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Published: November 5, 2008

“Too single-issue to pick wisely?”

Catholic law professor who endorsed Obama invited to speak at St. John’s Seminary

Douglas Kmiec, the Catholic law professor at Pepperdine University whose March endorsement of Barack Obama stunned conservatives, has been invited to give an election post-mortem at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo.

Kmiec will give the 13th annual Newman C. Eberhardt Lecture on Nov. 11 at 7:15 p.m. in Prayer Hall on the seminary grounds. The title of the lecture is “Catholics and the 2008 Election: Are We a House Divided?” The lecture series is named in honor of Vincentian Fr. Newman C. Eberhardt, who taught church history at the seminary from 1941 until his death in 1995. Admission is free and reservations are not required.

According to an announcement on the seminary’s web site, Kmiec’s lecture “will be an examination of the prominent role played by the American Catholic community in the 2008 election, from Bishops educating candidates on ensoulment to alternative ways to be pro-life to the selection of running mates.” In addition, said the announcement, Kmiec will discuss “Were Catholics too single-issue to pick wisely on the full social Gospel of the Church?”

Before taking his current post as a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine, Kmiec served as legal counsel for presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, dean of the law school at the Catholic University of America, as a law professor at Notre Dame University.

“No doubt some of my friends will see this as a matter of party or intellectual treachery,” wrote Kmiec, a self-described Republican, in his March 23 Obama endorsement published in Slate magazine. In the article, Kmiec said he favored the preservation of traditional marriage and believed that life begins at conception, but that he favored Obama because the Illinois senator “wants to move the nation beyond its religious and racial divides and that he wants to return the United States to that company of nations committed to human rights.”

Most recently, writing for the National Catholic Reporter, Kmiec took on Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, who publicly called Obama the most pro-abortion presidential candidate in 35 years. (See “Kmiec vs. Chaput,” California Catholic Daily, Nov. 4, 2008.) Kmiec said the disagreement between himself and Archbishop Chaput is not over the “essence of Church instruction,” that is, “the promotion of human life,” but over “the preferred means of implementing it.” Kmiec said the archbishop argues for “the necessity of promoting life through law,” which primarily means working to reverse Roe v. Wade and “discounts reducing the incidence of abortion by cultural (economic and social) means.”

The endorsement of Obama led a priest to deny Kmiec communion at a Mass for the Ventura/LA North chapter of Legatus in April. The incident made it onto the pages of the Washington Post, where columnist E.J. Dionne wrote, “Word spread like wildfire in Catholic circles: Douglas Kmiec, a staunch Republican, firm foe of abortion and veteran of the Reagan Justice Department, had been denied Communion. His sin? Kmiec, a Catholic who can cite papal pronouncements with the facility of a theological scholar, shocked old friends and adversaries alike earlier this year by endorsing Barack Obama for president. For at least one priest, Kmiec's support for a pro-choice politician made him a willing participant in a grave moral evil.”

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