"In my piece for The Guardian which John Smeaton refers to, I never call Moore a “committed Catholic”. Those words were added by the editor in the standfirst. What I say in the piece is that Moore goes to Mass each Sunday. When I questioned whether this was true in a post for America magazine I received an emphatic message from his office which led me to apologise for questioning the fact. As for failing to mention that Leo XIII in the same year as Rerum Novarum spoke out against abortion, mea culpa– but I don’t see anything worth apologising for. I have a strong record of speaking out against abortion, and I deplore Moore’s failure to do so.”I am grateful for Austen Ivereigh’s clarification. Whilst of course accepting the explanation for the description in The Guardian of Michael Moore, the film director, as “a committed Catholic”, I do think Austen painted an incomplete picture. His article in The Guardian, in my opinion, portrayed Michael Moore as a man fired up with a wholly admirable zeal for social justice, a zeal he gets from Catholic social teaching. As I pointed out in my blogpost, Michael Moore ardently supports abortion and it’s a matter of very serious concern whenever pro-abortion people in public life have their Catholicism put on a pedestal for others’ edification. Archbishop Burke put it rather more strongly than this, recently, when he wrote:
“To ignore the fact that Catholics in public life, for example, who persistently violate the moral law regarding the inviolability of innocent human life or the integrity of the marital union, lead many into confusion or even error regarding the most fundamental teachings of the moral law, in fact, contributes to the confusion and error, redounding to the gravest harm to our brothers and sisters, and, therefore, to the whole nation."Comments on this blog? Email them to johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk
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