We're All Responsible

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