'Catholic' Astroturf in Action

“Catholic groups protest SBA List tour.”

That was the headline I read in this morning’s DC-insider publication Politico. I about spit out my coffee.

SBA List (Susan B. Anthony List), you see, is an effective, energetic pro-life organization with almost 300,000 members nationwide (full disclosure: I collaborate with them, because I respect their mission).

The “Catholic groups” protesting SBA’s latest pro-life tour, in sharp contrast, are Catholics United and Pax Christi USA. As I’ve written many times before, Catholics United is a fake “astroturf” organization. Basically the group is Chris Korzen (a long-time Democrat operative who worked the John Kerry campaign) and his buddy James Salt (who, surprise-surprise, has worked for Pax Christi and arch pro-abort Kathleen Sebelius), and lots of undisclosed high-dollar donor backing. 

Catholics United recently promised to spend half a million dollars (who knows how much will actually materialize) defending Catholic Democrats who voted for Obamacare (the same Democrats that SBA List has targeted as ripe for retirement because of their vote on this unpopular, anti-life legislation).

Catholics United has been trying to organize counter-protests along SBA List’s tour, and judging by camera stills from local TV reports, they’ve been very successful … at convincing Ozzy Osbourne and his friends to show up.

The original Politico article features a quote from Dave Robinson, executive director of Pax Christi USA:

“The Susan B. Anthony List is little more than a partisan front group, which uses issues like abortion to confuse voters and to score cheap political points.”

Poor Dave, you see, is caught in a personal time-warp where abortion is simply one among many issues. His organization has published pamphlets entitled “Life Does Not End at Birth” and explained his political mantra to CNS in 2004:

“The Catholic vote cannot be swayed or obtained by pandering to one solitary issue of our faith’s social and moral doctrine.”

We’ve heard that argument before from, well, partisan folks (like Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden) who, just like Catholics United, use the Church’s social teaching to “confuse voters and score cheap political points.” (Remember what I’ve written before, that those who are practiced in the art of deception will often claim the other side is guilty of the very thing they are doing?)

We should not lose sight of the fact that the US Bishops have firmly ruled Robinson’s position out, in their document Faithful Citizenship:

 42. As Catholics we are not single-issue voters. A candidate's position on a single issue is not sufficient to guarantee a voter's support. Yet a candidate's position on a single issue that involves an intrinsic evil, such as support for legal abortion or the promotion of racism, may legitimately lead a voter to disqualify a candidate from receiving support.

I do not think Faithful Citizenship is a perfect document, but it certainly a more perfect representation of how to use Catholic principles to form a Catholic conscience than Dave Robinson’s cop out.

So let’s recap: a few familiar figures in the Catholyc Astroturf scene use their connections to get op-eds in the Washington Post and stories in Politico, trotting-out the same tired arguments which have been ruled-out by the US bishops definitively, in the hope of confusing uninformed Catholics and lending cover to Catholic politicians who refuse to put their Catholic principles in action.

Meanwhile, a grassroots organization of almost 300,000 Americans, operating with the same prudential conclusion as the US bishops about what the health care legislation actually does, undertakes a nationwide tour to educate Americans about the issues and hold all politicians (not just Catholic ones) accountable for their anti-life votes, while photo-documenting the whole thing – because they are proud of what they do and have no interest in hiding behind a media-created image.

Final argument…

SBA List rally:

Catholics United rally:

Which rally looks like a Catholic rally? Which movement looks like it has a future?

Tags: abortion, catholics united, catholycs, obamacare

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true dat to the last argument. pro-life people have kids; pro-abortion people don’t. and then they wonder why there are so many of us young people at the national walk for life.

Is that Ozzy Osbourne in the background at Catholics Unitied?

Kyle, I believe the “may” is there because, unfortunately, one may not have a choice of a pro-life candidate to vote for. Therefore, one ought to vote for the one whose position is most favorable to life. If the word “shall” were placed there, one could interpret that as meaning that both candidates are automatically eliminated.