Colorado Catholics supporting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama say church leaders are giving new meaning to the term “bully pulpit” by asserting the abortion issue should determine the votes of “authentic” Catholics.
Troubled by some clerics’ singular focus on the abortion issue and de facto opposition to Obama, some local Catholics say fighting poverty, fixing health care and ending the war also matter.
Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput, nationally prominent as a politically outspoken prelate, heads a list of clergy and action groups steering Colorado Catholics in “faithful citizenship” and away from Obama.
Churches cannot endorse candidates — it violates Internal Revenue Service rules for nonprofits. Some Catholic Democrats say the line is getting blurred, if not crossed.
Colorado Catholics, key swing voters in a battleground state, are targets of national and local campaigns. They have faced pews stuffed with arch-conservative voter guides and a barrage of ads, robo-calls, speeches and even sermons.
“We’ve had it,” said Dennis Haugh, a 66-year-old Greenwood Village Catholic. “I admit it rankles me so much because I’m on the other side of the political spectrum, but I vehemently object to the notion that I’m not a good Catholic because I see things differently.”
Focus on the Family voter guides
The Denver Archdiocese has distributed voter guides prepared by the Colorado Family Institute, an affiliate of evangelical media ministry Focus on the Family.
Chaput has been specifically critical of Obama recently.
The archbishop told a Catholic women’s group Oct. 18 that “the cornerstone of Catholic social teaching is protecting human life from conception to natural death.” Chaput then called Obama “the most committed abortion-rights presidential candidate of either major party” since the 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.
“The Democratic platform that emerged from Denver in August 2008 is clearly anti-life,” Chaput said.
Many Catholics feel the pressure is inappropriate.
“I think the archbishop in Denver and bishop in Colorado Springs have taken positions that are bordering, if not crossing, the line drawn by U.S. bishops against supporting or opposing a candidate or party,” Haugh said.
Denver Archdiocese officials deny partisanship.
“The Church isn’t telling people who to vote for,” archdiocese spokeswoman Jeanette DeMelo said. “The Church has been voicing moral teaching and encouraging Catholics to pray and reflect on Church teaching so that they are making decisions in good conscience.”
U.S. bishops against one-issue politics
Yet Chaput and Auxiliary Bishop James Conley have left little wiggle room for Catholics to pick candidates like Obama who support legal abortion.
Conley, according to the Denver Catholic Register, told parishioners that given a choice between a “pro-choice” candidate and a “pro-life” candidate, he couldn’t see how a Catholic could justify voting for a supporter of abortion, an “intrinsic evil.”
Notre Dame University theologian Rev. Richard McBrien said bishops who make a case for one-issue politics or openly oppose a political candidate are in violation of U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops guidelines, set in 1984 and most recently reaffirmed in 2007.
“Catholic voters and their bishops should examine the positions of the candidates on the full range of issues as well as their integrity, philosophy and performance,” McBrien recently said in the National Catholic Reporter.
Andrea Merida, a 42-year-old Denver Catholic and Obama campaign volunteer, said Catholics can’t be single-issue voters.
“The bishops like to say abortion trumps every other issue. It can’t. All the issues are too interconnected.”
“I couldn’t believe my ears”
Merida said having grown up in an urban Hispanic environment, she knows why many people have abortions. “They feel unsupported. They can’t handle or afford a pregnancy or child.”
Berwin Brezina, a 38-year-old mechanical designer who works in Durango and lives in nearby New Mexico, said his parish priest has openly criticized Obama during Mass.
“I couldn’t believe my ears. I feel like the Republicans have somehow hijacked the church.”
Brezina said he voted twice for George Bush because he opposed abortion and Bush didn’t end abortions. “Maybe abortion legislation isn’t what’s needed. Maybe we need to change people’s hearts,” Brezina said.
Diane Mayer, a 50-year-old Englewood mother of three, said her conscience tells her to look at the full spectrum of life, including fair wages, affordable health care, environmentalism and ending the war.
“Archbishop Chaput, when will you stand up for all life issues and stop advising Catholics to support war-mongering candidates just because they want to overturn Roe vs. Wade?” Mayer asked in a letter to the editor Oct. 24.
Chaput has said he sees no cause that could counterbalance the 40 million unborn children killed by abortion.
Electa Draper: 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.com
