Catholic Clergy Absent at Inauguration

We suspect Obama’s omission of a Catholic participant was a whole lot more intentional than that. This year’s Democratic National Convention in Denver also notably excluded an invitation to Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, unlike invitations extended at previous conventions to bishops such as Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles at the DNC in 2000 held in that city.

Why the contemporary reluctance among Democrats to grant Catholic bishops a voice at functions they have organized? Perhaps it’s because they fear that virtually any Catholic bishop they invite will call the nation’s attention to the Democratic Party’s failure to respect the sanctity of life of the unborn, because of the party’s formal commitment to the promotion of abortion rights.

In fact, that’s exactly what Cardinal Mahony did by raising the issue of abortion in both the homily and the invocation that he delivered to the Democrats who assembled in his city in 2000. “O God, we trust that you will keep us ever committed to protect the life and well-being of all people but especially unborn children, the sick and the elderly, those on skid row and those on death row,” Cardinal Mahoney prayed in the invocation.

The U.S. bishops have become even more forceful in the intervening eight years in speaking out about the moral obligation of every American in public life to defend the lives of the unborn. And they specifically called Obama to account on this issue following his election, with their Nov. 12 statement decrying the anti-life Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) that Obama has promised to sign into law as president.

So it’s only reasonable to speculate that Barack Obama — who by general consensus is the most extreme pro-abortion candidate ever elected to the White House — is not eager to afford one of the Church’s American shepherds another high-profile opportunity to remind him that this obligation to respect the sanctity of the lives of unborn Americans applies very specifically to all of Obama’s actions during his upcoming presidency.

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