abortionsamesexmarriage

I was at a conference last week in Prague and missed the Pope’s statement in Fatima that abortion and same-sex marriage were “some of today’s most insidious threats” to the common good. James Martin, S.J., responding to this, reports here that, “A good friend of mine, who is gay, recently resigned from his position at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in Washington, D.C., where he said, with great dismay, that ‘abortionsamesexmarriage’ had become one polysyllabic word among some of his bosses.”

Martin wonders: “Why has same-sex marriage been equated with abortion? Are they really equivalent ‘threats’ to life? If you're looking for a life issue with stakes as high as abortion, why not something that actually threatens life? Like war? Or the death penalty? Or the kind of poverty that leads to death? Why aren't ‘abortion and war’ the most ‘insidious and dangerous’ threats to the common good? Or ‘war and the death penalty’? Or ‘war and poverty?’”

Perhaps the Pope paired the two because Portugal’s parliament had recently approved same-sex marriage and Portugal had approved abortion in 2008 (his opposition to both abortion and same-sex marriage is hardly news). Nonetheless, the pairing of abortion with same-sex marriage is common practice among American conservatives and the pairing of the two by American Bishops together with their opposition to the health care legislation suggests that they have chosen to emphasize those beliefs of theirs that could qualify them as a spiritual wing of the Republican Party.

Comments

[Michael Perry]

Steve, I hope you cross-post this @ MOJ.

Michael

[Robert Hockett]

Or as the self-appointed 'Transcendent Seal of Approval' office of the Republican Party!

Thanks, Steve!,
Bob