Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput has accused British Catholic paper, The Tablet, of displaying "unhelpful and badly informed opinions" on American domestic issues and misrepresenting Catholic teaching on abortion..
In an article on the Denver diocese website Archbishop Chaput criticizes the "British Catholic journal" for its uncritical praise of Barack Obama's health care proposals in a recent editorial that, he says, sounded as if it was written by the president's "acolytes", the Daily Telegraph reports.
"Last week a British Catholic journal, in an editorial titled 'U.S. bishops must back Obama,' claimed that America's bishops 'have so far concentrated on a specifically Catholic issue-making sure state-funded health care does not include abortion-rather than the more general principle of the common good,'" Archbishop Chaput wrote.
The paper "went on to say that if U.S. Catholic leaders would get over their parochial preoccupations, 'they could play a central role in salvaging Mr. Obama's health-care programme.'
"The editorial has value for several reasons," Archbishop Chaput wrote ironically.
"First, it proves once again that people don't need to actually live in the United States to have unhelpful and badly informed opinions about our domestic issues.
"Second, some of the same pious voices that once criticized U.S. Catholics for supporting a previous president now sound very much like acolytes of a new president.
"Third, abortion is not, and has never been, a 'specifically Catholic issue,' and the editors know it. And fourth, the growing misuse of Catholic 'common ground' and 'common good' language in the current health-care debate can only stem from one of two sources: ignorance or cynicism.
"No system that allows or helps fund-no matter how subtly or indirectly-the killing of unborn children, or discrimination against the elderly and persons with special needs, can bill itself as 'common ground.' Doing so is a lie," Chaput said
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Archbishop Chaput accuses The Tablet of distorting Catholic teaching on abortion (Daily Telegraph)
Health care and the common good (Archdiocese of Denver)
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The Tablet