Pulpit Abuse
Question: A national Catholic paper reported that Vice President Al Gore was offered and took the pulpit during a Sunday Mass at the homily time on September 5 in Sacred Heart Church in Detroit. The Vice President's "speech" was preceded by a tiny "homily" (introduction?) by the pastor and we are told this timing was the only "miscue." Can this be serious?
Answer: Unfortunately, this is serious: both a serious violation of canon law and a serious violation of credibility against the stated teaching of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
First, the canon law is clear and explicit— the homily, which is part of the liturgy itself, is reserved to a bishop, a priest or a deacon (cn. 767, #l). Mr. Gore is not ordained to any of these offices nor is he a Catholic layman. Thus, this is clearly contrary to Church law.
Second, last November, the N.C.C.B. published a formal Statement "Living the Gospel of Life: A Challenge to American Catholics" (11/18/99) (for text. Origins 28:25 [12/3/99] pp. 429:431-437).
Among other things the Statement says bishops must "explain, persuade, correct and admonish those in leadership positions who contradict the Gospel of Life through their actions and policies" (n. 29, p. 435). Given this forceful and nuanced Statement of the Bishops, it is, to me, simply incomprehensible that any Catholic pastor would hand over the pulpit during Mass to the national pointman of pro-choice activities (Mr. Gore even supports the presidential veto of the partial-birth abortion ban!).
Whatever real or imagined qualities Vice President Gore might possess, his anti-life advocacy and abortion justifications are so egregious that I believe his status vis-a-vis the Catholic Church is unique. I know of no other American politician who was repudiated by name by the highest authorities in the Church.
My expertise is not political and I do not use this column to make political points. However, public policy statements and pro-abortion advocacy by the second highest elected official in the country are available to all in newspapers and popular publications national and international.
National. Let's look at the record. Mr. Albert Gore (a Democrat from Tennessee) began his political career in the House of Representatives as a consistent pro-lifer. Beginning in 1977, he voted against federal funding of abortion, even in cases that could result in "serious health damage" to the mother. He voted against abortion 84% of the time in his eight years in the U.S. House.
After his election to the U.S. Senate in 1984, Mr. Gore's star began to rise in his own Democratic party. But with that rise there arose another tension—what do you do with a pro-life record in a pro-choice party? This presents the Cuomo dilemma—in a contest between political ambition and pro-life principle, principle gets mugged and ambition wins hands down.
Thus, for eight years in the U.S. Senate, on 32 abortion-related measures, Mr. Gore voted pro-abortion 30 times. That's how you get ahead and stay ahead in a pro-choice party. Some (but not Mr. Gore) might try the porous rhetoric "I-am-personally-opposed-BUT." However, when you personally vote over and over for abortion, its funding and for no restrictions on it or of it, you are not personally opposed; indeed, you are personally voting for it over and over.
The Gore abortion record is a matter of record and in a trenchant article "Al Gore's Great Abortion Flip-Flop" by Matthew Rees in the Weekly Standard (10/18/99), Mr. Gore now denies half of his own Congressional record. Q. "Have you changed?" Ans. "No, not at all. I've had the same position from the very first days in Congress" (p. 28),
As is often the case with defenders of evil, killing the innocent makes liars out of its defenders. They don't want to call it what it is (they say "choice" not "killing the unborn") and they would prefer that no one examine or unpack their double-talk. This is not a new ploy but among the oldest! Not how accurately Pope John Paul II describes the first killing in the Bible: "Cain tries to cover up his crime with a lie. This was and still is the case, when all kinds of ideologies try to justify and disguise the most atrocious crimes against human beings" (Evangelium Vitae [3/25/95] n. 8; also nn. 11 and 58).
On January 22, 1997, Mr. Gore became the icon and national cheerleader for the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League promising that morose lobby that no one will ever take away their "right to choose": "On behalf of President Clinton, I vow to you here ...that we will never ever let anyone take that right away!"
Notice the religious fervor—he takes a "vow" to be the leading knight and field commander for N.A.R.A.L. Given his Congressional record, we can always pray that this is, at best, a temporary vow. But, there is a problem here with a man who does not tell the truth about his own record. His N.A.R.A.L. speech (1/22/97) was so strident and insulting to those of other views that Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles subsequently wrote to the Vice President that he was "offended" and "appalled" by this shocking speech.
Is this a single blind spot? Can we not admit that any politician can have an off day? Apparently not, because the national pointman for choice had gone international and on one well-reported occasion had gone head on against the Catholic Church universal.
Universal. Let us recall the Cairo population conference of 1994. In March of 1994, a State Department cable instructed U.S. embassies to tell their host governments: "the United States believes that access to safe, legal and voluntary abortion is a fundamental right of all women. ..." This is truly aggressive advocacy since abortion is a fundamental right nowhere outside of North America and this attempted to export ("impose") Roe v. Wade on the rest of the world. Later that spring, Mr. Gore, at the National Press Club, would deny that cablegram exists—however, copies of the offending cable do exist.
These most aggressive American advocacy positions were planted in the U.N. draft Program for Action in their best protective euphemisms. "Reproductive Health," "Reproductive Rights," and, "Family Planning" turned out to include abortion usually linked with "family planning" and "reproductive health services" making the point that abortion is a legitimate family planning method.
The columnist, John Leo, pointed out at the time that the Vatican challenged these "linguistic sinkholes" and rallied 20 to 30 nations to resist. The Clinton administration, in the person of Mr. Gore, backed down in part and abortion was gone from the draft.
Six days before the Cairo Conference, page one of the New York Times carried this headline: "Vatican Says Gore Is Misrepresenting Population Talks" (NYT [9/1/941 p. A-1). Dr. J. Navarro-Valls, the Pope's chief spokesman, singled out the United States as the principal sponsor of pro-abortion policies and for the first time pointedly attacked a high American official by name. "Mr. Al Gore, Vice President of the U.S.A. and a member of the American delegation, recently stated that 'the United States has not sought, does not seek and will not seek to establish an international right to abortion.'" Mr. Navarro-Valls also said, "The draft population document, which has the United States as its principal sponsor, contradicts, in reality, Mr. Gore's statement" (NYT [9/1/94] p. A-8).
That the highest levels in the Catholic Church had to call the second highest elected official in our country a liar was to me, as an American Catholic, both embarrassing and appalling. I simply cannot recall another instance where the Vatican did such a thing by name and in public. Almost always Vatican agencies use polite, diplomatic terminology and indirect discourse. This was so direct and specific that I was ashamed of my own country.
Perhaps this 1994 dissembling was a warm-up or trial run for Mr. Gore's abortion "flip-flop" so carefully detailed in the Weekly Standard (10/18/99) above. In any case, I do believe it puts him in a category by himself.
Thus, for national, international and canonical reasons, I find it personally unbelievable and scandalous that any Catholic pastor would offer a pulpit, during the Sacred Liturgy, to any politician, but especially to one who uses so many other platforms to oppose and contradict (even belittle) Catholic teaching and Catholic practice. That makes no moral sense; indeed, it is immoral nonsense of a unique kind.
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