By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
The head of the pro-abortion caucus in the U.S. House, Rep. Diane DeGette, is coming under fire for voicing her belief that religious groups should be prevented from participating in the abortion debate in Congress.
Rep. DeGette was being interviewed by The Hill when she said that “religiously-affiliated groups…should be shut out of the process” in the health care debate because of their support for the Stupak/Pitts amendment. “Last I heard, we had separation of church and state in this country,” she said. “I’ve got to say that I think the Catholic bishops and all of the other groups shouldn’t have input.”
Her comments caused a firestorm of protest with many groups demanding that the President and other Congressional leaders repudiate her remarks.
“I call on President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Harry Reid to immediately repudiate this religious bigotry,” said Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, “and reaffirm the Constitutional right of all Americans including people of faith to participate in this critical debate.”
Calling her remarks, “stunning,” Perkins said that according to DeGette, “if a group of people are in association with one another because of their Christian faith, they should not have a voice in the crafting of public policy. What she is asserting is that if your ideas and actions are a product of your faith, you’re a second class citizen and your voice should not be heard.”
Even more galling is the fact that DeGette once gave a speech at her alma mater, Colorado College in which she spoke of her involvement with the liberal Faith and Politics Institute.
“Apparently, in her view, it’s OK to be involved in politics and have religious faith – but only as long as you agree with her,” Perkins said.
Her religious bigotry is a far cry from what the Founders believed, he said. “Several months after the British surrender at Yorktown, George Washington, in a letter to the Reformed German Congregation of New York, wrote, ‘The establishment of civil and religious liberty was the motive which induced me to the field (of combat).’ Sadly, Diana DeGette seems eager to smother these precious freedoms, neither of which can exist without the other.
“Rep. DeGette’s comments serve to only further confirm that this takeover is not about health care, it is about a radical social policy in which the expansion of abortion, at taxpayer expense, is at the very center of this effort.”
In November, 2002, Pope Benedict XVI addressed the role of the Church in political life in the doctrinal note, “The Participation of Catholics in Political Life” in which he says: “It is not the Church’s task to set forth specific political solutions – and even less to propose a single solution as the acceptable one – to temporal questions that God has left to the free and responsible judgment of each person.
“It is, however, the Church’s right and duty to provide a moral judgment on temporal matters when this is required by faith or the moral law. If Christians must ‘recognize the legitimacy of differing points of view about the organization of worldly affairs’, they are also called to reject, as injurious to democratic life, a conception of pluralism that reflects moral relativism. Democracy must be based on the true and solid foundation of non-negotiable ethical principles, which are the underpinning of life in society.”
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STUDY QUESTIONS:
1. Do public officials have the right to suspend the political rights attached to citizenship? (See No. 2237 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, available here: http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a4.htm#III
2. What are the duties of citizens? (See No. 2239 in the same section)
3. Contrary to those who think Catholics who involve themselves in the political life of a nation are guilty of “imposing their religion” on others, the Church sees this involvement as part of its mission. (See No. 2246 in the same section)
4. How integral is a correct understanding of the human person to the success of a democracy? (See the third paragraph in No. 3 of the Doctrinal Note “The Participation of Catholics in Political Life” available here: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20021124_politica_en.html )
5. Is it possible to separate politics from morality? (See the fourth paragraph in No. 4 in Pope John Paul II’s letter declaring St. Thomas More a saint, available here: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/motu_proprio/documents/hf_jp-ii_motu-proprio_20001031_thomas-more_en.html )
6. For personal reflection: Do you view the interjection of religious principles into politics as a civic duty or an imposition of one’s religion on others? How have the above readings changed the way you feel about professing your faith in the public sphere?
