Oh, yah, there are a bunch of them--albeit they are the Usual Suspects.
The brains behind the convention are Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and NETWORK, a national Catholic social-justice lobby. Sponsors include a who's who of progressive Catholic organizations: Pax Christi, USA; Maryknoll Office of Global Concerns; Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities; Catholic United; Catholic Scholars for Worker Justice; and the University of San Francisco, Lane Center for Catholic Social Thought. (Also listed as a sponsor is the AFL-CIO.)
You didn't have to spot anything other than the Ass'n of Jebby Colleges to know where this was going.
Look for Catholics in Alliance with the Common Good to take a leading role in gathering Catholic support for Obama. Led by co-founder Alexia Kelley, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, CACG has been steadily gaining visibility since its founding in 2004. Kelley worked for nearly ten years at the Catholic Campaign for Human Development of the USCCB. She raised some eyebrows by taking the job of religion outreach director at the Democratic National Committee during the Kerry campaign while still leading CACG.
It is noteworthy that Ms. Kelley is no longer affiliated with USCC/B. There are only a couple of ways to leave that dinosaur--but much of the LeftyWacko contingent which used to (frankly) run the place has disappeared in the last few years.
HT: ProEcclesia
Just in case you have any doubts at all, here's Pope Benedict's summation for the EU Congress in 2006:
In his March 2006 address to European parliamentarians, Pope Benedict stated the following:
"As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are NOT NEGOTIABLE [my emphasis].
Among these the following emerge clearly today:
- protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death;
- recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family
- as a union between a man and a woman based on marriage
- and its defence from attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different forms of union which in reality harm it and contribute to its destabilization, obscuring its particular character and its irreplaceable social role;
- the protection of the right of parents to educate their children."
Of course, neither McCain nor Obama would sign off on a document which offered these items as "non-negotiables" in the political arena.
But some "Catholics" would be perfectly happy to leave them out.
Yes, neither McCain nor Obama is where we would hope they would be on various Catholic concerns, so we lay faithful must each use our best judgement.
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