Update: Tomasic takes another swing at Abp. Chaput, strikes out

In response to my post of last Friday, "John Tomasic tries to cast Abp. Chaput in a bad light," the author made a contribution to the comment thread:

You all misread. The original post-writer Tomasic (me) has nothing at all against anyone in the country freely speaking their mind, including Abp Chaput. I object not to speech but to showboating and the politics of Chaput and his pro-life pepsquad, who play into the hands of right-wing political power-seekers, who in their law-making care little for Catholic teaching -- that is, for alleviating the suffering of the sick and the poor and, as you say, especially the helpless. I encourage the Abp to continue to speak out and I encourage others to hold him to account when he does.

In fact, on that matter, I was wondering if Chaput would weigh in on the men held helpless in the U.S. prisons of the War on Terror, the men subjected to the insane abuses, including hundreds of waterboardings, outlined in the CIA torture memos released last week. Predictably, five days after release of the memos, there is nothing from Chaput and there is nothing on this Papist blog about the way the memos reveal the extent to which the culture of life held up by the Church had been violated intentionally and repeatedly by the Bush administration and its thug lawyers and operatives.

Where is Chaput calling for a letter-writing campaign for justice and protest in defense of the rights of the unconvicted prisoners of the CIA? It was the ACLU that sued for release of the memos and encouraged letter writing. Where was the outspoken Bishop? Where was the American papist?

Rather than chase after his red herring argument, I've attempted to refocus the debate:

Let's get to the heart of this disagreement right away. In 3 easy steps:

1) Abp. Chaput believes that abortion is the murder of an innocent, helpless human being. Science agrees - but we don't need to get into that now. For our purposes, Abp. Chaput genuinely believes abortion is murder.
2) There are millions of abortions each year. That means Abp. Chaput believes there are millions of human beings being murdered in the United States every year.
3) Because of 1 & 2, Abp. Chaput believes abortion is the No. 1 moral issue of our age. Because he does not have an infinite amount of time, as much as he sincerely cares about these other issues, he focuses on abortion in a special way when he speaks publicly.

Now do you understand Abp. Chaput's vocal condemning of abortion in this country? Even if you disagree with the science, even if you don't share his faith, can you at least see how Abp. Chaput is *not* "showboating" or "playing into the hands of right-wing political power-seekers" when he tries to prevent the further murder of millions of unborn human beings? He really believes this stuff.

If you can't see how Abp. Chaput's public speech is at least consistent with his internal beliefs, then there's nothing I can really talk to you about. You just don't get it, you don't get him, and you don't get what American Catholics are about in this debate.

As I said in my original post, you don't even try to grapple with what Abp. Chaput is saying. It's said that before one can critique an opponent's position, one must understand it. You haven't demonstrated even understanding what Abp. Chaput is saying. Well, he's been pretty clear about that, if you had bothered to listen.

Maybe my rejoinder lacked charity, but hopefully it contained some needed truth.

After all, it remains a common critique in the public square that whenever a bishop speaks out about the evil of abortion, it is said they are picking and choosing their issues. However, this criticism will always apply no matter what - there will always be some issue a bishop is unable to address, because he only has so many words and so much time. If, for instance, Abp. Chaput were to take up the issue of torture, the criticism could then be made that he has not spoken about the sex-slave trade.

Well, it's true Abp. Chaput has not weighed-in on every single moral issue confronting America today. But what he has spoken about forcefully, abortion, is very important - even the most important issue of our day and age. So let's debate that issue on its own merits.

Tomasic still hasn't tried to do that.