Catholic Bishop John Stowe rebukes Trump as 'anti-life'

 

Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky, publicly criticized President Donald Trump during a July 31 webinar.  This has been one of the strongest and most direct criticisms of Trump by an American Catholic bishop, though Pope Francis himself has taken Trump to task on occasion. 

Notable, the Bishop joined with a growing number of faithful Catholic voices not over matters such as immigration, capital punishment, care for Creation, labor rights and other issues where the Catholic Church has a clear position rejected by Trump.  The Bishop called Trump "anti-life."

In the webinar, the Bishop stated:  "For this president to call himself pro-life, and for anybody to back him because of claims of being pro-life, is almost willful ignorance. He is so much anti-life because he is only concerned about himself, and he gives us every, every, every indication of that," Stowe said.

The Bishop continued, "Pope Francis has given us a great definition of what pro-life means.  He basically tells us we can't claim to be pro-life if we support the separation of children from their parents at the U.S. border, if we support exposing people at the border to COVID-19 because of the facilities that they're in, if we support denying people who have need for adequate health care access to health care, if we keep people from getting the housing or the education that they need, we cannot call ourselves pro-life." 

But for Stowe, being truly pro-life must include efforts towards racial, social and environmental justice. "We have to be concerned for the unborn children, it's foundational for us," Stowe said. But, he added, "our understanding of pro-life has to be the vision that was described as the seamless garment vision." That vision gained traction after a 1983 speech by the late Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin.

Right wing elements have long rejected a broad vision of protecting human life.  Not only have they rejected offenses against human life because of race and economic injustice but have also disregarded offenses against unborn life when it does not fit with their partisan political agenda.  Spontaneous abortions caused by environmental pollution and industrial chemicals are unmentioned,.  Proven social programs that reduce abortion such as universal health care and paid parental leave are opposed.  And these Right-wing activists even oppose provisions of the Affordable Care Act that prohibited discrimination in health insurance against the unborn by requiring that the unborn be included in parent's heath care policies.