Catholics shunned at Obama Inauguration

Here in DC it seems that everyone and his brother is coming into town for the Inauguration of Barack Obama.

Well, actually, scratch that. It seems that Catholic clergy aren't being invited to the official events:

Steven Waldman of Beliefnet.com notes that Catholic clergy are conspicuously absent from Barack Obama’s selection of religious leaders invited to participate in his inauguration.

.... While all four of Obama’s picks are Protestants — albeit ones with highly disparate doctrinal outlooks — Beliefnet’s Waldman points out that before 1990 it was routine to include a Catholic representative among clerical inauguration invitees.

.... 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. (Tom McFeely at National Catholic Register)

Considering how null Obama's personal outreach was to Catholics during his campaign, I'm not surprised we're not being invited to the table now. Our commitment to protecting unborn life would be an awkward sign of contradiction at the festivities, and a reminder that going ahead into the future, there are still issues that deeply (and tragically) divide us.