Thoughtful critic

From a Commonweal magazine article on Judge Roberts:

As a result, many Catholics will ask whether the bishops will apply the same “all or out” standard to Judge Roberts that they applied to Kerry or, more disgracefully, to longtime Congressman David Obey (D-Wis.), a thoughtful critic of abortion who failed to support the whole prolife agenda.

And just exactly what is there definition of a thoughtful critic of abortion? Well I guess it include someone who correctly voted the partial birth abortion ban, but also opposed President Bush’s “Mexico City initiative” (which limits foreign aid funding of abortion-providers overseas) and voted to allow them for abortion in military hospitals. Beyond that he also opposes the Presidents restrictions on Federal embryonic stem-cell research.

The rest of the article is typical Commonweal boilerplate of widening the issues to just abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, same-sex marriage, and other and other “non-negotiable” (The scare quotes are his) What he refers to as "so-called life issues." You can learn a lot about what an author thinks by the scare quotes used and what gets proceeded by a ‘so-called.’ And of course he also appeals to the late Cardinal Bernadin. As Papabile emphasized the other day that what often is left out is the fact that the Cardinal’s said that abortion was the first concern in his speeches on a consistent life ethic. Too often the seamless garment is used to smother babies in favor of government supported programs for the poor.

Some early reports associated Roberts with the Federalist Society and its hankering to return to pre-New Deal restrictions on federal powers. That position is at odds with important elements of Catholic social teaching.

Gee I must have missed the magisterial documents on how the Federal government is responsible for all these programs and how subsidiarity would mandate this. I had the opposite impression.