Governor Sebelius’ Veto Prompts Pastoral Action by Catholic Archbishop
In his column, Governor’s Veto Prompts Pastoral Action, in today’s The Leaven newspaper, Kansas City, KS Archbishop Joseph Naumann challenged Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius to be part of the Culture of Life.
In part, the Archbishop said:
I learned that Governor Kathleen Sebelius had vetoed the Comprehensive Abortion Reform Act (HS SB 389), which had been passed by significant majorities in both chambers of the Kansas Legislature. Last week, an attempt to override the governor’s veto failed in the Senate by two votes.
Governor Sebelius in her veto message claimed: “For years, the people of Kansas have asked their elected officials to move beyond legislative debates on issues like abortion.” From her veto message, I received the impression the governor considered it a waste of the Legislature’s time to pass a statute that attempts to protect some women by making certain they have the opportunity to be well-informed: 1) about the development of their unborn child; and 2) about abortion alternatives available to them. Evidently, the governor does not approve of legislators devoting energy to protecting children and women by making it possible to enforce existing Kansas laws regulating late-term abortions.
The governor’s veto message demonstrated a lack of respect to the members of the Kansas General Assembly who had carefully crafted and resoundingly passed the Comprehensive Abortion Reform Act, as well as to the many Kansans who find it more than an embarrassment, in no small part due to several previous vetoes by Governor Sebelius of earlier legislative efforts to regulate abortion clinics, that Kansas has become infamous for being the late-term abortion center for the Midwest.
The next statement by the Archbishop is not quite accurate:
What makes the governor’s rhetoric and actions even more troubling has been her acceptance of campaign contributions from Wichita’s Dr. George Tiller, perhaps the most notorious late-term abortionist in the nation. In addition to Dr. Tiller’s direct donations to her campaign, the governor has benefited from the Political Action Committees funded by Dr. Tiller to support pro-abortion candidates in Kansas.
There have been no “direct donations to [Sebelius’ gubernatorial] campaign” from Dr. Tiller, but Tiller, his wife, and clinic had given to Sebelius from 1994-2001 in her campaigns before running for governor, and Tiller and his clinic gave to Sebelius’ Blue Stem PAC from 2000-2002. See Tiller’s Governor web page for details.
Gov. Sebelius has benefited indirectly from Dr. Tiller’s donations, including a $100,000 contribution from Tiller’s clinic to the Democratic Governor’s Association.
While there is no evidence that Dr. Tiller gave directly to Sebelius’ gubernatorial campaigns, he did send a fundraising letter from his ProKanDo PAC (see below) in which he admits personally donating $200,000 to ProKanDo, and making an appeal to raise $250,000 prior to the 2002 elections to oppose “the anti-choice position of Mr. Shallenburger,” who was Sebelius’s opponent in 2002. While Tiller’s appeal in 2002 was to raise money to oppose Shallenburger in support of Sebelius, campaign contribution records show ProKanDo spent this money to oppose Phill Kline for Attorney General instead. Tiller’s ProKanDo PAC went out of his way to conceal its money in the 2002 campaign.
The Archbishop concluded his article with this request:
I have not made lightly this request of Governor Sebelius, but only after much prayer and reflection. The spiritually lethal message, communicated by our governor, as well as many other high profile Catholics in public life, has been in effect: “The church’s teaching on abortion is optional!”
I reissue my request of the faithful of the archdiocese to pray for Governor Sebelius. I hope that my request of the governor, not to present herself for holy Communion, will provoke her to reconsider the serious spiritual and moral consequences of her past and present actions. At the same time, I pray this pastoral action on my part will help alert other Catholics to the moral gravity of participating in and/or cooperating with the performance of abortions.
Update (May 23): Archbishop Naumann addresses questions that earlier column raised.
While there is no evidence of direct Tiller contributions to Sebelius as governor (there are many indirect connections), Tiller did write this fundraising letter in 2002 in his attempt to raise $250,000 in support of Sebelius:
Related:
- Political state of grace, Washington Times, June 2, 2008.
- Sebelius urged to refrain from Communion, Topeka Capital-Journal, May 9, 2008
- Dr. Tiller declares infants born alive as “just sloppy medicine” yet Gov. Sebelius vetoes late term abortion restrictions in Kansas?, Kansas Meadowlark, Apr 22, 2008
- Archbishop criticized Sebelius in editorial, Lawrence Journal-World, Sept 14, 2006
- “The Silent and Suffering Church in Kansas” (late Archbishop Strecker’s rebuke of State Rep Kathleen Sebelius), The Leaven, March 27, 1992
- “Killing fetus not crime, court rules” (and State Rep. Sebelius blocks new laws), Wichita Eagle, Oct 28, 1989.
- Obama receives Sebelius’ endorsement, Lawrence Journal-World, Jan 29, 2008
- Catholic Dissidents Advise Obama, Catholic League, May 2, 2008
- Thoughts on “Roman Catholics for Obama ‘08 by Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput
Tags: Archbishop Joseph Naumann, Catholic Church, George Tiller, Kathleen Sebelius, ProKanDo PAC
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:11 am
If more Americans would read works like Michelle Goldberg’s Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, the longevity of our democracy, as we know it, would be more assured. I say this because the more people who understand the thinking and agenda of the growing forces of “Christian nationalism,” the less likely it will be that these forces will succeed. Not many people want to go where Christian nationalists want to take the country.
Michelle Goldberg, a journalist who writes for Salon, defines Christian nationalism as the “Christian worldview” that envisions Christianity governing “every aspect of public and private life, and [holds] that all — government, science, history, culture, and relationships — must be understood according to the dictates of scripture.” Christian nationalists have “biblically correct positions on every issue, from gay marriage to income tax rates.”
These believers are also known as dominionists. Dominionism is a theology drawn from God’s instruction to Adam in Genesis (1:26-27) to take dominion over the animate and inanimate world. As Goldberg explains, “dominionism is derived from a theocratic sect called Christian Reconstructionism, which advocates replacing American civil law with Old Testament biblical law.”
May 23rd, 2008 at 7:00 pm
We have infanticide in Kansas and too many look the other way. You don’t need to be Christian to be horrified at what is happening in Kansas. Don’t secular humanists feel pain when they see other humans suffer?
I once heard a former abortionist describe the procedure for aborting an unborn child that was more than 12 weeks old. The special tool needed past 12 weeks, and his description of crushing the child’s skull was horrifying, and nearly everyone in the room was crying. We are losing our humanity if our “choice” is to ignore such brutality on the weakest among us.
The Archbishop was encouraging Gov. Sebelius to respect life from conception to natural death. How do you stretch that to a warning about “Christian Nationalism” and “Dominionism”? How does a Culture of Death help society?
May 30th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Compassionate conservatism began with some questions: Is it possible to apply conservative and free-market ideas — school vouchers, the promotion of community and faith-based institutions, the encouragement of wealth-building and social mobility — to the task of helping marginalized Americans? In the wake of liberal failures, do conservatives offer any hope to addicts and the homeless, to disadvantaged children in need of mentors and adequate education, to people living among the broken glass of durable poverty?
This project found conservative champions: Jack Kemp, Dan Coats, Steve Goldsmith, George W. Bush.
But compassionate conservatism has come under criticism for a variety of reasons. For some, it is fundamentally at odds with fiscal conservatism — no social priority is deemed more urgent than balancing the budget. For others, it is a violation of their vision of limited government — the state’s only valid purpose is to uphold markets and protect individual liberty. But by drawing these limits so narrowly, such critics would relegate conservatism to the realm of rejected ideologies: untainted, uncomplicated and ignored. And by leaving great social needs unmet, they would grant liberalism an open field and invite genuine statism.
Now comes another charge — that compassionate conservatism is actually opposed by the Bible. “Common sense and the Scriptures,” argues Sen. Tom Coburn, “show that true giving and compassion require sacrifice by the giver. This is why Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell his possessions, not his neighbor’s possessions. Spending other people’s money is not compassionate.”
It is not my purpose to pick on the senator from Oklahoma; he is a man of principle. And he is merely restating a fairly common view: that compassion is a private virtue, not a public one, and that religious conscience concerns the former and not the latter.
But this is a theological assertion, not a political one. And as theology, it is flawed.
It is true that Jesus was not a political activist; he joined no party and issued no Contract With the Roman Empire. But it is a stretch to interpret his personal challenge to the rich young ruler as a biblical foundation for libertarianism.
The Jewish tradition in which Jesus lived and taught demanded that just rulers make a minimal provision for the poor, including no-interest loans and the distribution of agricultural commodities. (Look it up: Exodus 22:25-27 and Deuteronomy 24:19-21.) The apostle Paul held a high view of government’s role in promoting justice and urged the willing payment of taxes — a biblical demand more severe, for some of us, than all those sexual prohibitions. And Jesus’s followers, fanning out along Roman roads, eventually expressed strong views on slavery, infanticide and the debasement of women — political views that followed naturally from their belief in a radical equality before God.
The great evangelical reformers of the 18th and 19th centuries — from John Wesley to William Wilberforce to Lord Shaftesbury — certainly believed that the teachings of Jesus had implications for enslaved Africans and children toiling in mills. Shaftesbury, a lifelong Tory, focused in Parliament on the plight of the mentally ill, on young chimney sweeps who often died of testicular cancer, on the 30,000 homeless children of Dickensian London. One biographer wrote of Shaftesbury: “No man has in fact ever done more to lessen the extent of human misery or to add to the sum total of human happiness.”
This, one assumes, is a historical judgment a conservative politician would covet.
The argument that government is often a flawed instrument to improve social conditions has merit. There are limits to take-a-number-and-wait bureaucratic compassion — and tremendous advantages to the commitment and sacrificial love of volunteers. Which is precisely why compassionate conservatism looks first to the expansion of private, community responses to poverty and need.
But the scale of these needs is sometimes overwhelming. Private compassion cannot replace Medicaid or provide AIDS drugs to millions of people in Africa for the rest of their lives. In these cases, a role for government is necessary and compassionate — the expression of conservative commitments to the general welfare and the value of every human life.
For millennia, artists, thinkers and politicians have shaped their image of Jesus, often into a mirror image of themselves. But the goal of Christianity is to allow Him to shape us, not the other way around. And just as Jesus the leftist revolutionary is a distortion, so is Jesus the libertarian.
June 1st, 2008 at 11:59 pm
sasnak: Thank you for your comments, but why are you using a tax-payer funded .edu E-mail account from a state institution for such political postings?
What does anything you say about “compassionate conservatism” have to do with infanticide in Kansas? Are you saying Jesus would say infanticide is “OK”?