c. 2005 Religion News Service
WASHINGTON _ More than 1,500 conservative Catholics from across the country attending the second annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast Friday (May 20) heard President Bush ask for their prayers and affirm “a culture of life.”
The phrase, which Bush uses often, was made popular by the late Pope John Paul II, who also decried a “culture of death.” It has become shorthand in conservative circles for a stance in opposition to abortion rights, physician-assisted suicide and embryonic stem cell research.
For Catholics, it can also mean opposition to the death penalty, which Bush supports.
During his brief remarks, Bush referred several times to the late pontiff, who died April 2.
“The best way to honor this great champion of human freedom is to continue to build a culture of life where the strong protect the weak,” said President Bush.
The president also praised John Paul’s successor, Pope Benedict XVI, for his condemnation of the “tyranny of relativism” and Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn., who attended the breakfast for the second year in a row.
The late pontiff inspired the event, created last year in response to his call for “a new evangelization.”
The president was greeted by a protracted standing ovation in the nearly full ballroom. A group of young men wore red T-shirts emblazoned with large lettering that read “You can’t be Catholic and Pro-Abortion.” They cheered and hollered, with one standing on his chair for a better view.
“So, today, I ask the prayers of all Catholics for America’s continued trust in God’s purpose, for the wisdom to do what’s right, and for the strength and the conviction that so long as America remains faithful to its founding truths, America will always be free,” Bush said.
Eternal Word Television Network, a favorite of conservative Catholics, broadcast the event from a table nearby.
Each of the ballroom’s 150 tables had 10 places set with baseball card-size pictures of John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and Blessed Jeanne Jugan, the founder of Little Sisters of the Poor, an organization dedicated to serving the elderly. Jugan was beatified in 1982 by John Paul II.
All attendees, who paid $50 a seat or $500 a table, were also given a copy of the Jacques Maritain book “Christianity, Democracy and the American Ideal,” which could have been the title of the event organized by Catholic leaders that included Joseph J. Cella, founder of the Ave Maria List, which supports anti-abortion candidates; Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), a pro-life activist group; and Jacqueline Halbig, deputy director of the Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at the U.S. Department of Labor.
Coming amid a heated Senate debate over the political views of Bush’s judicial nominees, the breakfast _ also attended by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the archbishop of Washington, and Cardinal Charles Chaput, archbishop of Denver _ quickly turned to discussion of the role of morality on the bench.
“All law is the imposition of somebody’s beliefs on someone else. That’s exactly the reason we have debates, and elections, and Congress _ to turn the struggle of ideas and moral convictions into laws that guide our common life,” Chaput said as the audience finished off a breakfast of eggs, bacon and fresh fruit.
“Belief in God has profoundly shaped what Americans believe about human dignity,” he said. “To cut God out of the public square is to cut the head and heart from our public life.”
Cella, president of the prayer breakfast’s board, read a letter expressing greetings and thanks from Pope Benedict XVI.
Ruse, the group’s vice president, joked, “This year the president, next year the pope.”
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