“The truth is the opposite”
Cardinal rebuffs Kmiec over Catholic News Service column defending Obama’s stem-cell policy changes
(Editor’s Note: This story was brought to our attention by Jack Smith, editor of The Catholic Key, the newspaper of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri. Below we provide a brief summary of the controversy, with a clickable link to Mr. Smith’s blog, which contains the full story.)
Douglas Kmiec, the controversial Pepperdine University professor who created a stir in Catholic circles last year when he endorsed Barack Obama for president, last week wrote a column for Catholic News Service, an agency of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in which he defended Obama’s shift in federal policy on embryonic stem cell research. Kmiec’s column, "New ethically sensitive stem-cell guidance from the Obama administration," proved too much to take for Cardinal Justin Rigali, the head of the USCCB’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities. The cardinal penned his own CNS column this week in which he took Kmiec to task.
“Law professor Douglas Kmiec states in an opinion piece distributed by Catholic News Service that the new policy is ‘ethically sensitive’ and in important respects ‘more strict’ than President George W. Bush’s policy that preceded it,” wrote Cardinal Rigali. “The truth is the opposite.”
To read the full text of Cardinal Rigali’s rebuttal on the Catholic Key blog, Click Here.
