The light blogging has been largely due to a race against the seasonal clock so-to-speak (I’ll explain after the first frost). But I couldn’t help but take notice of the Kaine death penalty flap.
Now some of the commentary has run the gambit from obituary to outrage. Sorry Waldo… calling Kilgore “anti-Christian” is not fair play.
I’ll admit, as a Catholic I can’t help but feel some sympathy for Tim Kaine getting beat up on his position on the death penalty. Catholics on the whole don’t really believe in the death penalty, and when they do they apply it sparingly. Most Catholics would send Hitler to the chair – I certainly would – and the Catechism is explicitly clear on the matter that the death penalty should be applied in the most extreme cases.
Now some folks are beating Kaine up for responding based on his “Roman Catholic” faith rather than his “Christian” faith. Let’s be honest, Kaine’s convictions don’t stem from a nebulous Christian background. They stem from his Catholic background specifically.
The real question that needs to be raised in the minds of voters is Kaine’s inconsistencies between his faith and his politics. Even on the death penalty, it’s certainly not the Catholic position that the death penalty never be applied, though I will readily admit that good Catholics can disagree.
The glaring inconsistency in my mind goes back to abortion. I cannot fathom how someone who can hold such strong convictions for the guilty can callously ignore the unborn victims of abortion. Catholic teaching is crystal clear on abortion, and yet the same faith that prevents Kaine from killing Hitler is mystically discarded when it comes to the #1 issue of his liberal allies.
Yes, there is a disconnect between Kaine’s principles and his rhetoric. Hiding behind Catholic faith on the death penalty, then tossing those principles aside on abortion is a hideous distortion of Catholic social justice. There’s no reason in the world why Kaine should get a free ride, and Kilgore has every right to raise the question until Kaine affords a reasonable answer.