[Apologetics] Fwd: Catholics shunned at Obama Inauguration

[Stephen Korsman]

  Catholics shunned at Obama
Inauguration<http://www.americanpapist.com/2009/01/catholics-shunned-at-obama-inauguration.html>
via American Papist: Not Your Average
Catholic!<http://www.americanpapist.com/blog.html>by Thomas Peters on
1/14/09

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
<http://blog.beliefnet.com/stevenwaldman/2009/01/the-inaugural-prayers-thicket.html>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 <http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=13571>, 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*<http://www.ncregister.com/daily/obama_shuns_catholic_prayers>
)

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.
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