Indeed, the story of this piece of legislation epitomizes the Catholic Right's peculiar priorities when it comes to "life" issues.

I ask you -- has anyone seen the Catholic League's Bill Donohue snarling about how children may suffer or even die without the extended medical coverage S-CHIP would provide?  Perhaps Heritage Foundation adjunct scholar was too busy pestering the Miller Brewing Company over its sponsorship of a gay street fair.  

And where was Archbishop Raymond Burke during all this? Threatening to deny Communion to those Catholic members of Congress who vote against S-CHIP?  No, I think we would have heard about that.  

What about Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life?  Did anyone hear of him challenging the president over his veto of the legislation?  Funny, there is no mention of the issue on his web site either.

Don't hold your breath waiting for the infamous theoconsevative trio of Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak or George Weigel to speak out for passage of the S-CHIP legislation. After all, that would conflict with Novak's peculiar spirit of democratic capitalism, the one of every man for himself. There will be no "Father Richard" --the figure George W. Bush often turns to on "issue of faith,"--helping the President  "articulate" support for the legislation. [not sure what you intend by this sentence] And there want be any accusations by Mr. Weigel that only a nihilistic society would deny healthcare to children.

One Catholic organization that has not held it tongue is  Catholics United. On October 11, 2007 the group a press release that targeted the hypocrisy of ten "pro-life" members of Congress who voted against extending SHIP, and  announced it "will launch a radio advertising campaign" to point this out to their constituents.  

What separates S-CHIP supporters such as Catholics United from the embarrassingly silent Catholic Right is that the former holds to a more enlightened form of faith and the latter does not. Enlightened faith, as Garry Wills tells us, is based on benevolence. It is compassion not in the abstract but in the actual. It is the balancing the head with the heart in order to make less painful the all-too-short time we inhabit this world.

But many of the strangely silent Catholic Right are not as much concerned with benevolence as much as vindictiveness. This was on display over the past two weeks as the Right Wing punditry attacked two children who put human faces on the success of the S-CHIP program. The same Catholic Rightists that were AWOL on  S-CHIP -- also failed to condemn these outrageous attacks by Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin and others.   For them it is as if faith is a concept to be used to strengthen the temporal authority of those who weild economic and political power rather than what Jesus taught and Pope John Paul II termed the church's "preferential option for the poor."   (That is an option the Catholic Right seems never to take.) What a sad statement on their constricted, self-serving view of faith.

The writer Albert Camus once remarked that we could not make a world where children no longer suffer, but we could create one where fewer children do. Apparently the Catholic Right defines children only as unborn. Only embryos and fetuses need apply for their help. The children who must survive in this world, are on their own.  After all, what good are the children of the poor to the rightwing foundations and Bush administration? For such men as these, faith is a political currency while children are but a line item in a budget they need to trim to finance unnecessary wars and tax cuts for the rich. No matter that their notions of faith do harm to the common good. Even the common good of children. No matter at all.

The Catholic Right: A Series, by Frank L. Cocozzelli :

Part One  Part Two  Part Three  Part Four  Part Five  Part Six   Intermezzo   Part Eight   Part Nine  Part Ten   Part Eleven   Part Twelve   Part Thirteen   Part Fourteen   Second Intermezzo   Part Sixteen   Part Seventeen   Part Eighteen   Part Eighteen   Part Nineteen   Part Twenty   Part Twenty-one   Part Twenty-two   Part Twenty-three   Part Twenty-four   Part Twenty-five   Part Twenty-six   Part Twenty-seven   Part Twenty-eight   Part Twenty-nine   Part Thirty   Part Thirty-one   Part Thirty-two   Part Thirty-three   Part Thirty-four   Part Thirty-five   Part Thirty-six   Part Thirty-seven   Part Thirty-eight   Part Thirty-nine   Part Forty   Part Forty-one