WASHINGTON, D.C., November 15, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com)—The National Catholic Register has taken a hard look at partisan efforts by Catholics — including professors at Catholic colleges — to downplay Catholic teachings and excuse candidates’ support for abortion rights and same-sex “marriage.”
One of these is Stephen Schneck, head of the Institute for Catholic Policy Studies at The Catholic University of America. Schneck was co-chair of Catholics for Obama and serves on the board of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, a group dedicated to Catholic social justice teachings but from a decidedly Democratic slant. In the past, he has called for bishops and Catholic college administrators to “be happy about” the administration’s alleged efforts on compromise regarding the HHS mandate. He insulted Archbishop William Lori and criticized the Knights of Columbus for their aggressive defense of religious freedom, defended Georgetown University’s selection of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for graduation speaker, accused Republican presidential candidates of promoting “racial division,” and publicly challenged House Speaker John Boehner when he spoke at CUA after defending the University of Notre Dame’s honors to President Barack Obama.
In an address in a panel at the Democratic National Convention, Schneck said that, if the Romney-Ryan ticket had been elected, it would have caused abortion numbers to go up significantly. He claimed that the Ryan budget plan would have cut Medicaid spending by 40 percent and that would have driven women to seek abortions. As he put it: “The most powerful abortifacient in America is poverty.”
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But Schneck and others have weak evidence for their claims and failed to take into account the Romney-Ryan plan to increase the number of jobs in the country, which would presumably enable women to have their own medical insurance. Nor did Schneck acknowledge the stridently pro-abortion Democratic Party platform. It seems difficult to believe that a political party as dedicated to abortion as the Democratic one is would have a serious commitment to reducing the number of abortions in this country.
This article originally appeared on Campus Notes, the blog of the Cardinal Newman Society, and is reprinted with permission.