More on "Hello, Catholics"

As I mentioned a few days ago, Daniel Finn has an essay in the latest issue of Commonweal called "Hello, Catholics:  Republicans and the Targeting of Religious Voters."  Finn observes that "the Republican Party [won the last election" by a margin of passionately religious-minded voters who cite moral concerns as their chief reason for voting" and asks "[w]hy has this happened? And why didn’t it happen a generation or two ago? "  Finn suggests (following a recent Harvard study) that the answer has to do with "strategic extremism," "the choice of an extreme political stance designed to attract more voter support."  According to this study, at this particular time, it is religious voters who are most attractive to politicians considering this strategy.  That is, churchgoers are useful to politicans. Finn continues:

But are politicians useful to churchgoers? Has the churchgoing public’s large political investment in moral issues, especially abortion, been duly rewarded? . . .

Let us examine how this applies to the politics of abortion. For all the principled talk about the right to life, the evidence suggests that opposing abortion is a strategic issue for the Republican Party. Republicans have held the White House during five of the seven four-year presidential terms since 1980, and have controlled one or both houses of Congress through most of that time. Has the party ever really made abortion a legislative priority? [RG:  Yes, I think it has.  Remember, Roe limits what legislatures can do.]  The number of abortions has remained about the same under Democratic and Republican presidents, even apparently rising somewhat since George W. Bush’s election.  [RG:  This "ris[e]" did not, in fact, happen.]  Republicans remain perennially the champions of Christians opposed to abortion-without actually bringing about any change. (Even partial-birth abortion legislation doesn’t reduce the number of abortions; it just requires that another method be used.) [RG:  There have been many changes in abortion-related policy under this Administration].  President Bush puts far more personal energy and White House clout behind tax cuts and Social Security “reforms,” and it is hard not to interpret his tepid follow-through on abortion as a Republican attempt to retain the support of its religious coalition without taking substantive action on the issue.  [RG:  What, exactly, could have been done -- consistent with Roe -- that has not been done or, at least, attempted?]

For Catholics, the question boils down to this: How many decades of inaction on abortion would be sufficient evidence for us to conclude that political mobilization on the issue is a misuse of scarce ecclesial resources-resources that should be directed to support a wider range of goals? With the appointment of a new chief justice for the Supreme Court, and the nomination of Harriet Miers to replace Sandra Day O’Connor, it is possible that the new Court will overturn Roe v. Wade. But if the Court does not overturn Roe, will Catholics then decide they’ve misallocated their political capital?

[RG:  It is worth flagging the possibility that abortion is not, in fact, the only issue on which a conscientious Catholic might conclude the Republicans are preferable to the Democrats.  It is also worth turning the tables and asking, "looking back on the Clinton years, and on the Clinton Administration's policies and actions relating to, say, the death penalty, welfare reform, military force, trade, etc. -- was enough progress made toward these other "goals" to justify supporting that Administration's absolutist abortion stance and policies?]

Some will reply that unsuccessful efforts in support of a just cause are warranted, even necessary, perhaps, for living a moral life. But those who recognize that politics is “the art of the possible”-and that moral people can at times be badly used in the political process-may better conclude that moral responsibility requires accountability for a broad range of issues.  [RG.  Agreed.  But to agree to this claim does not require one to agree with Finn's conclusions about voting.]

. . .  Moral perfectionists take the position that if abortion is the most fundamental moral issue today, then striving for political change on abortion should outweigh pressing for change on all other issues. So powerful and pervasive is this mistaken belief that I would not be surprised if at least some of these moral perfectionists misunderstand this essay and claim that it indirectly advocates abortion simply because it questions the political judgments the church has made in opposing abortion.  [RG:  To be clear, I do not so misunderstand Finn's essay.  I only mean to suggest that Finn is -- without being explicit about it -- relying heavily on a claim that, on every issue other than abortion, the Democrats are to be preferred by conscientious, faithful Catholics, who in good faith want to live and vote in accord with the Church's social teachings.]

Fundamental values should, of course, be protected by law. But in our efforts to use public policy to do so, good Catholic moral theology and Aquinas himself require that we avoid the pitfalls of singlemindedness.  [Fair enough.  On the other hand, abortion is more than just another issue, and one might think that concern about our tolerance -- even our celebration -- of abortion on demand is not a narrow, "singleminded" focus on a particular, but more of a worry about deeply rooted moral blindness in our culture.]

Let me be clear. . . . I do not intend to take Democrats off the hook on abortion. They have too often sided with extreme voices, badly overstating the claims of individual autonomy. The point here, though, is to put both parties on the hook for the full range of issues that Catholic moral analysis addresses.

Finn concludes with several "cautions":

The first is that prolife Christians who take religious perfectionism into politics act irresponsibly if they do not count the moral cost of demoting other issues of Catholic social thought.  [Fine.  And, it is also irresponsible to overstate the progress -- from a CST perspective -- that might be achieved on other issues by demoting abortion, or to downplay the progress that has -- within Roe's limits -- been made by Republicans on abortion, or to overlook the Democrats' own failures -- from a Catholic perspective -- on issues other than abortion.]  The second is that while Christians may take moral perfectionism into politics, the politicians appealing for their support surely do not. Decades of political promises without discernibly different results for abortion under Republican and Democratic administrations should be treated as prima facie evidence of the strategic use of Catholics and other Christians by politicians whose narrow interests are served by allowing the current impasse on abortion to continue while appearing to work for a resolution. Statements of support come cheap; pay attention to results.

I'm sorry for the long post.  Finn's essay is well worth reading, and it raises important questions.