In my earlier response to Father Radcliffe’s statement posted on this weblog, I quite deliberately did not take on the difficult, but perhaps unavoidable, question of whether and when the appropriate Church response to political cooperation with evil is to deny the Eucharist to those who exercise political power to faciliate that evil. My more limited purpose in that earlier posting here to the Mirror of Justice was to insist that passivity on the part of the Church about fundamental matters of immediate significance, such as the taking of unborn human life, is not a viable option. In that particular message, I intended only to challenge what I saw as Father Radcliffe’s endorsement of an “I’m-Okay-You’re-Okay” Church, in which everyone is a member of an inert family lounging around the house serenely untroubled by any words of action of the Church that might offend modern sensibilities. (As with any summary of a position, especially one extracted from a short homiletic polemic, this undoubtedly is a caricature of Father Radcliffe’s position, but I will say is the impression left not only with me but with other readers, as confirmed by my e-mail correspondece.)
In that earlier posting, I did not touch on, much less presume to advise what particular action should be taken or specific expression should be offered by the Church when those professing the name of the Church and presenting themselves for the Church’s sacraments nonetheless exercise political power to deny protection to unborn human life or otherwise transgress against fundamental natural laws. I merely wished to insist that silence or a pretense that all is well with the world cannot be the Church’s answer. Once we are agreed on that modest point – and those on this weblog appear to be in general consensus on this – the difficult question remains as to the appropriate response for each individual situation or category of situations that is both consistent with the Church’s pastoral role and faithful to its public witness.
So let me now turn to that question of appropriate action, or at least the propriety of the course of action being debated at the moment, which is withholding of the Eucharist from intransigent offenders. In doing so, I mean here to raise questions, while still refraining from offering any definitive answers (which are not ours to make anyway as the matter is reserved properly to the apostolic leaders of the Church).
The Eucharistic sacrament has multiple dimensions, as an extension by God’s grace of the real presence of Christ to his followers, as our faithful expression through partaking of our desire to be counted in the communion of saints, and as a symbol of unity within the Church. As philosophy Professor John O'Callaghan of Notre Dame reminded me by e-mail, “the question of reception of communion by anyone, politician or not, is a matter of Church discipline, not a matter of politics.” He observes that while the Church in “charitable concern for the faithful” ordinarily assumes good faith on the part of congregants and thus offers communion to all who come forward, “traditionally the Church holds out the possibility of denial of communion when because of the public character of both the reception of the Eucharist and the notoriety of the recipient, it would give grave scandal to the faithful.”
My colleague here at the University of St. Thomas and canon law expert Charles Reid further clarifies that, under canon law, material participation in the abortion of the unborn leads to automatic excommunication, not just from communion but all sacraments. This mandate flows from the unequivocal direction and urgent nature of the Church’s teaching on the preservation of unborn life. Thus, when a public official uses political power to facilitate the extermination of the unborn, the argument that Church discipline should attach – that this exercise of power is material participation in abortion – surely is a plausible (if not the only possible) interpretation of canon law. (I should note, by contrast, that however much some of us (and I include myself) might wish that political approval for, and most especially participation in, capital punishment should invoke a similar condemnation, neither Church teaching nor canon law has yet developed in a manner that would plausibly support imposition of similar discipline.)
In his e-mail to me, Professor O’Callaghan poses a hypothetical that should provoke us to consider whether the Eucharist is ever properly withheld and, if so, under what circumstances:
“Since the Mirror of Justice is a legal blog, perhaps a hypothetical is in order. I used to live in Omaha. The abortion clinic in Omaha, made famous in the Supreme Court case Stenberg v. Carhart, was across the street from a Catholic Church and its grade school. Now suppose Dr. Carhart was a Catholic. Suppose also that in his conscience he did not think that his business of performing abortions precluded him from receiving communion. So suppose further that it was his practice, perhaps from when he was a child, to regularly attend mass on a daily basis and receive communion. Suppose at lunch time, having performed any number of ‘intact dilations and extractions,’ he strolled across the street to attend mass and got in line for communion with all the other faithful, including as many children from the school who happened to be there for their weekly class mass. . . . What would the appropriate response of the pastor be? . . .
Of course this is simply an analogy. It is not at all designed to draw a moral equivalence between an abortionist who actually performs abortions, and a politician who legislatively and politically supports that abortionist. They are not equivalent, and should not be treated as equivalent. But that does not mean that they should not be treated in any similar ways. And with regard to politicians it is necessary to distinguish between those who politically and legislatively support abortion and those who tolerate it while working to eliminate it. The point of the analogy is simply to ask whether in general there is any public scandal great enough that the refusal of communion to someone is justified and consistent with . . . charitable concern for the sinner.”
Should the Catholic leader who seeks after political power and publicly promises that he would affirmatively empower the abortionist in his deathly craft be seen in the same light as the abortionist? Is the prospect of scandal to the Church and harm to the Church’s witness to human life similar? Do either warrant the exercise of disciplinary authority by the Church?
It may be tempting to avoid these questions by asking larger political ones, such as which candidate for political office given an imperfect choice is the best alternative or which partisan grab-bag of political platforms is most consistent with Catholic Social Thought as a body of thought. But that is not the immediate problem. Instead, the question is whether the Church in integrity can remain silent and inactive when an individual professes to be part of our Catholic communion, but seeks political advantage by aggressively advocating a course of action that is deeply antithetical to fundamental premises of the Church as an advocate for human life and social justice. It is the very claim of Catholic affiliation that creates the occasion of conflict from a disciplinary standpoint and makes the matter so poignant and painful as a pastoral matter.
As I’ve said, my undoubtedly frustrating point here is to raise questions rather than suggest answers, as I remain unsettled myself on the proper disposition. But I am increasingly of the view that something must be said or done, and something powerful, or the Church’s witness to the sanctity of human life will be seriously undermined. I close with the following link to a story from the Catholic News Service, which reports that Cardinal Ratzinger of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has indicated doubts about the wisdom of denying communion and has asked to meet with the United States’s bishops task force to achieve “a concerted and nuanced approach” on the question. Both the Vatican and American bishops are seeing an urgency in clarifying the issue.
Greg Sisk
Once again I'm struck by the stark difference in the public expression of religious sentiment in Europe and the United States. The democractically elected heads of state in Europe have repeatedly rejected the Vatican's requests to include a descriptive reference to the continent's Christian heritage in the new EU Constitution. It is obvious that those heads of state would be subject to immediate recall votes if they took that stance over here, as evidenced by the public outrage over Los Angeles County's decision to remove a barely visible cross from the county seal in the face of a (groundless, in my view) lawsuit threat from the ACLU. Of course, expecting countries like France to allow the collective expression of a particular religion's positive contribution to history may be a pipe dream, since the French won't even allow individual students to express a particular religion's contribution to the make-up of their own identities.
Rob
Here is an article, over at Slate.com, about Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's new book, What's Right With Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West. Here's the first paragraph:
"Many observers in both the Muslim world and the West say the real battle underway now isn't a clash of civilizations but rather a struggle for the soul of Islam that pits the vast majority of moderate Muslims against their militant co-religionists. Of course only Muslims can decide what their faith is going to look like in the future, but it is equally true that the West as a whole, and the United States in particular, has a lot riding on the outcome. It is vital to U.S. security interests that Muslim moderates rout their opponents, and Americans need to do whatever they can to help that happen. In What's Right With Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West, Feisal Abdul Rauf explains how both the American government and private citizens, non-Muslim and Muslim, can take the initiative."
Rick
Here is an interesting interview with Professor Sarah Gordon, author of the very helpful and enlightening book, The Mormon Question (dealing with the experiences of the LDS Church at the hands of the United States in the Nineteenth Century). Thanks to our friends at Times and Seasons.
I had occasion to use Professor Gordon's book for a paper I am working on, concerning government efforts to cause revisions in religious doctrine.
Rick
We've often discussed, on this blog, the difficulties facing believing Catholics who are engaged in politics (given that the "Catholic" view probably does not map neatly onto the platform and practice of either party). Here's an entertaining observation from the blog, "Evangelical Outpost," on a recent decision by a federal district court judge in Missouri to block deportation of a pregnant Mexican woman, noting that her unborn child is a "person", in light of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act:
"Pundit, journalist, and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan is both strongly pro-life (“I will use the Bully Pulpit to defend the sacred rights of the unborn to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”) and vehemently against illegal immigration (“We will stop the illegal immigration in its tracks.”). So imagine what he must think about this recent ruling:
A U.S. District judge in Missouri has temporarily prohibited the deportation of a pregnant Mexican woman who falsely claimed U.S. citizenship, saying that her fetus is a U.S. citizen and may be protected under the Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004.
I almost wish Buchanan were still running for office just so we could find out what he thinks about this dilemma. I suspect that either his head would explode or that he’d shut down like the computer at the end of War Games. Either way, it would be fascinating to see him tussle with which of his dogmatic priorities would take precedence in this situation."
Rick
Here's a worthwhile exchange on embryonic stem-cell research, between writers for the National Review (link) and the New Republic (link).
Rick
Thursday, June 3, 2004
The project American Catholics in the Public Square has produced a new collection of essays, American Catholics, American Culture: Tradition and Resistance. The opening essay by John McGreevey concludes with two lessons drawn from Catholicism's history of civic engagement in the United States:
The first lesson bears directly on the question Steve asked as to whether "any theory of constitutional interpretation that validates Roe v. Wade constitutes material cooperation with evil." McGreevey cautions that "Catholics eager to engage the issues of the day must not reflexively dismiss reforms or programs that seem to spring from suspicious sources. The anti-Catholicism of many American abolitionists, precisely because they held views about individual autonomy antithetical to powerful Catholic traditions, was real. But those same abolitionists also understood the inhumanity of slavery more profoundly than all but a few Catholics." Where possible, our criticism of the validity of political or legal theories must be a separate endeavor from our responses to the particular problematic (or noble) practices the theories are used to justify.
The second lesson highlights a primary source of the discomfort that many of us have with the bishops' pronouncements on pro-choice politicians and communion. McGreevey argues that "[t]he most effective Catholic witness to Christian values in the public sphere has come through placing single issues in a more systematic framework. In this regard I find Cardinal Bernadin's 'consistent ethic of life' compelling, and not, as is frequently alleged, a way for liberal Catholics to dodge the wrenching issue of abortion. Instead, such a framework -- and again the contrast with discussion about birth control is stark -- may ultimately persuade a vast, skeptical and largely non-Catholic public that the Catholic social and sexual ethic does not rest upon opposition to women's equality."
By appearing to elevate abortion as the singular determinant of an individual's standing within the faith community, the bishops leave themselves wide open to charges of crass election-year politics. I realize that the issue has in many ways been forced upon them given the religious identity and public positions of the election-year candidates, but the middle way alluded to by Michael may have been more within reach if the bishops had responded to the predicament with a broader acknowledgment and invocation of relevant Church teaching; this may have minimized the rampant cynicism that has greeted the bishops' narrowly focused and admittedly GOP-friendly pronouncements.
Rob
Last month's First Things, now available online, included a very interesting article by George Weigel on Catholic international relations theory. It's not remotely my area of expertise, so I leave assessing it to others who have studied these questions. Yet, I wanted to call attention to a particular passage that struck my eye:
Law is not self-vindicating or self-enforcing. Catholic international relations theory in the twenty-first century must take that into account in thinking through the relationship between “hard power” and “soft power,” and between the rule of law and the use of armed force, in international public life.
Being an adult convert, I come to Catholicism with the baggage of my Evangelical upbringing, which includes a strong emphasis on the Fall. As I observed in my article on Law and Economics in
Christian Perspectives on Legal Thought, the Fall of Man tells a coherent story about the nature and origins of human preferences in an unredeemed world. I further argued that:
To be sure, Christians are called to a higher standard of behavior than that of fallen man. If the purpose of economic analysis is to predict how people will respond to changes in legal rules, however, can we assume Christian behavior by the masses of a secular and God-less society? No realistic social order can assume “heroic or even consistently virtuous behavior” by its citizens. A realistic social order therefore must be designed around principles that fall short of Christian ideals. In particular, the rules must not be defined in ways that effectively require every citizen to be a practicing Christian. Christian visions of Justice therefore cannot determine the rules of economic order. Instead, legal rules and predictions about human behavior must assume the fallen state of Man, which is precisely what I have tried to suggest Economic Man permits us to do.
Even since I crossed the Tiber, I have been planning on pursuing the Catholic version of the Fall and its corollary perspective on the perfectibility of Man, but haven't gotten around to it. What struck me about Weigel's statement thus was its apparent consistency with my own rather pessimistic view about the perfectibility of human nature and the resulting role of law in an unredeemed world. Perhaps the baggage of my Evangelical upbringing is not quite as irrelevant as I sometimes think.
