Interesting developments today in the world of Catholic morality.  For some time, a theologian who I have heard mentioned a few times, Doug Kmiec, has been working on mental gymnastics to somehow come out with the notion that it is possible to maintain one’s Communion with the Catholic Church while at the same time supporting the Obamessiah for President.  Of course, the Catholic blogosphere, largely inhabited by orthodox, faithful Catholics (as opposed to “progressive” or more accurately heterodox Catholics, or even more accurately, “protestants”) has kept my heart from being too troubled on the matter, since their response has been uniformly critical of Kmiec’s position.  However, now there’s a website…prolifeproobama.com, with Kmiec as the poster boy for a staunchly pro-life Catholic who has come up with a rationalization for being pro-Obama.  Now Kmiec runs a serious risk to his eternal destiny here, because it’s one thing to choose a morally bankrupt position for yourself, but there’s something about millstones involving people who willingly convince others to choose the same morally bankrupt position.

Basically, Kmiec’s thesis is that Obama will do more to reduce abortion than McCain will, presumably by eliminating poverty and providing free health care (not to mention providing large amounts of free contraception, which is an entirely additional problem with Kmiec’s argument).  Something along the lines of, if you take away peoples’ “need” to abort, they won’t do it.  Of course this is fallacious…the democrat party has actually removed wording relating to making abortion rare (because to do so, they would be admitting there was a reason to make it rare, like maybe it had negative effects on people or something.)

Proving that satire is a great way to combat such insanity, the Curt Jester has written a great piece on why a good, moral person could support Stephen Douglas for President in 1860.  An excerpt…then you can go read the rest of it here:

Though Senator Douglas does not regard a slaveholding society as one whit inferior to a free society I think he is the best choice to reduce slavery. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 proves that he is pro-choice on the issue of slavery since the act allowed these new states coming into the union to make up their own mind as to whether slavery should be allowed in their territory. He lets the people in the state decide as to whether slavery is moral or immoral. Surely this will limit slavery and as we work for a more just society more and more slaveowners will decide to reduce the number of slaves they own. Just because Sen. Douglas has invoked racist rhetoric and accused Lincoln of supporting black equality which he believes the authors of the Declaration of Independence did not intend, does not mean that he is pro-slavery. Even supporters of slavery can be conflicted about slavery and whether blacks are equal to us or not and we should move to a society where slavery is safe, legal, and rare. Plus it is not true to call him pro-slavery. He is for the choice of slavery and people can decide on their own whether they want to become slaveowners or not. Shouldn’t we let people make their own choices on this issue? Do we really want to legislate morality? Now as a Catholic I personally believe that slavery is wrong, but lawmakers need to represent the people.