Kmiec / George Debate

American Papist shares the video and text from the Doug Kmiec / Robert George debate yesterday. I was able to listen to part of the debate before I left for Mass and I was quite impressed! Kmiec's words were a little shocking (I had never heard such distorted ideas and sentiments spoken aloud by a "Catholic" professor before this), while George, who was an eloquent speaker, did not mince words, but boldly proclaimed the truth and expressed Catholic beliefs about the sanctity of human life.

Jill Stanek has the full story on the Catholic University of America debate on her blog with photos. Professor Michael New shares his thoughts there:

The format could have been better. Essentially it did not allow for much dialogue between George and Kmiec, which was a bit disappointing....

That having been said, the best word to describe Doug Kmiec would be evasive. He tried to argue that other issues trumped sanctity of life issues when voting. He tried to make the case that the new stem cell regulations were part of a reasonable compromise. He said that denying holy communion to Catholic politicians who support legal abortion was counterproductive. Finally, he argued that science has not come to a consensus about the sanctity of human life. He was all over the place and on no issue was he particularly persuasive.

Interestingly, Kmiec did not spend much time talking about abortion trends. He briefly claimed (wrongly) that abortions increased during the presidency of the first President Bush. He briefly cited the decline in the abortion rate that occurred during the Clinton administration. But he gave credit to the strong economy. While this is partly true, he did not mention state level pro-life laws. At least he did not claim welfare spending caused the 1990s abortion decline.

Professor George, on the other hand succeeded in describing vivid contrasts between President Obama and the pro-life movement. Professor George described in great detail Obama's refusal to support incremental pro-life laws and his administration's efforts to fund abortion both in DC and in other countries. He also found it telling that while the Obama administration wants to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, they never express an interest in lowering the number of abortions. Overall the Obama administration does not think that fetal life is worthy of legal protection which makes finding common ground very difficult, if not impossible.

Overall, Professor George, was concise, hard hitting and made his points well throughout the course of the debate.

Wow! Kmiec needs to go back to school to learn the basics of his faith -- he needs to start with The Catholic Catechism for Dummies. That should be followed by an urgent and necessary visit to the Sacrament of Reconciliation.