The Laetare Award: Dismantling the architecture of the culture warrior church | National Catholic Reporter

The Laetare Award: Dismantling the architecture of the culture warrior church | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: Bravo to my Archbishop for lending his pressence to Notre Dame at this time when Vice President Biden and Speaker Boehner are honored with the Latarae award.  I would not say that honoring these two working class legislators dismantles the culture war in any way.  The war is not at Notre Dame, it is at select Sees like Philadelphia and Kansas City that can't get enough of the Republican Pro-life movement. Notre Dame is owned by a religious order - and most of these have opted out of the culture wars.



The honorees deserve their honors because they got things done - the right things - rather than focusing on pseudo-issues like abortion, where there is no real path forward.  While Biden as a Senator had a hand in the abortion debate when it came to confirming justices - even the GOP justices he confirmed turned out to vote against overturning Roe.  Neither politician has gone out of his way to bring abortion to the floor, as the partial birth abortion law, which was a stalking horse to overturn Roe, was passed before Boehner was speaker.



Sadly, there is the lost opportunity of what Biden could have contributed to the debate by publicly challenging the strategy of overturning Roe as an impossibility.  Sometimes the most loyal and courageous thing one can do as a Catholic is to tell the truth when the bishops cooperate with error.  He certainly could have explained the issue well without resorting to the Cuomo cop-out of pluralism.  Of course, he still can - but I wish he had in 2004.  Catholic voters may not like seeing the hierarchy publicly corrected - although I suspect the Democratic Catholics would have rejoiced - as we did when he voted for Obama as Catholics while condemning the pro-life movement as a Republican sham.  At least I was very public about it on OFA discussion groups and it seems to have caught on.  Of course, the death of Scalia makes it obvious that the movement needs a new strategy - as overturning Roe and letting the states sort it ous is as dead as the former Justice.