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.
You should and watch and listen to the "brilliant" one dig his own eternal grave.
May the cup of mercy you carry not be measured on you.
Thanks for the thought.
But the mercy that I pray for the creature Kmiec is repentance, conversion and salvation.
Recognizing his current filthy state and recognizing what he truly deserves isn't inconsistent with the hope for mercy on his pathetic deviant soul.
sitetest
Didnt sound like you wanted mercy for him only damnation. I believe Kmiec is wrong on his political stance but I believe your stance is not Christ like. We all make mistakes and are wrong, some mistake have a greater impact than others.
You act like God is not in control and can not work evil for good.
My question to you would be this......
If you were clearly in the wrong and a brother in Christ came to you and kept referring to you as (paraphrasing)” servant of Satan, a creature of the devil etc?” Would that restore you to righteousness? Is that a gentle word turning away wrath? If Doug is your enemy should you not be praying that God Bless Doug and his family?
How would you want to be gently corrected. Is not the goal to go after the lost sheep? not hunt him down and kill him?
If you read the parable of the prodigal son which character do you identify with? The father? the Prodigal son or perhaps the older brother?
“Didnt sound like you wanted mercy for him only damnation.”
You've been misinterpreting what I've wrote for the entire conversation, so I'm entirely unsurprised at your extremely uncharitable and false inference.
Par for the course.
“You act like God is not in control and can not work evil for good.”
Baloney. Of course God is in control. But just because God can bring good out of evil doesn't mean that creatures like Kmiec should do evil, or that we should pretend that he has done anything OTHER than EXTREME evil, which, unrepented, likely will lead to his damnation, my hopes and prayers for him notwithstanding.
Labeling a baby butcher as a baby butcher isn't unmerciful or "judgmental." It's just telling the truth about an evil person doing extremely evil things.
“If you were clearly in the wrong and a brother in Christ came to you...”
If I were helping to kill unborn babies, I'd pretty much expect it. And a whole lot worse.
“If Doug is your enemy..."
He's not so much my enemy as God's enemy.
"...should you not be praying that God Bless Doug and his family?”
Of course. Prayers for him that he turn away from his murderous lying ways, and also prayers, nearly daily, for the anti-Christ Obama, that he may be turned away from the way of death.
“How would you want to be gently corrected. Is not the goal to go after the lost sheep? not hunt him down and kill him?”
You slander me by suggesting that I've said that we should hunt him down and kill him. Perhaps you've been hanging out with your friend too long. One wonders whether there are reasons why you defend this lying deceiver.
“If you read the parable of the prodigal son which character do you identify with? The father? the Prodigal son or perhaps the older brother?”
I've “identified” with different persons at different times, but usually see myself as the prodigal son.
The problem for the creature Kmiec is that he's still spending his inheritance on whoring. Perhaps he'll get around to turning his sorry butt around and seeking out the forgiveness of his father. In the meanwhile, he does worse than pratronise whores.
He helps murder little babies.
sitetest
In the story of the prodigal did the father wait till the son came crawling back on his hands and knees?
NO. “And when the son was still a long way off the father came running.
I hope others reading this know that even the worst ab ortionist in history can and will be forgiven if they just ask with an authentic heart. Mercy and forgiveness is a gift you must accept by just asking for it.
O
Please do not take sitetests pharisitical view as the view of Gods love.
In the story of the prodigal son, though, the father did not come out to greet the son until the son had already repented of his sins against the father, and was well on his way back to the father's estate. The son had literally turned himself around, turned away from his sins, and had already traveled nearly all the way back to his father.
In that the creature Kmiec appears still be wallowing in his debauchery, your use of the parable as analogy fails to make your point utterly and makes mine rather neatly. Thank you very much. Certainly, we will all rejoice should Kmiec repent of his crimes.
Even still, God's love certainly reaches out to the creature Kmiec as he wallows in the mire of his murdering sins. When one of us prays for him (and I have specifically prayed for the creature Kmiec that he should repent and be saved), is that not in some way joined to God's love calling this abject sinner home?
Nonetheless, until he repents, the creature Kmiec is an unrepentant criminal, and we ought to say so forthrightly.
“I hope others reading this know that even the worst ab ortionist in history can and will be forgiven if they just ask with an authentic heart.”
Certainly! And we rejoice when this happens!
But the one still mired in the crime of abortion, like the creature Kmiec, brings no joy, and there is no reason that such a one should bring joy.
As well, in the case of the creature Kmiec, unlike most abortionists, the creature Kmiec has heard the Gospel and now has turned away from God. The creature Kmiec is now an apostate, which is a far worse state than one who had never known the Gospel to begin with. In part, his crimes are more vile due to his apostasy.
Sadly, the way back for a criminal like Kmiec will be far harder than it was even for someone like Dr. Bernard Nathanson, the notorious father of abortion, mass murderer, who turned away from the crime of abortion, sought forgiveness for his crimes, and became a devout Catholic.
“Please do not take sitetests pharisitical view as the view of Gods love.”
ROTFLMAO!! Oh dear me. For the “crime” of truthfully calling out the creature Kmiec for conspiring to elect the most baby-murdering president in history, I'm a pharisee. What, then, are you for calling me a pharisee?
How rich.
sitetest
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