Kerry's speech on values, moral truths and respect for human dignity

[ProSense]

Thank you. It’s wonderful to be here. For some time, I have looked forward to this opportunity to come here to talk about my faith, and the role of faith in public life. And I’m very grateful to Pepperdine—an institution explicitly founded to shine the light of God’s truth through the service of its graduates—for giving me this opportunity.

There will always be those bent on corrupting our political discourse, particularly where religion is involved. But I learned how important it is to make certain people have a deeper understanding of the values that shape me and the faith that sustains me. Despite this New Englanders’ past reticence of talking publicly about my faith, I learned that if I didn’t fill in the picture myself, others would draw the caricature for me. I will never let that happen again—and neither should you, because no matter your party, your ideology, or your faith, we are all done a disservice when the debate is reduced to ugly and untrue caricatures....

I believe these questions can be gathered around four issues where people of faith from every background can work together with other people of good will towards public policies that contribute to the common good.

The first and perhaps most obvious common challenge is to take practical steps to address global issues of poverty, disease, and despair.

Snip...

A second common challenge arises from the deep concern virtually all people of faith are enjoined to maintain toward sustaining and protecting God’s first creation. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians 10:20 says, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything on it.” The Prophet Isaiah (66:2) says, “has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?”

Snip...

A third area where we can find common ground is on one of the most emotional cultural issues of all: abortion. Obviously the issue of abortion has been enormously divisive, but there is also no denying there is common ground. There are 1.3 million abortions each year in America. Everyone can agree that that is too many and on a shared goal of reducing the need for abortion in the first place. And I believe our first step is to unite and accept the responsibility of making abortion rare by focusing on prevention and by supporting pregnant women and new parents.

Snip...

The fourth and final example of where people of faith should accept a common challenge is perhaps the most difficult and essential of all: rekindling a faith-based debate on the issues of war and peace. All our different faiths, whatever their philosophical differences, have a universal sense of values, ethics, and moral truths that honor and respect the dignity of all human beings. They all agree on a form of the Golden Rule and the Supreme importance of charity and compassion.

http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=4212

Full text also here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/18/AR2006091801046.html

[blm]

1. This sounds like Dennis Kucinich could have made this speech. It speaks

to the values I grew up with in MY early Catholic years that evolved into the liberal worldview I have today.

I have been an atheist since 1994. I am never offended by anyone's articles of faith until they use them to beat at whole sections of humanity.

Faith that urges the best in human beings' actions towards each other gets a big thumbs up from me.

[ProSense]

2. This is one of his greatest speeches.

The flame of intolerance is being fanned by people who claim God as their own, and declare the rest of us sinners.

One only need look at the today's news to realize that something has gone drastically wrong, including a U.S. president who claims Jesus as his prophet, yet sanctioned torture!

[karynnj]

3. I loved his comments on war and religion

Both for what it said and because it contained things he has always said now framed in this spiritual framework. How many of these words has he said since 2002:

"For me, the just war criteria with respect to Iraq are very clear: sometimes a President has to use force to fight an enemy bent on using weapons of mass destruction to slaughter innocents. But no President should ever go to war because they want to—you go to war only because you have to. The words “last resort” have to mean something .

In Iraq, those words were rendered hollow. It was wrong to prosecute the war without careful diplomacy that assembled a real coalition. Wrong to prosecute war without a plan to win the peace and avoid the chaos of looting in Baghdad and streets full of raw sewage. Wrong to prosecute a war without considering the violence it would unleash and what it would do to the lives of innocent people who would be in danger."

In 2004, I thought he was speaking of "just war" in several comments. His comments on taking care of those in need sound extremely like what I heard when we looked at a Jesuit college with a daughter and they explained the Jesuit concept of Social justice.

I am amazed, but not surprised that he could articulate such a detailed intellectual spiritual framework. In some ways it isn't suprising. Even in 1971, he used many words and phrases that come from a religious moral background. The seriousness does make the point others on DU have made that the use of the word "immoral" is important, you can't go back from it - there are some who could use the word casually or for effect, Kerry is not among them.