The Catholic Review Online: How we got here

In his weekly column, "Thoughts on Our Church," Archbishop Edwin O'Brien reviews the course of events by which Catholic politicians were able to be support abortion while claiming to be Catholic. Here is a portion of his column:

In a first-rate address to more than a hundred bishops gathered last February for a workshop conducted by the National Catholic Bioethics Center, Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, referred to a Wall Street Journal opinion piece of January 7 of this year.

Titled “How Support for Abortion Became Kennedy Dogma,” the article goes a long way in explaining how so many Catholic politicians, once pro-life, arrived at a deplorable compromise, abandoned their pro-life convictions, and even became, in too many instances, ardent “pro-choice” proponents.

In 1964, Robert Kennedy was seeking a New York Senate seat and brother Ted was running for re-election to the United States Senate from Massachusetts. Liberal, well-funded pro-abortion groups were gaining traction at the grass roots and targeting politicians in the Northeast as prospective torch-bearers for the movement. The Kennedys knew they would need theological backing to claim that a Catholic politician could support abortion rights “in good conscience” and they turned to a group of six dissident priests.

The article is must reading...