Earlier this summer, Pope Benedict XVI declared the beginning of a Jubilee Year of Celebration for the life of St Paul, the evangelist saint whose deep anti-Christian convictions were dramatically reversed through the witness of Jesus himself. I watched the Republican Convention in the city of St Paul, Minnesota, hoping that the choice of that city might represent a conscious wish by the party in power to project a spirit of humility and repentence for all the trials that have been visited on our country over the past 8-years. On the final night of the Convention, Senator John McCain said that he accepted his party's nomination with a sense of "gratitude, humility and confidence." But expressions of humility by the other speakers on the party's program were distinctly missing-in-action.

Like Senator Hillary Clinton at the Democratic Convention, Governor Sarah Palin made reference to "the Common Good," a term popularized in the Catholic Social Tradition and much-discussed during this election. My old teacher, Fr Ed Reese, was the one Catholic cleric to offer an invocation for the GOP. These moments of grace notwithstanding, I did not hear any references during the Convention to the Gospel challenges of poverty, illness or violence in the world--eg. calls for meaningful assistance to the poor, concern for the ~50 million Americans at risk of dying younger because they have no health insurance, or the renunciation of 'preventive war'-- enshrined as official US policy in the Bush Administration's most recent National Security Strategy Assessment.

Having seen the angry abortion protestors at the Democratic Convention in Denver, I was impressed by how little this issue came up at the GOP Convention. I didn't hear the word 'abortion' uttered during a single speech. Although the Republicans were beset by a substantially higher number of protestors than the Democrats—people anguished about the war in Iraq and virtually every other imaginable issue--anti-abortion protestors seemed to be completely missing from St Paul.

Their absence occurred despite high-profile speeches by Democrat Joseph Lieberman and Republican Catholic Tom Ridge, the two men most widely mentioned as likely running mates for Senator McCain before the Convention. The keynote speech on Wednesday night, preceding Governor Sarah Palin's address, was delivered by Catholic former presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani. All three of these men share in common a set of views on abortion that are virtually indistinguishable from those of Senator Barack Obama, who has been savaged by Catholic conservatives for his own views. A budget crisis in California and a hurricane on the Gulf Coast preempted the opening night speech by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, another Catholic who shares Senator Obama's position on this subject.

None of the Convention speakers made any reference to the decision by the Platform Committee the week before to remove language that called for taking constructive measures to decrease the number of abortions in the US. Press reports suggested that the Committee preferred to stick with the old formula of advocating a Constitutional Amendment outlawing all abortions, because conciliatory calls for abortion reduction might decrease the effectiveness of the abortion issue as a weapon against the Democrats in the fall elections. But Senator McCain opposes such a Constitutional Amendment, and no such legislation has been introduced in Congress since 1983 (a bill co-authored by a Democrat).

On the same day that Archbishop John Nienstedt was welcoming Republican delegates to a reception and tour of St Paul's Cathedral, the "Republican Majority for Choice Big Tent Event" was taking place across town. I could find no press accounts of anti-abortion protestors at either event, despite new CDC and private data showing that abortion reduction has slowed substantially since President Bush took office in 2001. The abortion rate fell by 4.5/1000 women of reproductive age during President Bill Clinton's two terms, about 50% faster than during the Bush years.

Senators Lieberman and McCain were the only speakers that meaningfully acknowledged the economic suffering associated with deepening job losses, home foreclosures, and rising energy costs. Governor Palin made no reference to economic troubles in her speech. But after introducing her family at length, she did find time to ridicule Senator Obama for his work 20 years ago as a community organizer in eight Catholic parishes in Chicago.

On the Convention's final night, Senator Sam Brownback, head of the Catholics for McCain effort, made the one reference I heard to abortion in a prime time speech. But it was in a chant-and-response cadence, immediately preceding references to "winning in Iraq" and forcing Iran to give up its nuclear program. I heard nothing all week about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, or to the plight of 4 million displaced people in that war-torn country, or about the folly of repeatedly threatening war against the 75 million people of neighboring Iran.

TIME Magazine political correspondent Joe Klein picked up on the theme of Mayor Giuliani and Governor Palin ridiculing community organizers, with an essay that elicited hundreds of reader comments. One respondent focused on Mayor Giuliani's biggest applause line belittling Senator Obama, that "change is not a destination .. just as hope is not a strategy." Mr Klein's reader recalled a relevant quote in "Some old book stupidly suggesting hope might be a strategy: 'More than that we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.'" The author of that homage to hope was, of course, St Paul (Romans 5:3).

Link to The Catholic Spirit Newspaper, Archdiocese of Minneapolis/St. Paul.

Patrick Whelan MD PhD is the co-director of Massachusetts Pax Christi, the international Catholic peace organization. He serves as president of the Catholic Democrats, a national organization of state-based groups serving as a voice for Catholics within the Democratic Party. He is also a pediatric specialist on the faculty at Harvard Medical School.