More Abortion Hypocrisy

 Here's the text of a letter I sent to my local paper, the Delaware County Times, this morning:

Once more, in her column on Sunday, Christine Flowers takes on abortion and again reveals her rank hypocrisy--and for that matter the rank hypocrisy of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In that column, Flowers writes in support of the bishops' call to deny communion to any Roman Catholic politician--and most notably President Joe Biden--who supports the legal right of a woman to have an abortion. Please note their objection is not to those politicians having actually participated in an abortion, but in their support for the repeatedly affirmed right for any woman to have an abortion, within certain limits.

Why do I call this hypocrisy? Because the Catholic Church's opposition to abortion is part of what it calls its "seamless" defense of the right-to-life, including an opposition to capital punishment. But the bishops--and Flowers--have never suggested that a Roman Catholic politician who supports capital punishment (also repeatedly affirmed as Constitutional) should be denied communion.

How many such politicians are there? It's tough to find an exact number, but here's a rough idea. The Republican Party platform has, since at least 2000, consistently supported capital punishment and opposed all efforts to have it curtailed or abandoned. There are 66 Roman Catholic Republicans in the House and Senate and it must be supposed that all of them support their party's platform in full.

So why have not the bishops--and Flowers--called for them to be denied communion?