McCain’s Catholic Committee
May 6, 2008, 8:46 am
Posted by Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
Sometime back, someone asked about McCain’s Catholic Committee, here’s a list:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/05/mccains-catholic-committe_n_100277.html
Thanks for reporting this. The “committee” is composed of about 99% politicians and seems more like andorsements rather than whatever advice they might give about some catholic issues. Most notably, national figures like Keating and Brownbeck will help him position vocabulary to the electorate and their own positions are well known. It seems different in kind from Obama’s committee.
“The usual suspects” as the lady said, much as it might be said of Catholics for Obama.
Interesting is the effort to smear one of the members by brining up a report about sexual misbehavior.
Mr. Keating’s comments seem to echo much of what has been said on this website about pusillanimous bishops:
“Frank Keating, the former Oklahoma governor, serves as one of two Catholics For McCain Co-Chairs. In June 2003, Keating was forced to resign from a Catholic Church review board after he suggested that the bishops were engaging in Mafia-like activities in their efforts to obstruct investigations into the child sexual abuse scandal”.
Your point is well taken, Gabriel, although I was not trying to smear Keating for his work on the Commission. I was referring to some other comments attributed to him about gay relationships and an absolutist sense of the papacy. The main point I was attempting to make was that this group had a more decidedly political component than the group of Obama’s advisors. I’m sure there are merits in each, but it seems that McCain’s coterie is more for leverage and perhaps “issue placement” and Obama’s committee is to raise concerns and issues that affect Catholics. Perhaps that is just as political, but it seems like a different strategy. One is not ot necessarily better or more authentic than the other in attempting to poisition its candidate in a good place with “Catholic issues.”
For some reason, the Catholic Committee (or whatever it is) for McCain sounds more like the machine round-up of appropriate names than Obama’s committee, which more or less appears to have not quite the economic or ideological interests as the Rep. Catholic committee.
In the linked post, someone says, these are folks who have a history of putting partisan politics ahead of the teachings of their faith.
The same is true of people on both sides, including Obama’s committee. Neither of the political parties is completely consistent with Catholic values, and anyone who signs on to a political campaign (in an officially “Catholic” role, no less) is indicating that they are willing to compromise certain central Church teachings.
It’s somewhat disappointing that you didn’t just link directly to the committee list on McCain’s site.
Disappointing? How so? I saw it where I saw it and remembered someone had wondered if McCain had a Catholic advisory group. I am not a fan of advisory groups myself–usually no one takes their advice.
I was disappointed because Huffington Post does not cover these issues in good faith. The article is clearly trying to draw some kind of moral equivalence between Obama’s association with Wright and McCain’s association with comparatively less controversial Catholic political figures. It just seems that a link to McCain’s website would have been preferable, considering it is a list of names with credentials.
This does not mean that I am not critical of certain people on McCain’s list. I can’t understand why anyone would associate with Deal Hudson, for instance. But I don’t think the author of the article is actually outraged, not really.
Please feel free to provide the link, Robert.