September 22, 2009 11:05 AM
- Text
Vatican Advice For Conservatives
(National Review Online)
This column was written by Colleen Carroll Campbell.
The coming campaign season is shaping up to be as rough-and-tumble any in recent memory, and religious voters are once again at the center of the action. With Election Day less than three months away, Catholics of all political persuasions are working overtime to turn out the faith-based vote.
On the Right, groups such as Priests for Life and Catholic Answers are distributing voters' guides that urge Catholics to support candidates who stand with the Church in its opposition to abortion, euthanasia, embryonic-stem-cell research, human cloning, and same-sex marriage — five moral issues that are, according to official Church teaching, non-negotiable and always wrong. The voter's guides make no recommendations on specific candidates or political parties, but the Priests for Life guide urges voters to consider the principles of the parties as well as the principles of particular candidates. "A pro-abortion party will not normally allow pro-life legislation to come forward, no matter how pro-life the individual lawmakers may be," the guide says. "Do not just look at whether the candidate is pro-life. Consider whether or not, if he or she wins, the pro-abortion party will come into power."
On the Left, Catholic leaders are urging religious voters to concentrate on other issues, namely the Iraq War. By focusing their public criticism on the President, they are hoping to make the congressional elections a referendum on Bush that energizes voters hungry for change. A group of Catholic sisters meeting in Milwaukee last month made headlines by publicly rebuking the president for policies "that continue the war in Iraq, that violate human rights along our borders, that intensify poverty, that pollute our earth, and that deny our interdependence with all peoples." On Aug. 3, the name of death-penalty opponent Sr. Helen Prejean of Dead Man Walking appeared on a considerably more pointed statement in the New York Times that called for Bush's ouster on account of his support for "a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism," torture, "a murderous" war, "a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance," and attempts to curb abortion. Prejean later distanced herself from that last criticism —which directly contradicts the teachings of her Church — but she made no apologies for the ad's vitriolic tone and comparison of Bush to Hitler. "I signed the ad because as a follower of the way of Jesus and a U.S. citizen, I cannot stand by passively and silently as I witness my government wage such grievous oppression and violence," Prejean said in a statement published on her website.
So what does the leader of the Catholic Church think about all of this faith-based political activism? Pope Benedict XVI, like Pope John Paul II before him, has publicly criticized the Bush administration's decision to wage war in Iraq. But both also have condemned abortion, euthanasia, embryonic-stem-cell research, cloning, and same-sex marriage. And both clearly distinguished between acts that are considered intrinsically evil (such as abortion) and those which must be judged according to circumstances (such as individual military conflicts). As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict) wrote to Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in 2004: "Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. …While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia."
A war may meet the Church's just-war criteria or it may not, but much to the chagrin of Catholic pacifists, the act of taking up arms has never been denounced by the Catholic Church as always and everywhere wrong. The same applies to a politician's refusal to raise the minimum wage, allow unlimited immigration, or repudiate the death penalty in the case of a dangerous criminal who poses a danger to society. Policies and decisions must be evaluated in light of Christian principles, but the Catechism of the Catholic Church does not give the same unqualified answers to such questions as it does to questions about abortion or euthanasia. As Pope John Paul explained in his 1988 encyclical, The Lay Members of Christ's Faithful People, "Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights — for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture — is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination."
The coming campaign season is shaping up to be as rough-and-tumble any in recent memory, and religious voters are once again at the center of the action. With Election Day less than three months away, Catholics of all political persuasions are working overtime to turn out the faith-based vote.
On the Right, groups such as Priests for Life and Catholic Answers are distributing voters' guides that urge Catholics to support candidates who stand with the Church in its opposition to abortion, euthanasia, embryonic-stem-cell research, human cloning, and same-sex marriage — five moral issues that are, according to official Church teaching, non-negotiable and always wrong. The voter's guides make no recommendations on specific candidates or political parties, but the Priests for Life guide urges voters to consider the principles of the parties as well as the principles of particular candidates. "A pro-abortion party will not normally allow pro-life legislation to come forward, no matter how pro-life the individual lawmakers may be," the guide says. "Do not just look at whether the candidate is pro-life. Consider whether or not, if he or she wins, the pro-abortion party will come into power."
On the Left, Catholic leaders are urging religious voters to concentrate on other issues, namely the Iraq War. By focusing their public criticism on the President, they are hoping to make the congressional elections a referendum on Bush that energizes voters hungry for change. A group of Catholic sisters meeting in Milwaukee last month made headlines by publicly rebuking the president for policies "that continue the war in Iraq, that violate human rights along our borders, that intensify poverty, that pollute our earth, and that deny our interdependence with all peoples." On Aug. 3, the name of death-penalty opponent Sr. Helen Prejean of Dead Man Walking appeared on a considerably more pointed statement in the New York Times that called for Bush's ouster on account of his support for "a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism," torture, "a murderous" war, "a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance," and attempts to curb abortion. Prejean later distanced herself from that last criticism —which directly contradicts the teachings of her Church — but she made no apologies for the ad's vitriolic tone and comparison of Bush to Hitler. "I signed the ad because as a follower of the way of Jesus and a U.S. citizen, I cannot stand by passively and silently as I witness my government wage such grievous oppression and violence," Prejean said in a statement published on her website.
So what does the leader of the Catholic Church think about all of this faith-based political activism? Pope Benedict XVI, like Pope John Paul II before him, has publicly criticized the Bush administration's decision to wage war in Iraq. But both also have condemned abortion, euthanasia, embryonic-stem-cell research, cloning, and same-sex marriage. And both clearly distinguished between acts that are considered intrinsically evil (such as abortion) and those which must be judged according to circumstances (such as individual military conflicts). As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict) wrote to Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in 2004: "Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. …While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia."
A war may meet the Church's just-war criteria or it may not, but much to the chagrin of Catholic pacifists, the act of taking up arms has never been denounced by the Catholic Church as always and everywhere wrong. The same applies to a politician's refusal to raise the minimum wage, allow unlimited immigration, or repudiate the death penalty in the case of a dangerous criminal who poses a danger to society. Policies and decisions must be evaluated in light of Christian principles, but the Catechism of the Catholic Church does not give the same unqualified answers to such questions as it does to questions about abortion or euthanasia. As Pope John Paul explained in his 1988 encyclical, The Lay Members of Christ's Faithful People, "Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights — for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture — is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination."
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