Bishop criticised for praising Barack Obama
By Ed West
21 November 2008

President Bush walks with President-Elect Obama at the White House (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Bishop Crispian Hollis of Portsmouth has been criticised for praising president-elect Barack Obama on his diocesan website.

Praising God for the election of the pro-abortion Illinois Senator, Bishop Hollis used his diocesan website to present a "special message" to his flock.

"With millions of others, I have been thrilled by Barack Obama's victory and I thank God for it," he wrote.

"For me, it represents a rare moment of hope and optimism which shows American democracy at its best and it is of seismic significance and potential for the whole global community. And so, more than ever now, he deserves and needs us to keep him in our prayers."

The president-elect, a former Democrat senator for Illinois, has promised to sign the Freedom of Choice Act upon taking power on January 20. This will abolish all state restrictions and limitations on the right of women to have abortions.

He has also pledged to reverse President George W Bush's ban on US overseas agencies promoting abortion. As a senator Mr Obama even refused to support saving infants born alive after failed abortions.

Bishop Hollis's comments were widely criticised, with John Smeaton, director of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC), saying: "The only 'potential' for the unborn under an Obama presidency will be that more of them will be killed. What 'hope and optimism' can Catholic medics have following Obama's election, which will abolish conscientious objection to abortion, thereby threatening to destroy Catholic healthcare in the US?"

Bishop Hollis later clarified his message, saying he "genuinely welcomed" Barack's Obama's election "because he represents such a different political profile" from that of President Bush.

"America - and the world - needs that political change and will benefit from it," said the bishop, who is in charge of international affairs at the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales.

"However, I am aware of what he has said about abortion and about the so-called freedom of choice and I deplore his words.

"There is no way in which I endorse his position on these crucial 'life' matters, nor, as a Catholic bishop, could I ever do so.

"Perhaps it's naïve to say this but I hope and pray that the realities of the political process will mean that he has to temper his personal policies on these all-important life issues and pay serious attention to the outrage with which many view his 'life' agenda."

Bishop Hollis's joy at Senator Obama's election was not shared by a respected American cardinal, who launched an outspoken attack on the "aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic" President-Elect. Cardinal James Francis Stafford, speaking last week at the Catholic University of America in Washington, said the new president had campaigned on an "extremist anti-life platform".

"Because man is a sacred element of secular life man should not be held to a supreme power of state, and a person's life cannot ultimately be controlled by government," Cardinal Stafford said at a lecture entitled "Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II: Being True in Body and Soul".

He compared America's future under President Obama with Christ's agony in the garden, saying that "on November 4, 2008, America suffered a cultural earthquake. For the next few years, Gethsemane will not be marginal. We will know that garden."

He added that Catholics must deal with the "hot, angry tears of betrayal" by being "with Jesus, sick because of love".

The lecture was hosted by the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family to mark the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae. Cardinal Stafford also spoke about a decline in respect for human life, which, he said, was largely caused by Roe v Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling allowing legal abortion, and said that Catholics needed to return to the values of marriage and human dignity.

"Its scrupulous meanness has had catastrophic effects upon the unity and integrity of the American republic," he said of the ruling made 35 years ago.

"If 1968 was the year of America's 'suicide attempt' 2008 is the year of America's exhaustion," said Cardinal Stafford, Major Penitentiary of the Apostolic Penitentiary for the Tribunal of the Holy See.

"In the intervening 40 years since Humanae Vitae, the United States has been thrown upon ruins."

Polls suggest that 54 per cent of Catholics voted for Obama, who became the first African-American elected president this month.

Last week a South Carolina priest asked any parishioners who voted for Barack Obama not to receive Communion at his church.

Fr Jay Scott Newman said in a parish newsletter that the President-Elect's pro-abortion stand was against the beliefs of the Church and anyone who voted for him should not receive the sacrament, although Church law does not allow him to refuse anyone Communion. He also asked that Obama-voting parishioners in St Mary's Church, Greenville, did penance.