04/16/2004: "More on pro-abortion Catholic politicians"

This time it's Colorado Attorney General Ken Salazar, who's running for the US Senate. According to the Rocky Mountain News, he takes exception to remarks made by Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput:

Attorney General Ken Salazar, the leading Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate and a former seminarian, said Thursday Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput went "beyond the line" by criticizing Catholic politicians who fail to follow church teaching in their public lives.

Salazar was responding to a column in this week's Denver Catholic Register, the archdiocesan newspaper, in which Chaput called the actions of such politicians "phony."

"Candidates who claim to be 'Catholic' but who publicly ignore Catholic teaching about the sanctity of human life are offering a dishonest public witness," Chaput said.

"They may try to look Catholic and sound Catholic, but unless they act Catholic in their public service and political choices, they're really a very different kind of creature.

"And real Catholics should vote accordingly."

In response, Salazar said, "The archbishop can have his point of view as leader of a church, but I think when the archbishop tries to influence the outcome of elections and get involved in government and directing voters, he's gone beyond the line of what should not be breached in our American democracy, where we believe fundamentally in the separation of church and state."

Salazar has obviously not been listening to the National Council of Churches lately, though of course its leadership is trying to influence elections and direct voters in the right (make that left) direction. His trotting out church-state separation, while entirely predictable, is faintly ridiculous. Essentially what he's saying is that the Christian faith should have nothing to say about public affairs, at least not when it runs counter to liberal ideological orthodoxy. Chaput says nothing about who Catholics should vote for, only that they should consider Catholic moral teaching and its public implications in voting. It's especially laughable to consider the reason why certain Catholic politicians say they're pro-abortion: because they "don't want to impose their morality on others." This despite the fact that they are perfectly willing to impose their morality on others when the subject isn't abortion.