Denver’s Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles J. Chaput says he is “tired of people telling religious folks to be quiet in the public square because of constitutional questions of separation of church and state.”
And it looks as though the Democratic Party might be tired of hearing from Chaput. Despite being the leader of Colorado’s largest religious denomination, Chaput will not be among the religious leaders praying or speaking this week at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
He told The Washington Times that he is not taking the omission personally, yet on Monday he issued a statement chiding House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her comments about the Church’s position on abortion during her interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
When asked about when human life begins, Pelosi stated, “As an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time, and what I know is over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition…. St. Augustine said at three months. We don’t know.”
In his letter, Chaput called Pelosi a “gifted public servant of strong convictions and many professional skills. Regrettably, knowledge of Catholic history and teaching does not seem to be one of them.”
Chaput went on to say that the “Christian tradition overwhelmingly held that abortion was grievously evil…Today’s religious alibis for abortion and a so-called ‘right to choose’ are nothing more than that — alibis that break radically with historic Christian and Catholic belief.”
The archbishop is author of Render Unto Caesar: Serving the National by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life. In the new book, he urges Catholics to not “buy into the notion that people should shelve their faith when they enter the public square,” he told the Times.
Chaput has even gone so far as to suggest that since majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices are Catholics, abortion should be restricted by now.
“You’d think that on issues like abortion, the country would be standing in a different place than it does,” he told the Times.
Chaput’s take on the separation of church and state: “The duty of the Church and other religious communities is moral witness. The duty of the state and its officials is to serve the common good, which is always rooted in moral truth. A proper understanding of the ‘separation of Church and state’ does not imply a separation of faith from political life.”
I think the archbishop is missing the point. Faith may not have to stay out of political life, but it definitely must stay out of official government decisions. Besides, whose “moral truth” are we going to follow, only Chaput’s?
This is not a country of one faith. This is a country of many diverse faiths and people with no faith at all who believe in a variety of different morals and values.
In fact, even many Catholics worldwide support the right of all women to follow their consciences when deciding about abortion, according to the Catholics for Choice Web site. “Catholic support for legal abortion is grounded in core principles of Catholic theology, which respect the moral agency of all women,” the site concludes.
Thankfully, Chaput probably won’t even be able to convince his own flock to accept his views, let alone the entire country. A recent poll by Catholics for Choice found that “seven in ten (70%) of those polled say that the views of Catholic bishops are unimportant to them in deciding for whom to vote and a similarly large proportion (73%) says they believe Catholic politicians are under no religious obligation to vote on issues the way the bishops recommend.”
It’s good to see most Catholics are on board in their understanding of separation of church and state. Just because Chaput’s interpretation of his faith is anti-choice does not mean Pelosi or any other public official should base national policies on Chaput’s religious beliefs or anyone else’s.
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