Feminist Looking Glass

Well, I thought I was going to stop writing for a while about the Catholic Church’s blatant attempts to force its will on government officials.  (For instance, see this and this and this.)  Certainly, I thought that I was not going to write any more about the dispute on abortion between Rep. Patrick Kennedy and Bishop Thomas Tobin, since the MSM is writing quite a lot about it.

But then I saw this interview on Hardball with Chris Matthews with Bishop Tobin.

The interview started off with Matthews showing the clip from John F. Kennedy’s famous 1960 statement where he says that he believes in an America

where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source.  Where no religious body seeks to impose its will, directly or indirectly, upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials.

Tobin gave a non-responsive answer that was contradictory to what Tobin himself was saying and was completely contradictory to what John Kennedy said on the clip.  Tobin started by saying “what we are trying to do is not dictate what public policy should be in the United States from a purely Catholic doctrinal point of view.”  But then he contradicted himself by saying:

What we are trying to do most of all is instill good human values but also have Catholics who are in political office be faithful to the dictates of the Church and the dictates of their conscience and the teaching of the Church. . . . For any Catholic in public office, his first commitment has to be to his faith. . . . No commitment is more important than your committment to your faith because it involves your relationship with God. …  Nothing can become more important than your relationship with God.

Tobin (and by implication the Catholic bishops and Catholic church) couldn’t be any clearer that he  expects that all Catholic politicians must follow the tenets and directives of the church.

Matthews called out Tobin on the contradictions and it was off to the races for Matthews.  What I thought was most interesting was that Matthews kept pressuring Tobin to say, since he was opposed to Patrick Kennedy’s beliefs about abortion, what Tobin believed Kennedy should do about legislation–not beliefs.  In other words, what laws did Tobin think should be made about abortion.  Tobin never had an answer.

Matthews approached some of this from a position that is not often discussed.  He said to Tobin that, since Tobin does not want any law that provides for any form of abortion, if a law was passed that outlaws abortion, that must mean that a woman obtaining an abortion in the United States is breaking the law.  Therefore, the woman is a criminal.  Tobin had no answer to that.

To me, that is a very good question to ask of opponents of abortion.  If they are opposed to abortion, shouldn’t a woman who has an abortion be sanctioned just as is an abortion provider?  (I know that it doesn’t work like that for drug penalties, for instance, where a drug dealer is generally subject to harsher penalties than a drug user.  But the drug user is still penalized–often very severely.)  Matthews is right to press people who have strong anti-abortion views like Tobin to explain what penalties they feel should be imposed on women who obtain abortions.  If the debate has to contain that question, it will be harder for anti-abortion (i.e., anti-choice) people to have a consistent position.

(And by the way, some Catholics think that Matthews was “uncivil” to Tobin. But that’s the way Matthews frequently is to any guest, isn’t it? There’s no reason for Matthews’ to change his style just because the guest is a church official. (And he did refer to Tobin with the ridiculous title of “Your Excellency.” Really, is there any reason to use that title?)

Filed under: Abortion, Religion Tagged: | Abortion, Bishop Thomas Tobin, Catholic Church, chris matthews, Politics, Religion