Matthews Does The Unthinkable (1)

Chris Matthews made me look foolish, given that I had suggested the possibility that he exhibits a preference for politicos of his own faith. He may do so, but it certainly didn't enter into his extraordinary questioning of a member of the Roman Catholic hierarchy Monday evening.

Spurred by the row between Representative Patrick Kennedy (D.-R.I.) and the Diocese of Rhode Island over taking communion, Matthews on the Hardball episode of 11/24 aired two revealing segments, one strictly about abortion and one touching on the matter, The latter, which was the last segment of the program, consisted of a discussion with Patrick J. Buchanan and The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson and included the following:

MATTHEWS: We're back with MSNBC political analysts Eugene Robinson and Pat Buchanan for more of the fix. Pat, we had an interesting discussion, I thought, putting it lightly, with Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, because he has gone out and basically, apparently privately advised Congressman Patrick Kennedy, the son of Ted Kennedy, he shouldn't go to communion. Kennedy put that out publicly. It's really become a church/state fight here.

BUCHANAN: I agree with the bishop. He has a moral responsibility to teach and instruct someone who's doing something morally wrong, which is providing funding for the killing of innocent human beings. You asked him, you know, what should the sanction be? Should you really be telling lawmakers what to do? Certainly they did in the Civil Rights era. They said, look, I don't know how this law is going to be passed, but what is being done is wrong. Amanda Perez was ex-communicated for being against civil-

MATTHEWS: I'm not sure that anybody on the pro-life side-or few of them are willing to say a woman should be put in prison for getting an abortion. The word murder is used frequently.

BUCHANAN: They would go back to the 1950s. You put the abortionist in prison. If you put someone there, not the woman, she's the first victim.

MATTHEWS: How would that stop a person from-

BUCHANAN: It may not stop all of them, Chris. You can't stop all drugs by outlawing them.

ROBINSON: I thought I heard the bishop say go back to pre-Roe v. Wade. We all know-we're talking about the real world here. We all know abortion is not going to become illegal in every state. Women are going to go across state lines.

MATTHEWS: It's not going to be eradicated where it's illegal, either. Let's face it, there's always going to be a med student who flunked out of school who's willing to be an abortion doctor.

ROBINSON: The question you asked I thought was a good question. How do you criminalize it? What is the penalty?

MATTHEWS: Pat, I go back to this. Your hesitance to prescribe a punishment tells me you have a problem with calling this, in effect, legally murder. Is this murder?

BUCHANAN: It is the killing of an-

MATTHEWS: Is it murder?

BUCHANAN: -- innocent unborn. Does it meet the definition of murder?

I think it does.

MATTHEWS: Why don't you punish the woman?

BUCHANAN: If an abortionist does it, she's a participant in it, but I think she's a victim.

MATTHEWS: Great. Thank you. You're hedging, hedging, hedging. Eugene Robinson, Pat Buchanan. Right now, it's time for "THE ED

Pretty simple. If abortion is outlawed, it will be because legislators and/or judges have determined abortion is killing and, hence, must be prohibited, at which point 'killing' will have become 'murder.' Otherwise, the motive will have been to restrict radically the power of a woman over her own body or to expand radically the power of government to restrict an individual's control over that body. Few could be so cynical as to deny that a passionate belief in abortion as the taking of a human life would not be the primary motive.

The role of the federal or state government, in case of violation of the law, would be clear: punish both the professional who has taken the life and the woman who requested the act be committed. And given the likelihood that, with the risks inherent in conducting a proscribed procedure, the woman will have sought out the professional and paid him to kill her baby, prosecution of the mother who had been pregnant would be ethically unavoidable.

If Matthews had- as he has previously- merely pointed out the (euphemistically speaking) disconnect or the (still generous) hypocrisy of advocating the prohibition of abortion while unwilling to support prosecution of the woman, he would have been performing a public service, one far too few in his profession are willing to do.

But earlier in Tuesday's program, Matthews- proudly Roman Catholic by background and affiliation- discussed (video below) with the Diocese's Bishop Thomas Tobin this extraordinary lack of will. Call it "Nixon going to China" or whatever you will, but virtually no journalist, and certainly no politician, would deign to conduct an interview like this one (worth reading in its totality):

MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. That's John F. Kennedy, of course, back in 1960 down in Houston.

The bishop of Providence has been engaged in a series of sharp exchanges these days with U.S. Congressman Patrick Kennedy over abortion rights. Over the weekend, Congressman Kennedy revealed that Bishop Tobin, Thomas Tobin, had asked him not to receive communion because of his support for abortion rights in Congress.
Bishop Thomas Tobin joins us now.

Your Excellency, what do you make of that quote from Kennedy back in '60; "I believe in an American-in an America where no public official either requests or accepts instruction on public policy from the pope"?

REV. THOMAS TOBIN, BISHOP OF PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND:
Sure. And that's a good reference and a very famous quote, of course.

A little bit of a difference, though. I think what the president, the ex-president, was talking about was the establishment of a national religion. In fact, what we're trying to do is not dictate what the public policy should be in the United States from a purely Catholic doctrinal point of view.

What we're trying to do, most of all, is instill good human values, but also have Catholics who are in political office be faithful to the dictates of the church and the dictates of their conscience and the teachings of the church.

MATTHEWS: I don't see how you read it that way, Your Excellency. "I believe in an America where no public official, no public official either requests or accepts instruction on public policy from the church."

I don't know how you read that any other way than the way Senator-or then Senator Kennedy said it-no instruction on public policy from his church. You think he meant something different than what he said?

(CROSSTALK)

TOBIN: I suppose there are different ways of approaching that.

But the point is that any Catholic in public office, his first commitment has to be to his faith, not just for a Catholic, but for a member of any religious community. No commitment is more important than your commitment to your faith, because it involves your relationship with God.

And if your faith somehow interferes with or your job gets in the way of your faith, as I have said on other occasions, you need to quit your job and-and save your soul. Nothing can become more important than your relationship with God.

MATTHEWS: If you were a member of Congress-and I know you're a political junky, from reading about you and talking to my friends about you, Your Excellency-what would be your voting record on abortion? How would you deal with the issue if you got to vote in Congress?

TOBIN: Well, of course, I'm not a member of Congress.
But, if I were, I certainly would never be in a position of supporting any degree of abortion legislation that enables or facilitates or encourages abortion. Keep in mind what we believe about abortion. Every time an abortion takes place, a baby dies. I don't know how people of good conscience, especially people from a Catholic background, could take that position in good conscience.

MATTHEWS: Well, what law would you pass?

TOBIN: Well, I think laws that preserve and...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: That's what we're talking about here, Your Excellency, the law, not the morality of the issue, but the law. You're-you're coming down on Congressman Kennedy and on other public officials because of the way they're approaching the law. What law would you write if you had the authority to do that on abortion rights?

TOBIN: Sure.
I think I would write laws that pre-I would write laws that preserved and protect human life, to the extent that it's completely possible.

MATTHEWS: Right. That's the value. That's the value you support.

TOBIN: We recognize-right.

MATTHEWS: This isn't about values. This is about behavior.

TOBIN: We...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: What law would you pass? Would you outlaw abortion?

TOBIN: I think that was certainly where our nation would want to move, much like it was before that disastrous decision of Roe v. Wade.
I mean, that was a benchmark, as you know, that...
MATTHEWS: So, you would vote to outlaw it. No, I really want to get...

TOBIN: Sure.

MATTHEWS: We have to get down to this, because your problem with Congressman Kennedy is his position on the law, what the law should read on abortion.
What should the law be? What should a good Catholic, as you would put it, believe about the law? Should the law outlaw, should it ban abortion? Is that what a good Catholic should do?

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Because you're instructing people now how to vote. So, tell Catholics now on television how they should vote as members of Congress.

TOBIN: Sure.
Catholics should vote as members of Congress on laws that preserve and protect human right. I don't know that I'm in a position to comment on specific pieces of legislation, because, as you know, there are hundreds of them and thousands of them.

MATTHEWS: Would you outlaw it?

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Well, let me ask you a broad question. Would you outlaw it?

TOBIN: Absolutely, because abortion is the taking of innocent human life.

MATTHEWS: Right, I know. Right. So that's where your difference is with president-with Congressman Kennedy. He wouldn't outlaw it. Isn't that your difference?

TOBIN: That's a huge difference. And keep in mind that I didn't go after Congressman Kennedy. I didn't single him out. I didn't look for him. I responded to things that he had said when he initiated his first unprovoked attack on the church, and other things he's written since then. So I haven't gone after him. I've responded to things that he has said consistently.

MATTHEWS: You said that we should go back to where we were before Roe v. Wade in '73. So let's go back to that, if that is the prescription you're offering here. If you outlaw abortion at the state level, say at the Rhode Island level, or the Pittsburgh level in Pennsylvania, where you come from, or anything like that, then you make it illegal for a person to go get on abortion. So what does that do, in fact? What's the effect on human life? You want to respect and preserve human life. What is the effect that has if you say a doctor can't perform an abortion? Would you criminalize it? Would you put people in jail? If it's murder, as you see it, would you criminalize it?

TOBIN: Well, the first effect on human life is that we preserve human life.

MATTHEWS: How would it work? How would it work? That's one of the questions I have. How would it work if you outlawed it?

TOBIN: Sure. Well, again, I think it would depend on the specific piece of legislation that was crafted. And I'm not in a position-I wouldn't even pretend to be in a position to do that.

MATTHEWS: Well, that's what you're doing here. You're saying that Congressman Kennedy has voted wrong. Tell me how he should have voted. Should he vote to outlaw or criminalize abortion? If you say that a doctor can't perform an abortion, then somebody else might do it or they might leave the country to have an abortion or they might do it illegally. Some midwife could do it or somebody who flunked out of med school could do it. Unless you outlaw it, unless you outlaw getting an abortion, I just wonder if you're really preventing it in any way.
I mean, what would be the penalty for a woman getting an abortion in the world you would like to construct here? What would be the penalty for getting an abortion?

TOBIN: I have no idea what the penalty would be, because I'm not-

MATTHEWS: Well, you're talking about-no. But you're telling congress-people how to vote and what laws to pass. What law should be-

TOBIN: What we're trying to do-

MATTHEWS: No, no. Go ahead.

TOBIN: No, what we're trying to do-

MATTHEWS: I think you're intervening. I think you're getting into law here, and you don't like Congressman Kennedy's voting record in Congress. That's what you're really going after, where he stands on the law. A lot of catholics agree or disagree in every poll I've seen about what the law should be. They generally accept the teaching authority of the church, the magistar (ph), your teaching authority, your excellency.

Where the disagreement is where the law should be, what the penalty should be. I've never heard of anybody in the church, in the laity, in the clergy, or in the hierarchy saying a woman should be put in prison for having an abortion. And then I said, wait a minute, if you think it's murder, there's an inconsistency here.

And if there is a hesitancy to punish a woman for having an abortion, maybe that's instructive to you, sir, your excellency, because when you realize you don't really want to punish a woman for having an abortion, under the law, then maybe you should step back from using the law as your tool in enforcing moral authority.

Maybe your moral authority comes from the pulpit and from teaching, and a congressman has a totally different role, which is to write the law. Now, I've asked you three times, your excellency, to tell me what the law should be. And if you can't do it, maybe you shouldn't be involved in telling Congressman Kennedy how to write the law. You say you don't know how to do it. Well, you ought to try before you tell him what he's doing wrong. That's my thinking.

Because when it comes to the law, it's a secular question. It has not to do with the moral-we do a lot of things in this country we don't like, we think are immoral. But the question is, what sanction do you apply to it? And I'm asking you again with respect, because you are here on the show of your own free will, at our request. What should be the penalty for a young woman or a girl, even, to have an abortion? And if there is no penalty for it, are you really outlawing it?

TOBIN: Sure. And it can perhaps be different degrees of penalties, depending on the involvement of the person. There might be some penalty for the woman having the abortion.

MATTHEW: What would be appropriate?

TOBIN: For a doctor performing-

MATTHEWS: No, let's get to the woman. No, you have no idea, and it's not your area. And yet this is the very area you've transgressed in. You've gone into the area of lawmaking, and condemned the behavior of public officials who have to write public policy. And I get back to what John Kennedy said when he was under pressure to explain the separation between church and state, the difference between rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar, which is the law, and rendering to your flock and people like me what is right and wrong.

And I would contest that your problem is you haven't gotten people to obey your moral code through teaching, and you have resorted now to use the law to do your enforcement for you. And the problem with that is you are hesitant, even here, your excellency, to state for me now what the punishment should be under the law for having an abortion, because you know, deep down, if you said one minute in prison, you would be laughed at, because the American people, catholic and non-catholic, do not think it's a criminal act to have an abortion.

They may not like it. They may think it's immoral. But they don't think it's criminal. And yet you are here bringing the force of the law, the authority of the police, and the bench, the law, the judiciary. You want to bring it all to bear, including the Constitution, to enforce your moral beliefs, which are very valid, and I happen to share them. But how do you do it under the law, your excellency? And I'll give you plenty of time to do this. How do you do it under the law?

TOBIN: Thank you. And I appreciate-appreciate the time to try to explain it. I think it's not unusual, and you would understand this, I think, to have the moral law reflected in the laws of a land. We do that all of the time when we say that you may not kill somebody. You may not steal something. You may not beat somebody up. It's not at all unusual to have the moral law reflected in the laws of the land.

Now, exactly how that is played out, that's not the job of the church, much as we're involved in the question of health care. We're trying to establish some very basic principles about health care. We're not involved in the great details of the 2,000 page piece of legislation. And the same approach would be taken perhaps to abortion. We believe that abortion is wrong. It's a matter of the natural law and our legislation often reflects principles of the natural law.

I'm not a legislator. I can't begin to write those laws. My job is to try to promote the truth of the moral law, and to encourage members of my church who freely choose to be catholic to follow the dictates of their faith.

MATTHEWS: I-your excellency, thank you for coming on. I believe you expressed a hesitancy of the clergy to intervene in terms of what sanctions should be. Words like murder and killing are used in the case of abortion, but they do not seem to apply in terms of writing the law, and you've made that very clear. And I would urge you to consider the possibility of error here, because in getting into telling public officials how to set public policy, you're stepping beyond moral teaching, and you're basically assuming an authority, which I don't think is yours. Anyway, thank you very much.

TOBIN: Obviously, we disagree on that point. Thank you.

MATTHEWS: About the authority of the church. And I do believe that Jesus had it right when he said "render under Caesar the things that are Caesar." And as you admitted tonight on four or five occasions, you don't know how to write law. And writing law is very tricky in a secular society, in which you and I live, even with our moral conduct, I hope acceptable to god. Thank you.

TOBIN: Sure. I will reflect on that, if you reflect on the teachings of the church.

MATTHEWS: Thank you, sir. Very much your excellency. >

In the first half of the exchange, Matthews legitimately questions the role of the American Roman Catholic Church in asserting its will (some would call it lobbying, but it may not legally be so) toward the anti-abortion rights provision in the House health care bill. Leaving that aside, however, the second half of the interview revolves around the disingenuousness of many of the anti-abortion rights view.

Matthews asks Bishop Tobin:

1) If you outlaw abortion at the state level, say at the Rhode Island level, or the Pittsburgh level in Pennsylvania, where you come from, or anything like that, then you make it illegal for a person to go get on abortion. So what does that do, in fact? What's the effect on human life? You want to respect and preserve human life. What is the effect that has if you say a doctor can't perform an abortion? Would you criminalize it? Would you put people in jail? If it's murder, as you see it, would you criminalize it?

2) How would it work? How would it work? That's one of the questions I have. How would it work if you outlawed it?

3) I mean, what would be the penalty for a woman getting an abortion in the world you would like to construct here? What would be the penalty for getting an abortion?
4)What should be the penalty for a young woman or a girl, even, to have an abortion? And if there is no penalty for it, are you really outlawing it?

After asking roughly the same question four different ways, Matthews finally gets an answer when Bishop Tobin responds “Sure. And it can perhaps be different degrees of penalties, depending on the involvement of the person. There might be some penalty for the woman having the abortion.”

Finally, consistency- but wait. When Matthews himself responds “What would be appropriate?” the Bishop states “For a doctor performing….” Matthews, recognizing a dodge and realizing that Bishop Tobin doesn’t want to talk about the woman, interrupts his guest. Bishop Tobin is relieved and the interview soon concludes with the men largely agreeing to disagree.

Give the Bishop of the Diocese of Rhode Island credit. Eviscerated by his interrogator, he did not raise his voice, walk off the set, or become accusatory. He demonstrated considerable courage allowing himself to be subjected to a line of question anti-abortion rights politicians, let alone clerics, rarely if ever face.

Nevertheless, neither Bishop Tobin nor others of like mind plainly admit that an individual who seeks and arranges a murder should be prosecuted for first degree murder. That may be cowardice- or instead, as reflected in Pat Buchanan's reluctance "to prescribe a punishment," a lingering doubt that abortion is the taking of a life.





Next: the other issue Matthews raised.