"Fr. Kenneth Weare’s defense of the USF’s McLaren College of Business having Congresswoman Pelosi as their commencement speaker (CSF 5/25/2007) is breathtaking in its lameness. Fr. Weare argues that those who object to Pelosi’s presence because of her career-long support of abortion risk becoming “Cafeteria Catholics” – driven by a single issue. Fr. Weare thus reduces abortion to one issue among others—as if the several issues had the same weight, so that choosing between them means no more than, say, a choice of chocolate or vanilla ice-cream. In so doing, he is in a flat-out flight from reality. Any issue involving human “rights” you care to name—immigration, poverty, health care, the war in Iraq—only has meaning if the prior right to life is recognized. Not for nothing did Jefferson enunciate the right to “Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness”, and in just that order. Like a programmer, he knew each term was necessary for those that followed. Otherwise, system failure. Without life, no liberty. Without life & liberty, no pursuit of happiness. All social “rights” are secondary to, and derivative from, the right to life. It’s only when we recognize rights in their proper hierarchy that we can make proper judgments. Old-timers tell me the Jesuits used to be able to grasp this."
Gibbons Cooney
San Francisco
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