Quote:

Wednesday said:
After long defining itself as an undisputed defender of abortion rights, the Democratic Party is suddenly locked in an internal struggle over whether to redefine its position to appeal to a broader array of voters.



Wall St. Journal

    On February 28, a congresswoman from Connecticut named Rosa L. DeLauro released a "Statement of Principles." Signed by 55 members of Congress--all of them Catholic Democrats, and together making up a majority of the Catholic Democrats in the House--the statement urged . . . well, it isn't really apparent just from the text what the statement is supposed to be for.

    According to the description from Ms. DeLauro's office, it "documents how [the signers'] faith influences them as lawmakers, making clear their commitment to the basic principles at the heart of Catholic social teaching and their bearing on policy--whether it is increasing access to education for all or pressing for real health care reform, taking seriously the decision to go to war or reducing poverty. Above all, the document expresses the signers' commitment to the dignity of life and their belief that government has moral purpose."

    Who could object to that? Certainly not the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which issued a response on March 10 that declared, "We welcome this and other efforts that seek to examine how Catholic legislators bring together their faith and their policy choices, . . . [and] we welcome the representatives' recognition that Catholics in public life must act seriously and responsibly on many important moral issues."

    All the talk in the "Statement of Principles" about individual conscience is intended really as a demand that Catholics legislators not get beaten up anymore for supporting abortion: "We . . . agree with the Catholic Church about the value of human life and the undesirability of abortion," the statement reads, and that word "undesirability" leaves a peculiar taste in the reader's mouth. Abortion, murder, and thermonuclear war are undesirable, it's true. They are even unfortunate and less than optimal. But somehow one wants a little more oomph in the word chosen to describe them.

    As it happens, oomph is what's missing all the way through the "Statement of Principles." Syntactical clumsiness makes the drafters conclude the statement: "we have a claim on the Church's bearing as it does on ours." But the meaning seems to be: If the Church thinks it can order us around, it's got another thing coming, 'cause we are the Church and the Church are we, and so by simple logic we get to order the Church around just as much it orders us around.

    That rather makes hash of the statement's earlier claim that "we acknowledge and accept the tension that comes with being in disagreement with the Church in some areas." If you "acknowledge and accept" it, then why are you trying to change it?