ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, Oct. 11 2007

Giuliani could take a lesson in courage from Archbishop Burke
By Colleen Carroll Campbell

It's déjà vu all over again, as Yogi Berra would say: In the 2008 presidential
race, as in 2004, a leading Catholic candidate is struggling to reconcile his
staunch support for legalized abortion with Catholic teaching that abortion is
a grave moral evil. And St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke is facing intense
scrutiny for saying that such a candidate should not receive Communion.

The 2004 candidate was Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, whose
clumsy attempts to square altar-boy anecdotes with his 100 percent voting score
from the National Abortion Rights Action League helped him lose the Catholic
vote to President Bush. When Burke said Kerry should not present himself for
Communion, critics accused Burke of partisan motivations.

That criticism was debunked last week, when Burke said he would apply the same
principle to Republican Rudy Giuliani, who hopes to become his party's first
pro-choice nominee in 32 years. Writing recently in a prestigious Catholic
journal, Burke — one of the world's foremost experts in church law — reiterated
his support for the longstanding practice of denying Communion to Catholics who
publicly and persistently flout church teaching on serious matters.

Catholic theology regards few matters as more serious than the defense of
innocent human life from its beginning. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope
Benedict XVI, emphasized that point in a letter to Washington Cardinal Theodore
McCarrick during the 2004 Communion controversy. He wrote: "Not all moral
issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. . . . While the
church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise
discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be
permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to
capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among
Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with
regard to abortion and euthanasia."

Such clear teaching would seem to leave little room for Catholic politicians to
paint abortion-rights advocacy as consistent with their faith. But politicians
such as Giuliani — who frequently refers to theology courses he took during a
brief flirtation with the priesthood — typically respond by saying they
personally oppose abortion but can't impose their religious and personal
beliefs on others.

That claim raises more questions than it answers. The argument that respect for
the sanctity of innocent life constitutes a purely religious conviction with no
place in public policy would surprise the authors of our Declaration of
Independence, which describes the right to life as "unalienable" and
"self-evident." Similarly puzzling is the reluctance of pro-choice Catholic
politicians to impose their "personal beliefs" with regard to abortion, since
most show no such reticence on other issues.

The personally-opposed-but-publicly-supportive argument logically leads to one
of two conclusions: Either such politicians agree with the church and consider
abortion to be intrinsically evil but they lack the courage to act on their
convictions; or they disagree with the church but lack the integrity to
honestly proclaim their beliefs and accept the consequences that follow.

Giuliani's record suggests the latter. As the Village Voice has reported, his
newly declared abhorrence of abortion was unknown in his tenure as mayor of New
York, during which he repeatedly hosted celebrations at City Hall of the Roe v.
Wade ruling and received 100 percent ratings from NARAL for his rejection of
parental-consent measures and his support for taxpayer-funded and partial-birth
abortions.

Giuliani may not have the courage of his convictions, but Burke does. Catholics
concerned about the integrity of the faith and all voters concerned about truth
in political advertising should be grateful for that.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television host and St. Louis-based
fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is www.colleen-campbell.com.