7/15/2004
"It’s the Babies, Stupid”: A lecture by pro-life activist Joseph Starrs
Edited by D.G. Judy
Among the issues surrounding the 2004 election is the relationship between politicians’ religious beliefs and their policies. In particular, some members of the Roman Catholic Church have drawn attention to Catholic politicians’ stances on abortion. Increasingly, the discussion centers on Senator John Kerry, the first Catholic presidential nominee since John F. Kennedy.
One of the most strident voices in this discussion belongs to Joseph Starrs, a Catholic pro-life activist. Starrs directs the Crusade to Save Our Catholic Church (Crusade), a project of the American Life League (ALL). A northern Virginia resident and father of five children, Starrs was raised by missionary parents on a Navajo reservation in Arizona. He studied theology and journalism at Franciscan University and worked for over a decade for Paul Weyrich’s Free Congress Foundation.
Starrs spoke to The Rutherford Institute’s summer legal interns on June 11, 2004, about the work of Crusade and other projects of ALL. The following comments were excerpted from his lecture.
Our overall goal is absolutely to save babies. If Catholics, Christians, and Jews acted in the manner as prescribed by their faith—followed the Ten Commandments’ “Thou shall not kill”—then we could overturn the laws of the land that have led us to this. A friend of mine at work always says, “It’s the babies, stupid. It’s the babies, stupid.” That’s what it’s about. And it’s about the eternal salvation of these people. People say, “Well, you’re politicizing religion. You’re politicizing the Holy Eucharist.” No, we’re not. We’re trying to save the babies, and we’re trying to get these politicians to end up in a good place.
This is a civil rights issue. It’s not a Catholic issue. It’s fundamentally a civil rights issue. Without that first right to life, you don’t have any other rights. That’s how I deflect one of the common arguments, “You’re crossing the line; you’re imposing Catholic doctrine.” But all of us, whatever our religion, have to stand up for civil rights. If you don’t stand up for the first civil right, forget about it. But there’s something called the “seamless garment” argument a lot of liberal Catholics like to make—that abortion is just one of many issues, that you’ve got to be concerned about fair housing, you’ve got to be concerned about poverty, you’ve got to be concerned about the death penalty, and, oh yeah, abortion is up there, but it’s equal. Our contention is that this is a dangerous philosophy. A lot of people have bought it, but it’s not true.
We like to say—and it’s the motto of the American Life League—that we are pro-life without exception, without apology, without compromise. That’s our 100% commitment to the sanctity of human life, from the moment of fertilization until natural death.
The Crusade for the Defense of Our Catholic Church is not Catholic in the sense of our trying to preach Catholic dogma. Our focus is very simple. We are trying to get the Catholic bishops in the United States to do something about the problem of pro-abortion Catholic politicians. It is our belief that much of the damage done by the culture of death, much of the legislation that has been passed, much of the garbage that has affected our society has happened because Catholic politicians have not acted like Catholic politicians and have voted, promoted and defended abortion-on-demand. So the goal of the Crusade is three-fold: to identify who the pro-abortion Catholic politicians are and, more importantly, to get the bishops in their respective dioceses to do something about them—about the politicians like the Ted Kennedys, John Kerrys, Nancy Pelosis and, yes, the Republicans like Senator Susan Collins of Maine. In the United States Congress right now, there are about 70 members of Congress who call themselves Catholic but who also call themselves “pro-choice.” The third leg of what we are trying to do is simply to promote what John Paul II called the “gospel of life” in every facet of society. We have the politicians, we have the bishops, and then we have the people in the pews.
Those people in the pews aren’t just Catholics. They are Protestants, evangelicals—people of all faiths. And I will say as an aside that since we began this endeavor a year and a half ago, the feedback and support from the Protestant and evangelical communities has been outstanding. It has been better than from the Catholic community, I think, because the Protestants and evangelicals see what we are doing. They see that, yes, we can make a concerted impact with some segment of the political elite who call themselves Catholic. And we can make a major dent in getting pro-life legislation passed, in getting judges to act like judges instead of executioners.
We want the bishops to enforce Canon 915 of the Canon Law—the codified law of the Catholic Church—that has been around for centuries. And there’s a particular Canon law, 915, which says, “Those who persist in manifest grave sin shall not be admitted to holy communion.” That is all we are asking the bishops to do. And I think most U.S. Cardinals don’t get it. There are a number of lower level bishops like Bishop [Raymond] Burke [of St. Louis] who do get it.
We point out that we are not calling for people not to vote for John Kerry. We’re just pointing out the fact that he is a politician who is not a Catholic in good standing. I think that the significance [of Kerry’s standing] is huge because if you have a person who says one thing but does another, how can you trust him to be the Commander-in-Chief? If I cheat on my wife and tell people that I cheated on my wife and brag about cheating on my wife and go to church and receive communion, that’s hypocrisy. And that, in essence, is what Senator Kerry, Senator Kennedy, and all these people are doing. They court the Catholic vote, they splash holy water on themselves on Sunday and then go and vote for pro-abortion policies on Monday. Except they are doing more than splashing holy water on themselves—they are profaning Holy Communion.
[People say], “You can’t judge John Kerry” or “you are judging his heart.” I’m sorry, but we are not judging his heart; we are judging his record. His record is a consistent record on behalf of death. He is no reluctant supporter of abortion. They pretend that “Oh, this is so painful. I’m personally opposed, but because I represent so many people I am duty bound by the Constitution.” Baloney! They stand up at every Planned Parenthood fundraiser, they bow down at the altar of the National Abortion Rights Action League, and they chase the money. These people aren’t reluctant supporters. They are happy to do it, and they do it every chance they get.
We have been very outspoken in saying that President Bush has not been pro-life enough [in the area of stem cell research]. He has slipped, if you will. If he wants to retain his base, if he wants to retain his pro-life credentials, he can’t go with the Orrin Hatch position on this.
I believe that [Bush] is a good Christian man. I believe that occasionally he listens to Karl Rove or someone else way too often. I like to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he could be a lot better. One of the things that worries me the most is his talk about appointing Alberto Gonzales to a Supreme Court vacancy that comes up. I don’t think he is a conservative. And if he is pro-life, I haven’t seen anything to indicate it. So the fact that President Bush is considering appointing Gonzales could be extremely worrisome.
The northeast section of the country has the highest concentration of pro-abortion Catholic politicians of anywhere in the country [because] I think it is heavily Democratic, number one. It is the home region of John Kennedy [and] Edward Kennedy. Unfortunately, those people have bought hook, line, and sinker the lie that you can be a Catholic and pro-abortion. And frankly, it’s the silence of the bishops.
On January 22, 2003, we ran a full-page ad in The Washington Times highlighting the Senatorial “Deadly Dozen.” These were the top 12 pro-abortion Catholics in the United States Senate, including, as you could guess, Edward Kennedy, John Kerry, Susan Collins, and Dick Durbin, to mention just a few. That ad was the catalyst, our way of announcing to the country that okay, we are taking the gloves off.
[Then in the] spring of 2003, the next major endeavor was another ad campaign called our “California Deadly Dozen.” We went to the West Coast and published a full-page ad in The Sacramento Bee that highlighted the top 12 pro-abortion Catholics in California. That included Governor Gray Davis, Cruz Bustamante, Supreme Court Justice Ming Chin, and Loretta and Linda Sanchez of the U.S. House.
[Reps. Loretta and Linda Sanchez were] commencement speakers at Mount St. Mary’s Catholic Girl’s College in Los Angeles. We were there protesting during the commencement, and we actually had a blow-up of Loretta Sanchez and Hugh Hefner, which just happened to be in Playboy that week. So all the good Catholic girls saw Representative Loretta Sanchez standing next to Hugh Hefner as they drove up to the graduation.
We went back to California in the fall. Cruz Bustamante, Gray Davis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, contenders for the governor’s office, were all pro-abortion Catholic politicians. The ad that we ran then was called the “Unholy Trinity.” It wasn’t focused on electing or not electing these people but just pointing out the big white elephant that nobody wants to talk about.
Catholic bishops will be in Denver, Colorado, and we will be at the same hotel where they are. We will be running a full-page ad in USA Today and holding a press conference. That ad shows the picture of Holy Communion and basically tells the bishops that if they believe in it, they have to do something about Senator Kerry and all the other pro-abortion Catholic politicians.
In the best of all possible scenarios, [the bishops] would basically unanimously endorse the Burke Doctrine. Then all 70 Catholic members of Congress would be under interdict, which would be a nuclear bomb. While I don’t believe that is going to take place, I think the best thing that could happen would be for a number of bishops to become convinced that they need to do something—before the election. If they do something before the election, I think it could have a real impact on who is elected. For the last 15 months, steam has been picking up and I am proud of what I have been able to accomplish.
[Editor’s note: On June 18, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement regarding pressure to deny Communion to pro-choice Catholic politicians. The statement said that because of the “range of circumstances involved in arriving at a prudential judgment on a matter of this seriousness,” each bishop must decide on “the most prudent course of pastoral action” in each case. On July 9, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote to Cardinal McCarrick of Washington, D.C., head of the USCCB’s Task Force on Catholic Bishops and Catholic Politicians, that the June 18 statement “is very much in harmony with the general principles (of) ‘worthiness to Receive Holy Communion,’ sent as a fraternal service—to clarify the doctrine of the church on this specific issue—in order to assist the American bishops in their related discussion and determinations.” More is available at Catholic News Service.]
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of The Rutherford Institute.
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