U.S. Catholic Magazine Interviews Obama, McCain

Catholics may want to grab the October issue of U.S. Catholic magazine, a fine and readable periodical publish by the Claretians, a Catholic religious order. The magazine interviewed both Senators Obama and McCain on various Catholic concerns. On the issue of abortion, both senators proclaimed they were not for abortion and both affirmed that abortion cannot be stopped with just legal restrictions but requires social support for women in crisis pregnancies. Neither candidate supported federal laws banning abortion but McCain did indicate reversal of Roe v. Wade to allow those states that so wished to pass laws restriction abortion within their state.

Obama continued his recent emphasis on working to reduce the number of abortions. “Much more can and should be done to address the underlying factors that may lead a woman into the difficult situation where she feels she has to make this decision.” He said he wants to make comprehensive age-appropriate sex education more widely available to help prevent unintended pregnancies. And he wants to offer more support services for women who choose to have a child, including pre- and postnatal care, parenting education, and adoption and foster care services.

Obama told the Catholic magazine, “My own path to Christ was shaped in part by my work as a community organizer with the poor and disadvantaged on the South Side of Chicago,” and he noted that this work “was funded in part by Catholic churches.” He said he wants to expand the earned income tax credit and “establish 20 ‘Promise Neighborhoods’ in impoverished, crime-ridden areas to be modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone.”

Barack Obama said his work as a community organizer for a Catholic sponsored project gave him key insights as to helping people in poverty. He spoke of his commitment to health care for all, an issue that was first proposed in the United States by the Catholic Bishops in 1919. Obama also outlined positions that matched the policies of the Catholic Church on immigration, child labor and the war in Iraq.

Obama pointed out that as an Illinois state senator he was a co-sponsor of the Bernardin Amendment, named after the late Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, “which set out that health care is a fundamental right.” His health care plan, he told U.S. Catholic, would provide all Americans with “quality, portable, and affordable health care coverage” and would reduce health care costs for families to $2,500.

In one of the most lame lines so far in this presidential campaign, McCain (according to the conservative Catholic New Agency) said that he would prioritize the eradication of poverty through programs like domestic oil drilling.