March 27, 2009
Michael Steele to speak at banquet, Bishop Gettelfinger will stay away
By PAUL R. LEINGANG (Message editor)
The decision by Bishop Gerald A. Gettelfinger to stay away from the Vanderburgh County Right to Life banquet has resulted in a blizzard of phone calls, comments and questions — but apparently no change in anyone’s position.
Michael Steele will be the featured speaker. Bishop Gettelfinger will not attend.
Bishop Gettelfinger objects to the choice of Michael Steele as the featured speaker at the April 16 event, especially after a March GQ magazine interview was widely circulated, in which Steele said that women have the right to choose abortion.
Bishop Gettelfinger told Jim Collins, director of Catholic Charities, that he would not attend the banquet if Steele were the speaker. Collins is active in the pro-life movement and is a former co-chair of the Vanderburgh County Right to Life banquet. (Response from Collins: Michael Steele, a pro-life leader?)
Emily Snipes, pro-life coordinator at Catholic Charities, is a member of the VCRTL board. Snipes told Mary Ellen Van Dyke, executive director of VCRTL about the bishop’s decision.
When board members learned of the bishop’s position no action resulted, and the invitation to Steele was not withdrawn.
The executive board of VCRTL had earlier shared the bishop’s concern about Steele’s apparently pro-choice comments in GQ, but after speaking with Steele, Van Dyke said the committee members were satisfied with his pro-life position.
Bishop Gettelfinger, however, reached a different conclusion.
After speaking with Steele on the phone March 20, and after examining a statement issued by Steele after the GQ interview, Bishop Gettelfinger wrote in a letter to Van Dyke that his “early decision not to attend still stands.”
The GQ interview
In the March issue of GQ, Steele was asked if he thinks women have the right to choose abortion. He answered, “Yeah. I mean, again, I think that’s an individual choice.”
In his letter to Van Dyke, Bishop Gettelfinger said Steele’s answer seemed to emanate “from a political stance, not a principled one.”
“The principled answer for us is that there can be no equivocation,” Bishop Gettelfinger continued. “Intentional abortion is an act of killing the unborn. There is no room for choice in this deadly matter. Mr. Steele assiduously avoids such strong language.”
Following the publication of the GQ interview, Steele issued a statement, saying “I am pro-life, always have been, always will be.” He went on to say that “the Republican Party is and will continue to be the party of life.” He said he supports the Republican platform that calls for a Human Life Amendment.
Friday afternoon, March 20
Even before the bishop’s letter was completed, a reporter from the Washington Times in Washington D.C. contacted the diocesan Office of Communications. The reporter, Ralph Hallow, said he had learned about what was going on from “informants,” one in Indiana and one in California. He said he had already spoken with Van Dyke and with Steele, and asked about the bishop’s viewpoint.
Hallow’s story was published as an “exclusive” on the Washington Times website and in the Sunday print edition. Up until that report, discussion had not been public – but the Washignton Times story Sunday led to interviews and local stories on Fox News Monday, and by the Courier and Press and WEHT News 25 on Tuesday.
Calls and questions also came into the diocesan communications office from the Associated Press in Indianapolis; from the Catholic News Agency, a Catholic news provider headquartered in Denver; from a reporter for LifeSiteNews, a pro-life Internet site, and from the morning show host on EWTN Radio.
In a telephone interview March 20, Van Dyke said Steele “had been highly touted as a pro-life speaker.” She said he had been elected as the lieutenant governor of Maryland where “he ran as a pro-life candidate.”
Steele was booked as a speaker for the VCRTL banquet with the assistance of Ambassador Speakers Bureau, which is described on its website as the oldest and most established Christian-based talent agency in the United States.
Following the GQ interview, Van Dyke said that, “after much research and investigation, the board felt that we should go along with our contract.”
Mixed reaction
Reaction in the diocese was mixed, when the news was reported that the bishop intended to stay away from the banquet.
Several callers to the communications office said the bishop should have spoken out last fall against then-candidate Barrack Obama and his pro-abortion positions.
Other callers said Steele’s views were damaging or at least confusing. Or that Right to Life had dangerously allied itself with the Republican Party.
Still others feared the disagreement could damage the pro-life work of VCRTL, and called for unity.
What’s next?
More words. More opinions, locally and nationally.
For example, Christian conservative columnist Star Parker, writing in the Dallas Morning News and syndicated by Scripps Howard, has called (March 16) for Michael Steele to step aside from his national political leadership position. She said the GQ interview was the “defining moment” but her discomfort goes back to 1996 when Steele told network interviewer Tim Russert that he accepted Roe vs. Wade as “stare decisis” — accepted legal precedent.
John McCormack, at www.weeklystandard.com, (March 12) defended Steele. He concluded that “Steele was asked whether there is a right to abortion—not whether there ought to be a right to abortion. Under the current legal regime dictated by the Supreme Court, abortion is an ‘individual choice’ throughout all nine months of pregnancy for effectively any reason. In the GQ interview, was Steele simply stating the fact that abortion is an individual choice or expressing support for the laws that make it so? Steele wasn’t perfectly clear, but it’s clear from the entire GQ transcript that he’s making an argument in favor of choosing life over abortion.”
Published in this issue of the Message are a commentary from Jim Collins and a letter, both on page 23. Bishop Gettelfinger promises to take up the topic in his column, the Bishop’s Forum, to be published April 3.