St. Peter's Basilica

Two things have caught my attention in the last week that point out the deep and unmistakable hypocrisy of some Catholics who eagerly wade into American politics. First up: Notre Dame’s decision to give President Barack Obama an honorary degree.

The decision has rocked the Catholic and conservative political chattering classes because Obama supports abortion rights and the Church does not. Mary Ann Glendon has gotten a lot of play in the past 48 hours after posting a letter to Notre Dame explaining why she — a former US Ambassador to the Vatican (btw, why do we have an Ambassador to a religion?) — is declining to accept a medal Notre Dame is planning on bestowing her.

Glendon writes that she believes it is wrong “to honor a prominent and uncompromising opponent of the Church’s position on issues involving fundamental principles of justice.”  The Archbishop of Indianapolis, Rev. Daniel M. Buechlein, also weighed in:

There isn’t a single reason that would justify Catholic sponsorship of the president of our country, who is blatantly opposed to the Catholic Church’s doctrine on abortion and embryonic stem-cell research. You dishonor the reputation of the University of Notre Dame and, in effect, abdicate your prestigious reputation among Catholic universities everywhere.

That is, in fact, the crux of nearly every argument about Notre Dame’s decision and it is logically a difficult, if not impossible, position with which to argue. Glendon and Buechlein are correct. The Catholic Church has a very strong position about the “culture of life” and has indicated in no uncertain terms that the Church and it’s ancillary parts (of which Notre Dame certainly seems to be) should not honor opponents of that position.

But the “culture of life” is not only a code phrase for abortion or embryonic stem cell research or even assisted suicide. The Catholic Church also opposes the death penalty. Indeed the Conference of Catholic Bishops has a whole campaign to battle capital punishment. So why is no one talking about the honorary degree Notre Dame is handing out to the Chief Jutice of the Indiana Supreme Court?

Chief Justice Randall T. Shepard has repeatedly upheld the use of capital punishment in Indiana during his 29 years on the bench including a case in 2005 in which he wrote the majority opinion that a mentally ill man could be put to death despite a state law that prohibited executing the mentally “retarded.”

So where’s the outrage? Death-penalty-advocate Justice Shepard should no more be honored by a Catholic University than should abortion-rights-proponent Barack Obama. Hypocrisy should have no place in this debate. Principals are principals. No?

The other bizarre note came from the new Archbishop in New York who gave a big sit-down interview to the hometown New York Post and leapt in to the gay marriage debate. Here’s what Archbishop Timothy Dolan had to say:

There’s an in-built code of right and wrong that’s embedded in the human DNA. Hard-wired into us is a dictionary, and the dictionary defines marriage as between one man, one woman for life, please God, leading to the procreation of human life and if we begin to tamper with the very definition of marriage, then we’re going to be in big trouble. We’re not anti-gay — we’re pro the most basic definition of marriage.

The Church certainly has every right to oppose something like same-sex marriage but isn’t it a bit hypocritical to suggest that DNA is involved — even if he’s trying to be figurative? DNA? That’s science. Science and the Catholic Church have always had an uneasy relationship. Remember Galileo?

This is the Church that only officially recognized evolution as fact in 1996! And now one of their leaders is arguing there’s a scientific basis to marriage? Science is pretty convenient I guess.

The only problem is marriage is a human creation not a biological one. And nearly every historian who has looked at the way our ancestors married concludes that it was an economic and civil transaction for millennia before it became religious — and later — romantic. Church weddings are a product of the Middle Ages. And please don’t tell us, Archbishop, that one only must look to the animal kingdom to see why man-woman pairings are genetic.

If we’re going to rely on science and DNA then that’s fine. Here’s what DNA researchers have found out about early humans: They slept around. A lot.

So if Archbishop Dolan would like to argue that we should follow our “hard-wired dictionary” and avoid same-sex marriage then he must also admit that we are “hard-wired” (please ignore the pun) to have sex with lots of different mates. Free love for Catholics?

Hypocrite, know thyself.