Neither charge is true. I remain unabashedly prolife and I have never consciously misstated the doctrine of the church.”
“This essay,” Professor Kmiec further explains, “is not about abortion, but at least this much must be said: blog lies to the contrary, there is no real legislative interest in FOCA. The attempt to use FOCA to drive a wedge between the church and the incoming administration is unjustified”. He then warns the U.S. bishops: “the bishops, having stated clearly their opposition to FOCA-and rightly so-should not allow the right wing to obscure what Obama shares with the church: concern for the poor; support for the average family; a commitment to ending an unjust war; and respect for our environment.”
“Unless the sore losers of November 4 manage to poison the well, the Holy See and the Obama administration should be working more closely together in service to others than any administration in modern memory,” he opines.
Going back to his criticism of Catholic bloggers, Kmiec writes that “the scurrilous remarks of conservative bloggers missed the point, which was that I and millions of others who voted for Obama did so not despite our Catholic faith but because of it.”
“A hate-filled blogosphere,” argues Kmiec, after defending the sincerity of Obama’s religious beliefs, “feeds a politics of odium, misleading people of faith and good will, diminishing and at times obliterating our ability to know one another.
“Sadly, neighbor-love is not what has overwhelmed my in-box since my Obama endorsement. Instead, right-wing blogs and their readers have launched missiles of hate, delivering ad hominem invective of an astonishing vehemence and crassness.”
Professor Kmiec later laments in his essay that “to be remade by a hateful blogosphere has its price, I’ve learned. I worry that such invitations to speak at Catholic colleges, and the fruitful exchanges these invitations make possible, will be fewer.”
“One member –he says- of the U.S. hierarchy whom I greatly admire has renounced our past association, writing, ‘We are not friends, professor,’ and answering my invocation of Christian brotherhood with a curt retort: ‘I do see you as a brother in Christ –a brother who is serving an evil end.’ The greatest personal price I have paid is the loss of old-and the preemption of new-friendships.”
Kmiec also confesses that when America Magazine’s blogger Michael Sean Winters speculated that the Obama administration might name him as ambassador to the Holy See, he was “flattered” and started seriously thinking about the possibility.
But he claims that “neither God nor the president-elect had an opportunity to answer before the blogs were recycling their various calumnies, and adding now an anonymous voice allegedly saying ‘it would never happen.’”
Kmiec doesn’t reserve blame to “right wing” Catholic bloggers alone. In his essay, he says a role were played by “unfortunate remarks,” like the ones of Archbishop Raymond Burke calling the Democratic Party “the party of death,” and of Cardinal Francis Stafford at The Catholic University of America “describing some of the policies of the president-elect as ‘aggressive, disruptive, and apocalyptic.’”
But he takes again on “right-wing Catholic bloggers,” which “acting as a thinly disguised political front for the GOP, remain fixated on the goal of precipitating an unnecessary war between the Holy See and America’s next administration. It is dismaying to see a few American prelates and their ‘anonymous’ Vatican commentators acting as witting or unwitting coconspirators in this divisive action.”
Nevertheless, Professor Kmiec takes solace in the fact that “blogs have not closed the mind of the new president and, like Lincoln, he bears ‘malice toward none’ and manifests ‘charity for all’.”
“Even spinning a pervasive web of falsehood, the right-wing Catholic blogosphere is no match for the self-evident truth of that golden rule-nor would its bloggers want to be, were they to indulge a microsecond of charitable thought before hitting the send button,” he concludes.
He doesn’t have a character worth assassinating.
No, Dougie, you committed character suicide. You don’t have to ‘splain it to me, but I sure don’t envy you ‘splainin’ it to God.
Yes, but he’s such a smooth talker! Let’s face it, the man is a born diplomat.
Agreed. BTW, I have been noticing that Bambi’s “team” has been getting a lot of religious figures - ranging from Rick Warren to Vicki Gene - to do the honors at his Immaculate Inauguration, as Rush calls it. Do you think he’ll be able to find a Catholic?
0bama said words matter, Dougie. Therefore, when 0bama said the first piece of legislation he would sign would be the FOCA, we were taking him at his word. Oh, yeah that and his opposition to the Born Alive Act and the Mexico City policy, comments like ‘punished with a baby’ and a voting record to the left of the Hildebeast on abortion. So either 0bama make false promises, or he really is the most pro-abortion President in history. Either, 0bama was morally unacceptable to Catholics who actually follow their faith.
Kmiec is simply as useless as all those other phony Republicans who kissed up to BHO.
Any TRUE Catholic knows that the catechism of our faith is diametrically at odds with the Party of Death.
Kmiec should leave the Church and the GOP.
FOCA. “The first thing I would do is sign it.”
I believe that is a direct quote from Obama before Kmeic endorsed him.
Spin, only spin.
Kmiec, be a man and stop whining. You made your bed with the devil, now lie in it. When your bosom buddy Obama signs FOCA, you can rest assured that some of the blood of those aborted babies will be on your hands. Repent and believe the Good News.
I may not be as smart as the Professor, but I'm not so foolish to believe that there is no "real" legislative interest in FOCA.
Right Wing Bloggers Accuse Kmiec of Character Suicide
Yes, WE internet Catholics have the Pope’s ears. And the Pope is totally convinced based on rumors.
In your dreams, buddy. But maybe the Pope has READ with his own eyeballs the vile things you have written.
"I renounce any and all support I have ever given to the abortionist 0bama Regime, and I sincerely apologise for giving grave scandal in supporting it."
I know Doug and His wife. First they are authentic and serious about their faith. 2nd. Doug is probably one of the most brilliant constitutional scholars alive today. 3. I can not explain his position on Obama for the life of me. I have not asked him either. It is truly one of those Huh? things that sometimes happens.
“Right-wing” Catholic? To be Catholic IS to be conservative; to hold otherwise is to be NOT Catholic.
Liberal “Catholics” are not practicing the traditional Catholic Faith, they are practicing the heresy of Modernism. They are acting as “cafeteria” Catholics. Liberalism and the Catholic Faith are two diametrically opposed positions. One cannot lay claim to both and remain honest.
The Church’s position on abortion, and being an ACCESSORY to abortion, is quite clear. There is NO wiggle room on that point: Abortion is an intrinsic evil. The Churches position on homosexuality is also quite clear: Homosexual acts are an intrinsically disordered passion. The Church is also quite clear regarding property rights: Socialism and Marxism are anathema to that position. A Catholic in good standing CANNOT vote for a pro-abortion or pro-homosexual marriage politician; nor a Marxist or Socialist, without becoming and accomplice to the evil represented and propagated by those positions, period. More prudentially, to vote for a pro-abortion politician is to incur automatic excommunication.
Clear enough?
Quit wavin' yer hand around like that, Dougie. It makes you look just like your hero, "Zero".
His argument that Obama has some things in common with the expressed political positions of the Catholic church is correct.
However, he conveniently “forgets” that he originally tried to say that Obama was the right choice for a pro-life Catholic, attempting to justify Obama ON THE PRO-LIFE issue.
It was that disingenous and scripture-twisting argument that earned him the rightful disrespect of the educated Catholic community, and indeed of pro-lifers of every religious persuasion.
Yes, the Catholic church opposes the war in Iraq. And yes, the Catholic church cares about the poor. But that wasn’t the argument Kmeic used to support Obama before the election.
"I was misled!", he'll howl. No, Doug, you misled yourself.
The cognitive dissonance between being “authentic and serious about their [Catholic] faith”, and support for 0bama-of-the-Dead-Babies ought to be sufficient to induce cranial detonation.
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