The hypocrisy of Peter DeFazio

Earlier this week, 55 Catholic Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives -- including Oregon's Peter DeFazio -- signed and released a "Statement of Principles." Originating in the office of Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut, it was re-posted on the Democratic Party's website under the heading, "Catholic Democrats Release Statement of Principals."

(I'm tempted to ask why a bunch of principals are making a statement to the Democrats, but I know they meant "principles," so I'll just say I'm glad to hear they have them. Principles, that is.)

Throughout this post, I will probably print most of the statement, but you can read the whole thing at one of the links above if you wish -- it's pretty short. It begins:

As Catholic Democrats in Congress, we are proud to be part of the living Catholic tradition -- a tradition that promotes the common good, expresses a consistent moral framework for life and highlights the need to provide a collective safety net to those individuals in society who are most in need. As legislators, in the U.S. House of Representatives, we work every day to advance respect for life and the dignity of every human being. We believe that government has moral purpose.

So in 81 words, these House Democrats say they are part of a Catholic tradition that "expresses a consistent moral framework for life" and "advance[s] respect for life and the dignity of every human being."

They continue:

We envision a world in which every child belongs to a loving family and agree with the Catholic Church about the value of human life and the undesirability of abortion -- we do not celebrate its practice. Each of us is committed to reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies and creating an environment with policies that encourage pregnancies to be carried to term. We believe this includes promoting alternatives to abortion, such as adoption, and improving access to children's healthcare and child care, as well as policies that encourage paternal and maternal responsibility.

In all these issues, we seek the Church's guidance and assistance but believe also in the primacy of conscience. In recognizing the Church's role in providing moral leadership, we acknowledge and accept the tension that comes with being in disagreement with the Church in some areas.

This statement makes convolutions that would make a Twister competition proud: We agree with the church on the value of human life...but only when we agree with the church. (Oh, and to say the church believes that abortion is "undesirable" is like saying Saddam Hussein was not that great a guy.)

Certainly, you can't discount conscience. After all, God gave all of us the ability to accept or deny him, to follow his teachings or not. Catholics may disagree with me on this, but even the Pope, as a human being, is fallible. My problem with the statement above is the cherry-picking. How can you be committed to "creating an environment with policies that encourage pregnancies to be carried to term" and simultaneously believe that ("so-called") Partial-Birth Abortion doesn't conflict with that? How do they think improved access to children's healthcare and greater paternal and maternal responsibility will help a woman considering the termination of her pregnancy? How do they believe advancing "respect for life and the dignity of every human being" squares with pulling a child out of the womb by the heels and sucking his brains out?

I bring up PBA because 35 of the document's signers (according to Kellyanne Conway) also voted against a PBA ban. Mr. DeFazio is a three-time violator, having voted against it in 1995, 1997 and 2003.

In the next section, this document hints at a typical argument against government intervention in abortion-related issues: the point at which life begins is a matter of faith, and therefore the separation of church and state prohibits us from legislating based on that information. This gets my hackles up, because it's wrong wrong WRONG! I recently made this point in the comments of another website, and wrote about it last year. Let's leave faith out of it -- there's plenty of hard science that proves human life begins at conception.

There was another part of that section that bugged me: after invoking the church/state separation, they say: "We believe the separation of church and state allows for our faith to inform our public duties." In other words, we can't vote in favor of abortion-related legislation because it's a faith issue, but we can use our faith to make legislative decisions on healthcare or education or poverty or defense issues. What a double standard!

But the clincher is the last paragraph, which sounds innocuous on its face -- until you look further into the issue they raise. It reads:

As Catholic Democrats who embrace the vocation and mission of the laity as expressed by Pope John Paul II in his Apostolic Exhortation, Christifideles Laici, we believe that the Church is the "people of God," called to be a moral force in the broadest sense. We believe the Church as a community is called to be in the vanguard of creating a more just America and world. And as such, we have a claim on the Church's bearing as it does on ours.

As a Protestant, I had to look up Christifideles Laici. Guess what I found? It turns out that Christifideles Laici (which was written by Pope John Paul II in 1988) includes this section (italics in original):

The inviolability of the person which is a reflection of the absolute inviolability of God, finds its primary and fundamental expression in the inviolability of human life. Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights -- for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture -- is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination.

The Church has never yielded in the face of all the violations that the right to life of every human being has received, and continues to receive, both from individuals and from those in authority. The human being is entitled to such rights in every phase of development, from conception until natural death; and in every condition, whether healthy or sick, whole or handicapped, rich or poor...

If, indeed, everyone has the mission and responsibility of acknowledging the personal dignity of every human being and of defending the right to life, some lay faithful are given a particular title to this task: such as parents, teachers, health care workers and the many who hold economic and political power.

So these 55 Democrats (60 percent of which voted against the PBA ban) agree with Christifideles Laici -- it says so right in the statement! -- but only when it coincides with the Democratic Party platform. Otherwise, despite their positions of political power, they apparently believe they have no obligation to defend the right to life that is called for in Christifideles Laici. They believe that government has a moral purpose, but they can't invoke morality to affect their votes on the unborn. And they are proud Catholics, unless they don't like what the church teaches.

What rubbish.