Time for a New Political Party

Rob's well-expressed dismay with both the fraudulence of Bush's "Catholic Team" pronouncements and Carroll's mixture of good sense about Bush and whitewashing of of Kerry's failure to contend with the implications of his faith for his public position on abortion almost makes me wish for a public square without faith-based discourse. But then I realized that today's faith based discourse is no more dishonest or degraded than what passes for public secular discourse. So, we shouldn't be singled out for exclusion!

Be that as it may, this election makes very visible the dilemma of many Catholics -- call us the Seamless Garment crowd -- who reject the Catholic Right's insistence that Cardinal Bernardin's linkage of abortion, war, poverty and capital punishment meant that we aren't really serious about ending abortion, and want to see candidates who reflect our encompassing conception of "life."I don't want to get into a theological argument here about the "intrinsic evil" concept of abortion. I want to call for a coalition of Catholics and others who believe that there is linkage among these issues, and who believe that the Democratic Party has impoverished itself and excluded us because of its slavish devotion to the most extreme pro-choice positions and its refusal to enter into any dialogue on the question of abortion. The Party thus has thrown many into the arms of a Republican Party that is fundamentally at odds with the principles of human dignity defined by Catholic social teaching. For all of Bush's "Catholic Team" bravado, he is wrong for Catholics, because Catholics care deeply about economic justice, a non-cynical application of just war principles, solidarity among rich and poor in both the US and around the world, and an end to a clearly unjust regime of capital punishment. We also don't believe that he genuinely cares about "family values"; otherwise he would not be constructing an economy that is destroying so many working families; his defense of marriage is little more than hypocritical homophobia. He defends traditional marriage abstractly while simultaneously undermining the material conditions that make marriage a locus for human flourishing.

There is a need for a religious voice in progressive politics. Such a voice inspired the abolition and civil rights movements, as well as the anti-war and anti poverty movements. That voice is gone now because the Democratic party has made no room for those of us who have even the slightest reservations about abortion and other fundamental Democratic positions relating to human sexuality, reproduction and life and death. So, if there is anyone out there who wants to join me in the new Seamless Garment Party let me know...maybe we can at least make some noise.

-Mark