Pro Ecclesia * Pro Familia * Pro Civitate: Deal Hudson: "Barack Obama's Catholic Problem"

Deal Hudson writes on "Barack Obama's Catholic Problem" at InsideCatholic:

In early January I wrote a column arguing that Barack Obama "will not win the Catholic vote." Although Obama has won eleven primaries in a row, his "Catholic problem" is emerging in voting patterns and early media skirmishes.

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And yet, on the heels of his relatively poor showing among Catholic voters, came the remark of well-known Catholic jurist Douglas Kmiec that Obama is a "Catholic natural." Evidently, Catholic voters are slow to recognize him as such. It's hard to blame them when Obama has voted against a law that would have protected a child once it was born and outside the womb -- the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act.

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... it comes as no surprise that Obama was endorsedby one of the nation's leading abortion advocates, Frances Kissling, former president of Catholics for a Free Choice. Calling Hillary Clinton "not radical enough on abortion," Kissling praised Obama as the man who could complete "the social transformation that Roe began but did not solidify."

Joe Feuerherd, who once wrote for the National Catholic Reporter (a newspaper that supported Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004), is also helping to define Barack Obama in the eyes of Catholic voters. This past Sunday, Feuerherd published an op-ed in the Washington Post in defense of his vote for Barack Obama in the Maryland primary.

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... the exchange between Feuerherd and the USCCB brings to the surface the core of Obama's Catholic problem, and why Catholic voters are already sensing a disconnect with the charismatic young senator from Illinois. Feuerherd is all too aware that Obama, as Catholic League president Bill Donohue puts it, promotes a "culture of death."

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Feuerherd evidently does not want to go through the exercise of spinning the bishops' and Vatican's documents on the issue of voting for pro-abortion candidates and platforms. He saw that such efforts didn't work in the past two elections, where George W. Bush did surprisingly well with Catholic voters. Feuerherd's message seems to be: If the bishops are getting in the way of electing Obama, then "the bishops be damned."

It's doubtful that such a strategy to gain Catholic support would be successful. Catholics often disagree with their bishops, but they do not take kindly to expressions of outright disrespect.

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McCain is in fact vulnerable to Obama on both abortion and the war. If the Arizona senator wants to win in November, he must convince Catholic voters that he's not a lukewarm pro-lifer. A good running mate could help him significantly on that score.

On the issue of the Iraq, McCain must become conversant, if he isn't already, in Catholic Just War teaching so he can discuss the war and occupation in terms Catholics will understand.

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