In an effort to show that folks like Michael Sean Winters at America magazine are not one-dimensional characters, I post his interesting comment on Catholics for Choice.  

In the midst of the various disagreements between the Catholic Left and Catholic moderates, everyone tends to be painted in black and white (I get that a lot myself).  Winters blazes in full color while taking apart Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice, for refusing to appear on a radio show because of some harsh things Winters had written about CFC in the past.  

Winters first apologizes for mentioning the topic of CFC at all:

Most days it would never occur to me to give a thought to the group Catholics for Choice (CFC). It is an unpleasant topic. Better to think about Somalia, or the stomach flu, than to occupy one’s mind with a group that seems determined to make a mockery of the moral tragedy which is abortion.

But Michael Sean Winters rarely holds back, as I know all too well, and what he has to say about the cowardice of O’Brien is withering:

What was surprising, even to me who holds CFC in such low regard, was the idea that Mr. O’Brien would fail to see that democracy lives by disagreement and discussion. I will go on the air to debate ideas with anyone except a Holocaust denier. Surely, it was not cowardice that motivated Mr. O’Brien to decline to appear on the same show as me. What was it? I think I know. I think Mr. O’Brien must know that I am on to the game they are playing at CFC, the game they exist to play. As someone who agrees — how can one not? — with the bishops about the morality of abortion but who sometimes disagrees with them about the politics of abortion, I am well acquainted with the line between moral authority and political authority. CFC exists to confuse people about that line. They are constantly raising an alarm that the separation between Church and State is threatened, as if a renewal of the Thirty Years War was the most likely thing to happen tomorrow. CFC displays a kneejerk hostility to anything any bishop says. They proclaim that abortion is a “personal decision” without acknowledging that such a formulation avoids, it does not confront, the moral issue. Still, even I was surprised that Mr. O’Brien would be so averse to the kind of debate and discussion that makes democracy possible. I knew CFC hated the Church. It was news to me that they have such contempt for democracy too.