The Knights of Columbus are “very encouraged” by Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s request that U.S. presidential and vice-presidential candidates sign a civility pledge developed by the Catholic charitable fraternity.
“I think it’s great. I think that this is the kind of issue that religious leaders should be speaking out on,” Supreme Knight Carl Anderson told EWTN News on Aug. 28. “These are the kinds of religious values, like respect for each other, that our religious leaders ought to be furthering in society. We’re grateful for Cardinal Dolan’s leadership.”
Cardinal Dolan of New York, the president of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference, in an Aug. 27 letter to President Barack Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, Romney’s vice-presidential running mate, asked the political rivals to support the Knights of Columbus’ initiative called Civility in America.
“Civility in America is giving voice to the desire of Americans of all backgrounds and political parties for more civil discourse during this election season,” the cardinal said.
Support for the effort means that the upcoming campaign will “remain focused on the critical issues facing our nation and not on personal attacks,” he added.
The civility campaign includes a pledge for citizens who ask that candidates, the media and other public commentators “employ a more civil tone in public discourse on political and social issues” and focus on policies rather than “individual personalities.”
“We hope that candidates around the country will listen,” Anderson stated.
He said the campaign aims to encourage people to “raise their voice about the need for greater civility.” Many Americans are “fed up with the incivility of this campaign season.”
The Civility in America effort drew inspiration from a July 2012 Marist Institute poll that found 78% of American adults are mostly frustrated by the tone of political campaigns. Almost as many think that the tone has grown more negative than in past election years. Two-thirds of respondents believe that candidates are spending more time attacking opponents than talking about issues.
Anderson said he hopes the civility campaign will also raise awareness among members of the news media about many Americans’ beliefs that “things need to get better.”
“We hope it has an effect,” he said. “It’s not just a Catholic issue. I think it goes across denominational lines. I think every religious leader ought to step up and say, ‘Look, we can do a better job in our national public debate of these issues than to focus on personalities and name-calling.’”
He said evangelical pastor Rick Warren has taken a “very strong position” by canceling plans for his civil forum for the presidential nominees because of the uncivil political climate.
Anderson added that while Americans relish “verbal competitiveness in the marketplace of ideas,” a line is crossed when prominent politicians impugn their rivals’ motives and engage in name-calling.
“I think that Americans expect that if a candidate is running away from his record or hiding his record or misrepresenting his record, the other candidate will step up and say it’s not so. And that’s a good thing,” he observed.
“But we need to be able to do that in a civil and respectful way.”
He suggested Americans should emulate the customs of the U.S. Senate’s “civil, respectful debate,” despite senators’ wide variety of viewpoints.
Anderson also sees civility and accuracy as linked together. The news media “can do better” by focusing on whether candidates are giving accurate, quality answers to the questions put to them, he ventured.
“I think that would help the tone of national debate on these issues,” he said.
The Knights of Columbus is a global Catholic charitable fraternal organization with 1.2 million members in the U.S. alone.
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I hope Cardinal Dolan prays at both conventions, the way Mother Theresa prayed at the National Prayer Breakfast. He needs to pray for a halt of abortion and the end of the HHS offensive mandate.
I don’t think anyone needs to resort to name-calling and personal slurs against the current president. His record alone speaks for itself. Romney should just skip the personal attacks and point out the obvious.
Where were all you guys when they shamelessly swift-boated Candidate Kerry in 2004? Or didn’t you consider that “un-civil”?
Maybe butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, but the US Senate hasn’t even officially considered a budget in years, bless their little hearts. (For you Yankees, “bless their little hearts” is a Southernism generally indicative of a wish for the opposite, but oh so civil.)
Just who’s side is Cardinal Dolan on? You cannot stradle the fence and defend both sides. You have to pick one side, the side that Jesus Christ would be on. The side of Life, Liberty, Morality, Marriage and against homosexuality. First Dolan invites Obama to the “Al Smith” dinner to laugh and share jokes and a fun time while all the while the evil one is there waiting to devour the Catholic church!? These are, and have been Obams’s intentions from the beginning and Dolan thinks of only acting as a “referee” to the Dem’s and the Republicans? I believe that Dolan wants “everyone” to like him and that’s including the left wing Democratic party. Christ spoke the “Truth” in love and that’s what Dolan needs to do. It seems to me that it’s the Democrats that have been spewing hatred (inc. Obama)now for almost for years yet, it’s both parties that must be civil? Speaking as a minority, I find it offensive that the left constantly throws out the “race” card all the time. This has also been Obama’s biggest charge, that the Republicans are racist. I would like to see Cardinal Dolan take a firmer stand w/the Obama and his Democratic party. If the Cardinals, bishops and clergy want us to defend our Catholic faith and stand behind them, they better stop confusing the laity and take a firmer/tougher stand against the party that’s been behind all the hate, the Democratic party!!
@stanchaz
“Where were all you guys when they shamelessly swift-boated Candidate Kerry in 2004? Or didn’t you consider that ‘un-civil’”?
The Knights aren’t saying “you can’t tell the truth” when someone is misrepresenting themselves.
A better question would be where were they when the Democrats, the liberal media and leftist comedians were, and still are, attacking Sarah Palin? Where were the bishops? Where were they when Cardinal Bernardin changed the definition of pro-life, which meant anti-abortion, to include so called social justice prudential judgment issues to “keep the pro-life movement from falling completely under the control of the right wing conservatives who were becoming its dominant sponsors?” (pgs 243,244 in a favorable biography by Eugene Kennedy entitled “Cardinal Bernardin - Easing conflicts - and battling for the soul of American Catholicism”) What was wrong with “right wing conservatives…becoming its dominant sponsors?”
I’ll tell you what was wrong with it. It meant the bishops and clergy would be driving faithful Catholics out of the Democrat Party, the principle supporter of keeping abortion-on-demand legal, if they continued talking about needing to get a Constitutional Amendment for the Right to Life. Thus, the bishops and clergy, themselves, would have to register out of the Democrat Party and stop voting for them; and, emotionally, that was too difficult to do. So, the bishops accepted adding “left wing liberal” issues to anti-abortion “pro-life” and called it “a consistent ethic of life” enabling Catholics to continue to be registered in the pro-abortion, Democrat Party, because “now their prolife doesn’t end with birth.”
Bottom-line, babies continued being killed - and the Democrat Party has grown into what it has become today, thanks to Catholics. Thank you, bishops, for making the mess we are all having to deal with today. Thank you for bringing this most amazing country to the brink of destruction all because you didn’t want the pro-life movement to keep “falling completely under the control of the right wing conservatives.”
You so-called “Knights,” really want to get “civility” back in politics? Register out of the Democrat Party and stop voting for them. Where were you when Senators Kennedy and Joe Biden were eviscerating suspected prolife nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court? Where were you when Catholic, black Clearance Thomas was attacked over a coke can? Where were you all the years Pelosi and Reid called President George W. Bush all kinds of names and lied about him and his party? Where was your Certificate of Admiration for George W. Bush when he never said a single unkind word to those Democrats who called him all kinds of names in his 8 years as President, even to today?
You know why Democrats act so uncivil and tell lies? It works. It keeps Catholics voting for them.
No, let’s not let “’pro-life’ keep falling completely under control of right wing conservatives” - it’s hurting the Party. And that is the real truth behind the reason for “a consistent ethic of life.”
This whole emphasis on civility seems to me a lame attempt to cast a favorable light upon Cardinal Dolan’s scandalous decision to invite Obama to the Al Smith dinner, all in the name of civility of course. The Church and faithful Catholics are being persecuted, and this is the priority right now? PLEASE!!!
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