Mirror of Justice

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Papers Presented by Nicole and Rick Garnett at the University of St. Thomas

Last week, the University of St. Thomas School of Law was delighted to host Professor Nicole and Richard Garnett of Notre Dame (indeed their whole family of five joined us in Minneapolis) for a two-day visit and to hear from each of them at two faculty scholarship workshops. Although neither of their works-in-progress are yet in general circulation, I wanted to preview each of them for our Mirror of Justice audience so that we can keep an eye out for them as they come to publication in the coming months.

Nicole Garnett’s paper, “Relocating Disorder,” addresses the growing practice in metropolitan communities of relocating governmental, nonprofit, and religious organizations that serve disadvantaged communities, such as the homeless, to a concentrated area. The stated goal is to be coordinate and serve the needs of the population without providers being dispersed around the city. However, as Nicole Garnett explains, the cities also plainly hope to “relocate disorder,” that is, move the homeless away from downtown areas that are targeted for renewal. As her paper puts it, “[homeless campuses, exclusion zones and regulatory sweeps all seek to relocate urban disorder from one place (where it is perceived to be harmful) to another (where policymakers hope it will be more benign).” As local officials fear civil rights lawsuits challenging policing measures designed to control disorder, they are turning to land use policies – such as homeless campus concentrations – to acheive the same purpose while taking advantage of deferential standards of judicial review for land use planning. Nicole Garnett suggests, however, that these land use approaches may impose costs as significant as the order-maintenance policing schemes that have gone before. While it is impossible to summarize the entire comprehensive piece in a few words, her conclusion is that disorder-relocation land use policies raise serious concerns about economic and racial justice and, moreover, are not likely to be efficacious in terms of providing governmental human services. The risk, in her view, is that land use regulations may codify the very racial and economic injustices that have motivated opposition by civil libertarians and criminal procedure scholars to order maintenance policing. At the same time, Nicole Garnett also offers a caution to the other side of the debate as well. Legal advocates who have challenged police order maintenance policies may wish to consider the consequence of such lawsuits in pushing local government officials to turn to land use planning as a less-than-ideal alternative.

Rick Garnett presented a paper titled, “Religion, Division, and the First Amendment.” Nearly thirty-five years ago, in Lemon v. Kurtzman, Chief Justice Burger announced that state programs or policies could “excessive[ly]” – and, therefore, unconstitutionally – “entangle” government and religion, not only by requiring or allowing intrusive public monitoring of religious institutions, activities, and believers, but also through what he called their “divisive political potential.” His point was not simply that government actions burdened with such “potential” pose a “threat to the normal political process”and “divert attention from the myriad issues and problems that confront every level of government.” More fundamentally, the Chief Justice contended, “political division along religious lines was one of the principal evils against which the First Amendment was intended to protect.” Chief Justice Burger's claim, as Rick Garnett clarifies it, was that the Constitution authorizes those charged with its interpretation to protect our “normal political process” from a particular kind of strife and to purge a particular kind of disagreement from our conversations about how best to achieve the common good. Rick Garnett’s paper provides a close and critical examination of the argument that observations, claims, or predictions about “political division along religious lines” should inform the Religion Clause’s interpretation, application, or enforcement. His examination is timely, because of the stark polarization that is widely said to characterize contemporary politics, and should also be helpful in understanding important developments in First Amendment law and theory more generally.

Greg Sisk

"Catholic Election Follies"

By Vince Rougeau

The National Catholic Reporter recently had an editorial on the election campaign and the rhetoric it has produced among some Catholics:

Issue Date: October 22, 2004

Catholic election follies continue

The election follies continue. Three cases in point:

In the opening paragraphs of his Oct. 1 pastoral letter “On Our Civic Responsibility for the Common Good,” St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke compares today’s United States to Nazi Germany.

Writing on the Web site of National Review magazine Oct. 12, Robert George, director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, and Gerard Bradley, professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, argue that “to vote for John Kerry in 2004 would be far worse … than to have voted against Lincoln and for his Democratic opponent in 1860. Stephen Douglas at least supported allowing states that opposed slavery to ban it. And he did not favor federal funding or subsidies for slavery. John Kerry takes the opposite view on both points when it comes to abortion. On the great evil of his own day, Senator Douglas was merely John Kerry-lite.”

“If you vote this way,” meaning for a pro-choice candidate, “are you cooperating in evil?” Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput asked The New York Times Oct. 9. “And if you know you are cooperating in evil, should you go to confession? The answer is yes.”

So, there you have it. Kerry-supporting Catholics are Nazi-like appeasers of evil, anti-freedom and need to go to confession on Nov. 3.

What to make of this hyperbole?

A few thoughts:

However much they stretch it (and, God knows, with the talk of Nazis and slavery and voters committing sinful acts, they are pushing the limits of civil discourse), Burke, George, Bradley and Chaput have a good point. Kerry says he “believes” that life begins at conception, but that he can’t “take what is an article of faith for me and legislate it for someone who doesn’t” agree. It’s a wholly unsatisfactory answer.

Articles of faith and matters of morality (“Thou shall not kill” and “ Love thy neighbor as thyself” being good examples) are, in fact, legislated all the time. No one is suggesting that Kerry force non-Christians to, for example, accept the doctrine of the Trinity or the incarnation. No, he’s being asked about serious public policy questions -- abortion and stem cell research -- that are also questions of morality.

You can read the rest of the article here

Vince

The Importance of Choosing Neither

By Rob Vischer

Mark Noll (see below) is not alone. Another one of my favorite Christian thinkers, Alasdair MacIntyre, is also taking the "none of the above" approach, and he defends his decision in terms of obligation:

When offered a choice between two politically intolerable alternatives, it is important to choose neither. And when that choice is presented in rival arguments and debates that exclude from public consideration any other set of possibilities, it becomes a duty to withdraw from those arguments and debates, so as to resist the imposition of this false choice by those who have arrogated to themselves the power of framing the alternatives. These are propositions which in the abstract may seem to invite easy agreement. But, when they find application to the coming presidential election, they are likely to be rejected out of hand. For it has become an ingrained piece of received wisdom that voting is one mark of a good citizen, not voting a sign of irresponsibility. But the only vote worth casting in November is a vote that no one will be able to cast, a vote against a system that presents one with a choice between Bush's conservatism and Kerry's liberalism, those two partners in ideological debate, both of whom need the other as a target.
Why should we reject both? Not primarily because they give us wrong answers, but because they answer the wrong questions. What then are the right political questions? One of them is: What do we owe our children? And the answer is that we owe them the best chance that we can give them of protection and fostering from the moment of conception onwards. And we can only achieve that if we give them the best chance that we can both of a flourishing family life, in which the work of their parents is fairly and adequately rewarded, and of an education which will enable them to flourish. These two sentences, if fully spelled out, amount to a politics. It is a politics that requires us to be pro-life, not only in doing whatever is most effective in reducing the number of abortions, but also in providing healthcare for expectant mothers, in facilitating adoptions, in providing aid for single-parent families and for grandparents who have taken parental responsibility for their grandchildren. And it is a politics that requires us to make as a minimal economic demand the provision of meaningful work that provides a fair and adequate wage for every working parent, a wage sufficient to keep a family well above the poverty line.

Read the rest here. (Thanks to reader Randy Heinig and Midwestern Mugwump for the lead.)

Rob

voting and political contributions

By Richard Myers

The Cardinal Newman Society reports, here, on political donations by employees of Catholic universities. Among the interesting facts noted there are that contributions favor Kerry by 9 to 1 and that Mark Roche is listed as a contributor to the Kerry campaign. I guess the Roche contribution is consistent with his Times editorial. There, he had argued that Kerry was really the pro-life candidate and was better on "Catholic" issues such as the environment and that on balance Catholics ought to vote for Kerry. I still, and maybe I'm just naive, found the political contribution surprising since the tone of the editorial seemed to be a reluctant vote for Kerry as the "lesser of two evils." I might be misreading the tone of the piece. I wonder if there is a difference between a reluctant, "hold your nose and vote for Kerry" done because proportionate reasons outweigh material cooperation with evil, and contributing money to the campaign of a candidate who is, as Greg Sisk has helpfully documented, an enthusiastic proponent of abortion rights.

What Catholics Want

By Amy Uelmen

For the past three years Fordham’s Institute on Religion, Law & Lawyer’s Work has coordinated a Faculty Colloquia on Jesuit Values and the Law School. Faculty interested in participating set the agenda for discussion themselves – this year they chose to focus on the relationship and potential tensions between individual conscience and religious teaching.

We kicked off this year’s colloquia yesterday with a discussion about Kerry’s Catholicism (readings included John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, and Mario Cuomo’s most recent piece in the collection One Electorate Under God). We were graced by the presence of Peggy and Peter Steinfels who are now here at our Lincoln Center Campus to direct the new Fordham Center on Religion and Culture.

In our discussion of whether the church perpetuates a “single issue” approach to politics, one of the most interesting observations was that the press could pick up on any number of Bishop’s statements – both national (e.g., Faithful Citizenship) and local (numerous letters and statements published in diocesan newspapers) – not to mention the international! - which outline the breadth and depth of Catholic Social Thought’s applications to the most varied political issues and questions – but generally it does not. (I’m not sure if this is a case in point, but I have been shopping the op-ed below for a couple months with no success…).

As we look into what seems to be a mirror of our Catholic community in the press, to what extent do the distorted images we see distract us from the enormously important task of seeing how the various aspects of the life agenda fit together into a cohesive and coherent whole? (I'm not advocating that we get back into the Seamless Garment Party discussion - because I think the most profound answers to this question will emerge from a respectful exchange between the different parties).

What Catholics Want
By Amy Uelmen

Roman Catholics are among the most important swing votes in the upcoming elections. Although in decades past Catholics have supported the Democratic party, the current landscape reveals profound discomfort with both parties. Looking to the left, and then to the right, many Catholics sense that no political party and too few candidates share a consistent concern for human life and dignity. At this point, as the Bishops described in their recent statement on political participation, Faithful Citizenship, many Catholics feel “politically homeless.”

In these few weeks before the elections, what political candidate wouldn’t give his or her eye teeth to be able to read the Catholic mind for insight into what this swing vote really wants? Not that it is any easier to generalize on this than on the eternal question of what women want – but it may be possible to detect a few clues.

What do Catholics want from Democratic candidates? Talk the talk. For those who believe that an unborn fetus is a human life, as Catholics tend to believe, it is jarring when political rhetoric fails to acknowledge that abortion is a profound moral and human tragedy. Catholics want Democrats to back off from a rigid and individualistic rights rhetoric that calls no one to responsibility, inspires no sense of community or solidarity, and can ultimately leave women very much alone.

Certainly a shift in rhetoric will not resolve the central tension – Catholics want legal protection for the unborn, and the Constitution has been interpreted to require less. But it might open the door to a less polarized approach to the problem. If Democratic politicians were to acknowledge openly that abortion is not a glorious triumph for anyone, express appreciation for the ways in which many pro-life efforts are deeply attuned with classically democratic social justice goals, and express their own concrete commitments to work toward a society in which abortion is rare, Catholics might even begin to see the possibilities for something of a common project.

What do Catholics want from Republican candidates? Walk the walk. To capture fully the Catholic imagination, it is not enough to express an isolated commitment to lobby for more restrictive abortion laws. For Catholics the “life” agenda is much broader. “Each person’s life and dignity must be respected,” – the Bishops have stated – “whether that person is an innocent unborn child in a mother’s womb, whether that person worked in the World Trade Center or a market in Baghdad, or even whether that person is a convicted criminal on death row.”

Catholics want Republicans to be broader, more consistent and more concrete in their work for social justice. Whether at the lively surface or imbedded deep within their subconscious, Catholics are inspired – or haunted – by the words of Jesus, “Whatever you did to the least, you did it to me” (Mt. 25:40). As Faithful Citizenship insists, “Our faith reflects God’s special concern for the poor and vulnerable and calls us to make their needs our first priority in public life.” Of course this special concern includes unborn children. But Catholics want Republicans to appreciate that it also embraces all people who struggle to feed, house, and clothe their children in order to provide for them a dignified human existence – in the United States and in every other country.

It should be no surprise that what Catholics want does not neatly line up with any political party’s platform. And to further complicate matters, in the church of “here comes everybody,” to borrow James Joyce’s phrase, one will always find a full spectrum of political perspectives on how best to resolve social problems.

So there is no magic formula for capturing “the” Catholic vote – Catholics will never vote as a bloc. But there is still much to be gained from an effort to understand how Catholic sensibilities may enrich our current political debates. In fact, by listening to what Catholics want, political candidates may even catch the pulse of some of the deepest yearnings in the electorate as a whole.

Russ Hittinger Weighs In

By Rick Garnett

Here is a guest-blog from Russ Hittinger of Tulsa, a leading natural law theorist:

A query for Kathy Kaveny and Michael Perry:

Perhaps either of you can take a moment to explain how a pro-lifer can
maintain solidarity with the unborn while voting for Kerry. Michael,
you can help with an analysis of just what “solidarity” includes and
how it bestrides issues of justice and charity. Kathy, you will have
things to say about the limits of justice in our fallen world. I know
that both of you will examine my thoughts in an intelligent and
charitable spirit.

Not a few pro-lifers worry about how to negotiate their disapproval of
Bush administration policies and actions and their rejection of Kerry’s
position on the life issues. Of course, they can take a bye and leave
the ballot blank at the presidential level. The pressing question is
whether to vote for Kerry as the ordinary means of expressing judgment
against Bush (for the war, the deficit, or whatever).

First, I will give you an outline of how I would answer the question.
Then, you can fire away.

Let’s begin with an example that I don’t think is inflammatory. The
peoples of sub-Saharan Africa are victims of plague, poverty, genocide,
and anarchy. We know that these things would never be tolerated in
developed countries; in fact, we would not tolerate them across our
borders. We also know that remedying the plight of these peoples is
not very high on the policy list of the affluent democracies. Most men
and women of honest conscience wish that it were not the case. But
mobilizing domestic and international politics is not so easy. Even
supposing good will on everyone’s part, the practical means for
remedying the situation are debatable, and the execution of policy will
be difficult. For one thing, there are other pressing issues
domestically and internationally. At the end of the day, however,
everyone knows that the Africans will come out at the bottom of the
agenda.

At the very least, solidarity with these victims requires one to
campaign for their interests, to take every reasonable step to insure
that their voice will not be lost or shuffled to the bottom of the
pile. Some times it requires even more, in the prophetic mode. On
balance, one does not break solidarity with the victims by taking an
incrementalist approach. Sometimes, we might have to say, “we haven’t
forgotten you, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.”
Perhaps the available political options, at this point in time, will do
more harm than good. We have learned from the Iraq war that “doing
good” abroad does not always yield the right results. In the meantime,
like trustees, we will advance your interests, and, as Christians, we
will pray for you in Kathy’s sense of the “vale of tears.” (I do not
disagree with Kathy’s effort to situate justice in a fallen world).

Sometimes, if not most times, solidarity with victims will be expressed
best on our knees.
But I would surely break solidarity with these people if I vote for a
candidate who is positively against any public measures (policies,
monies, police, etc.) to relieve the injustice and misery. Let’s raise
the stakes (and flammability) of the example. Suppose the candidate
holds that it is wrong for us to ever act in a public and corporate
capacity to relieve the injustice and misery. Let us imagine that he
or she holds that such problems must depend entirely upon cultural and
historical forces (“hidden hand” persuasions, occult movements of
history one way or the other), or upon merely "private" choices. The
candidate promises, insists, that he or she will support no public
remedy for the victims, either domestically or internationally. This
is not a case of saying that one will get around to the problem later,
or that, perhaps, we have to engage a long, incrementalist policy
culminating in public action. Rather, he or she says that it is wrong
to bring public resources to bear upon the problem. (Wrong,
constitutionally, morally, or whatever).

To be sure, I might have other reasons to support the candidate. But,
should I vote for him or her, one thing is clear. I cannot honestly
claim to have maintained solidarity with the victims. In fact, I have
voted (campaigned) for someone who insists that legal and political
remedies for the victims shall never be a rightful matter of public
prudence and policy. Having voted for him or her, I can get on my
knees and pray to God that He make history turn out differently. But
this is not the kind of prayer that I would want to make. Should I make
this kind of prayer, everyone should pray for me and my sin of
hypocrisy.

I imagine that at this point, you will want to change or emend the
analogy. Fair enough. For myself, however, I cannot see anything in
Kerry’s record or public pronouncements that give reason for thinking
that the lives of the unborn can be a legitimate public issue. I do
not detect any interest in saying, “let’s get around to this problem
later,” or “let’s build a culture of life that includes all of these
neglected persons.” I find no evidence of an incrementalist policy
such as what Kathy proposes. On the great issue of our time, the
dignity of human life at the margins of power -- more and more as
objects of technological engineering -- Kerry’s position is quite
severe. Indeed, it is much more severe than Clinton’s.

Thus far, I have spoken of solidarity with the victims. In my mind,
this is the main issue. But we should also consider solidarity with
all of the people who devote their lives to advancing the cause of the
unborn. They are vulnerable to political and legal prejudices. I am
often struck by how much they sacrifice, without the bubble of immunity
enjoyed by those of us who are tenured professors, journalists, and
think-tankers. How can I maintain solidarity with all of these people
while voting for someone who would enforce RICCO statutes against
pro-life protesters? Can I vote to make advocates of the unborn felons
in the order of social justice?

Perhaps, once again, I can get on my knees and pray to God that they
(the pro-lifers) maintain moral and spiritual integrity in their trial.
Perhaps I can pray that they learn patience, that they cultivate a
proper forbearance with regard to their neighbors who disagree, and
that they not act like mindless Republican activists whose mental life
is determined by “talking points” of the party -- but, all of these
things considered, I cannot vote against them. I cannot vote for
someone who would shut them up. Silencing the voice of the advocates
of victims is a blow against the victims.

So I cannot reason my way, or anyone else’s way, into a vote for Kerry.
That vote breaks moral solidarity with the weak and marginalized. It
cancels out the incrementalist policy. It retreats from the main issue
of justice in our time, which is solidarity with the humanum created ad
imaginem Dei, unto the image of God.

For those who believe that the Bush administration has acted
imprudently, even impudently, in the Iraq war and in questions of
international law, the choice is hard. Party discipline is not an
ultimate value. I am not sure what to say to pro-lifers who want to
leave the ballot blank. But I do not think one can vote for a
candidate who delivers the cry of weak into the “hidden hand” of
cultural persuasion even while taking every available measure to insure
that the pro-life position can find no home in common law.

What do you say?

Russell Hittinger
Warren Professor of Catholic Studies, and
Research Professor of Law, University of Tulsa

Faith-Based Initiative

By Susan Stabile

I recently posted here (see column on the right under my name) the paper I delivered at Villanova's Second Annual Symposium on Catholic Social Thought and the Law, entitled, "Subsidiarity and the Use of Faith-Based Initiatives in the Fight Against Poverty." The paper explores reasons faith-based organizations offer promise in the addressing poverty, discusses examples of succussful initiatives, and considers ways the work of such organiztions could be facilitated, while recognizing that there is still a substantial role for the government to play in areas where faith-based organizations can not be relied upon.
One of the points I made in the piece is that despite Bush Administration's executive orders and emphasis paid to their faith-based intitiative, no real additional funds have been allocated by the federal government to nongovernmetnal providers of social services. This morning's New York Times reported (p.A21, "Person and Political, Bush's Faith Blurs Lines") the recently released findings of a report of the Rockefeller Institute that the funds available to faith-based organizations has acutally been quite small and have shown little growth in the last few years.
--Susan

John O'Callaghan on Catholics and Abortion Politics: SacredMonkeys

By Michael Scaperlanda

Expanding on a theme he articulated in a letter that appeared on this blog on May 20, Notre Dame Philosophy professor, John O'Callaghan, recently explored the reigning confusion over how the faithful Catholic ought to respond when different politicians seemingly emphasize different aspects of the "seamless garment of life." In his October 25 posting (entitled Catholics and Abortion Politics) on the the Ethics and Culture Forum, O'Callaghan convincingly lays out the case for distinguishing abortion from the death penalty (and a host of other issues). He concludes by asking us to ask ourselves whether history will "judge us to be among the Lincolns or the Douglases of our own age."

Monday, October 25, 2004

We're All Responsible

By Greg Sisk

I read our good and gracious blog leader, Mark Sargent, as prodding us to change the subject, so I’ll make this my last post on the matter for now. I hope this message will not so depart from sensibility that another call of us “back to our senses” will be thought warranted.

Michael Perry in his recent message about my earlier posting expresses “great respect for [my] heartfelt decision--and the heartfelt decision of many other Catholics--to vote for President Bush.” I appreciate his words of appreciation, which are reciprocated. I genuinely do appreciate his thoughtful, gracious, and nuanced approach to difficult issues, not only when I agree but also when I do not. His voice for the proper and rightful role of religious conscience and expression in public life has been revolutionary and paradigm-shifting, for which all of us in the Catholic community owe a continuing debt of gratitude.

Nonetheless, although I feel somewhat churlish in saying so, I am obliged to clarify that I haven’t made the case to vote for President Bush. Instead I made the focused argument that it was seriously problematic, if perhaps not quite impossible, for a Catholic of a well-formed conscience and respect for life to cast a vote for John Kerry. The question would remain (for others to address, as I’ve said enough for now, and given Mark's hint as moderator, in other fora) whether, once having rejected John Kerry as patently unacceptable, a good Catholic then should vote for Bush or instead for none-of-the-above (or for a third-party candidate or write-in a name), alternatives of which Rob Vischer’s posting of Mark Noll’s comments serve to remind us.

In my postings, I have meant to emphasize our unique responsibility as a Catholic community, not only to struggle for the protection of innocent life but also to rebuke those who claim communion with the Church on Sunday but then set aside fundamental Church social teaching on Election Tuesday, all the while asking for our endorsement. First, I do argue that we should refuse to be counted as supporters, nose held or unheld, of the most extreme pro-abortion candidate ever to be nominated for President. Second, and more importantly, I submit that we should express our profound mortification, shame, and scandal that someone who professes communion with us in the Church has devoted his political career to waging the assault on innocent unborn life, opposing every modest effort at a ceasefire, much less a return to peace in the womb. We should be dismayed that a man with such a record would be rewarded with any Catholic support in his bid to be elevated to the nation’s highest office. We all as Catholics should be ashamed.

When one of our own, someone who claims to be one of us and in communion with us, rejects the foundation for any good society or concept of social teaching – the preeminent right to life – we have a moral duty to speak up without equivocation or apology. That duty is an inescapable and nondelegable one for each of us. As we have learned so painfully, if a priest abuses one of Christ’s little ones, we all in the Catholic communion are responsible. If the catechism of our children is so ineffective that the sanctity of human life could be misperceived by any congregant as a “doctrine of faith" to be dismissed as unimportant to public life, we all in the Catholic communion are responsible. If a professing Catholic seeks high office while repudiating the Church’s witness to life as the primordial right in any society, we all in the Catholic communion are responsible. All of us as Catholics should be ashamed.

A thoughtful law student who corresponded with me puts the point in this way: How racist would a candidate for President have to be before Catholics, even of the same political party and ideology, abandoned his campaign in disgust? I think we all know the answer to that: not very much. If John Kerry or George W. Bush were to betray even the slightest evidence of racist attitudes, suggesting that one or another ethnic group was less than equally human or lacking in equal dignity and character, good Catholics of conscience from all partisan and ideological perspectives properly would be united in condemnation. Well, then, how pro-abortion would a candidate for President have to be before Catholics similarly would be united in rejection? Sadly, as the essays and op-eds by Catholic apologists for Kerry seem to indicate, that point could never be reached. It is difficult to imagine a candidate for office who has been more addicted to the abortion license as a political issue than John Kerry, or who has served more loyally as a foot-soldier for the abortionists. And yet even he is not without those who would extend to him religious, even Catholic, cover, however much they sincerely may wish and hope they are doing otherwise. All of us as Catholics should be ashamed.

In light of those essays and op-eds, one can imagine the report made by the campaign manager to Senator Kerry and national Democratic Party officials: “See, Senator Kerry and Chairman McAullife, we told you that those so-called pro-life Democrats would come around. They always do. Oh sure, they have to go through the quadrennial ritual of assuring everyone they are holding their noses when they vote our ticket. They try to convince themselves that it makes no practical difference on the abortion issue who is elected President for the next four years (our pro-choice friends harbor no such illusions, which is why we need to be so very attentive to them – and Chief Justice Rehnquist’s newly-reported bout with cancer is further evidence that Kerry’s election promises a chance for appointments to lock up the Court in favor of abortion-on-demand for another generation and maybe get constitutionally-mandated abortion funding as well). They also argue that the best weapon against abortion is a good economic plan because the abortion rate might decline some (hey, our campaign message to pro-life Democrats could be that we at least are the party of ‘holocaust-lite’). But, in reality, these pro-life Democrats are only indulging in a little self-therapy of the conscience so that they don’t feel quite so bad when they dutifully line up behind our candidate on election day. However we get them, we always get them in the end.”

And so it goes, as it has gone before. Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Gore. There’s always an excuse to be made; always the hope that life issues won’t make a difference this time; always a way to claim that the balance of issues and qualifications justifies an exception for this pro-choice candidate; always a reason to surrender the principle of life on some pragmatic ground. The consequence is sadly predictable: more pro-choice candidates each campaign season, expressing ever more enthusiastically their support for the euphemistic "woman's right to choose," and ever more uniformity on the issue, even among Catholic candidates now. Indeed, there were three Catholics running for the Democratic nomination, two of whom had been eloquent advocates for life (Richard Gephardt and Dennis Kucinish), until they developed aspirations for national office and surrendered to what Father Langan calls the “unholy orthodoxy imposed by pro-choice pressure groups.” John Kerry was merely the worst on life issues among a pretty sorry lot. We all as Catholic should be ashamed.

Imagine for a moment what could happen if, instead of justifying a vote for an inexcusably repugnant record, the Catholic apologists were to expend the same energy and eloquence in explaining clearly to John Kerry and the national Democratic Party that while they want desperately to vote for him for so many reasons and because of his position on so many other issues, they simply cannot because he utterly failed the preliminary test of standing up for innocent life. Consider the impact that might follow for political campaigns and for the national culture if we all were to stand on principle and make plain that we will not apologize, we will not equivocate, we will not accommodate to intrinsic evil, we will not condone abandonment, especially by one of our own, of the most vulnerable among us. What if we all were to say, united together as Catholics in giving voice to the voiceless unborn, that we simply cannot countenance voting for anyone who has betrayed communion with our Church by persistently working to expand abortion-on-demand, undermining judicial nominations that might undo the absolute license to abortion, facilitating every request of the abortion industry, and refusing to take a courageous stand on the most fundamental issue of our time. Now that is a message worth hearing, and one that could not be ignored. Until that happens, we all as Catholics should be ashamed.

Greg Sisk

New Compendium of Catholic Social Thought