You may have seen the op-ed by Nicholas Cafardi that was distributed by RNS last week. Well, if you didn’t see it, lots of other people did, and they’re getting angry about it.
(For those of you just tuning in, Cafardi is the former dean of (Catholic) Duquesne University School of Law in Pittsburgh, and former chairman of the US bishops’ National Review Board on child abuse. What’s generating all the buzz, however, is his support of Barack Obama).
The swift and predictable backlash from the Catholic Right is in full force. A sampling:
From Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, where Cafardi sits on the Board of Trustees: “Franciscan University stands with the Catholic Church in its opposition to abortion as an intrinsic evil and violation of the sanctity of human life. The University does not believe the abortion battle is lost, but that the tide is decidedly turning in favor of life.”
From Deal Hudson, former publisher of Crisis magazine and a member of President Bush’s Catholic inner circle: “He equated an “unjust war” to genocide. He criticized the Bush administration on human trafficking, not mentioning that President Bush has done more than any other president to address the issue of human trafficking around the world.”
From Frank Pavone, head of Priests for Life: “If you think the battle against abortion has been lost permanently, then you are asserting that the battle for America and civilization itself have been lost. So don’t trouble yourself one way or another about this election. In a case like that, as the bishops state in Living the Gospel of Life, the American experiment would ‘no longer be worth conducting.'”
