Archbishop Chaput Again: Health Care Reform That Funds Abortion Is Not Common Ground

Archbishop Chaput agrees with me again:

Denver, Colo., Aug 24, 2009 / 02:08 pm (CNA).- "Common ground" is a phrase the President Obama and some of his supporters have been using to describe their efforts to work for health care reform. But Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver is taking them to task for abusing the Catholic concept, calling any labeling of the current reform proposals as common ground "a lie."

In his weekly column for the Denver Catholic Register—to be published online this afternoon—Archbishop Chaput tackles the health care debate by recalling an editorial in the British Catholic newspaper The Tablet that insisted the U.S. bishops must back Obama's reform effort.

The editorial also claims that America’s bishops "have so far concentrated on a specifically Catholic issue – making sure state-funded health care does not include abortion – rather than the more general principle of the common good."

This diatribe against the bishops raises some interesting observations, says Chaput.

"First, it proves once again that people don’t need to actually live in the United States to have unhelpful and badly informed opinions about our domestic issues. Second, some of the same pious voices that once criticized U.S. Catholics for supporting a previous president now sound very much like acolytes of a new president. Third, abortion is not, and has never been, a 'specifically Catholic issue,' and the editors know it. And fourth, the growing misuse of Catholic 'common ground' and 'common good' language in the current health-care debate can only stem from one of two sources: ignorance or cynicism."

"No system that allows or helps fund – no matter how subtly or indirectly -- the killing of unborn children, or discrimination against the elderly and persons with special needs, can bill itself as 'common ground,' Archbishop Chaput insists, adding that, "Doing so is a lie."

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Archbishop Chaput's full column can be read at: http://www.archden.org/index.cfm/ID/2420.

(emphasis added)


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
U.K. Catholic Rag Admonishes U.S. Bishops: Back Barack on Health Care, Stop Getting "Distracted" by Abortion

Archbishop Chaput: ‘Common Ground’ Claim Will Be Tested by Details of Health Care Reform

"Common Ground" on Abortion

No Common Ground to be Found