The Sullivan/Scalia Position in Favor of Moral Quietism

I agree with Rick that Andrew Sullivan is over the top in his blog post attacking Catholic leaders for taking moral stands and applying them to public officials is over the top -- including Sullivan's warning that such stands "unwittingly breathing new life into anti-Catholic prejudice, and new force behind the exclusion of Catholics from public life in a pluralist democracy."

Interestingly, though, Justice Scalia made a similar argument to Sullivan's in his Pew Forum speech on the death penalty a few years ago, criticizing the Pope and bishops for taking a stand against the death penalty:

I do not think it would be a good thing if American Catholics running for legislative office had to oppose the death penalty. Most of them would not be elected. If American Catholics running for governor had to promise commutation of all death sentences, most of them would never reach the governor’s mansion. I do not think it would be a good thing if American Catholics were ineligible to go on the bench in all jurisdictions imposing the death penalty, if American Catholics were subject to recusal when called for jury duty in capital cases.

I find it ironic that the church’s new, albeit non-binding, position on the death penalty, which if accepted would have these disastrous consequences, is said to rest upon, of all things, prudential consideration. Is it prudent when one is not certain enough about the point to proclaim it as an article of faith – and with good reason given the long and consistent Christian tradition to the contrary? Is it prudent to effectively urge the retirement of Catholics from public life in a country where the federal government and 38 of the states, comprising about 85 percent of the population, believe the death penalty is sometimes just and appropriate?

Now I acknowledge that Justice Scalia's argument is that when you are changing the historic position, and not yet willing to call the change a bedrock requirement, then you should consider these "prudential" factors.  But the very fact that the Pope didn't claim his anti-death-penalty exhortations were formally binding is all the more reason, it seems to me, to encourage them as moral statements.  The Pope took a moral stand and invited others to join him on that path solely on the basis of his arguments, without suggesting that those arguments were ecclesiastically binding.   

Justice Scalia's logic seemed to be that unless the Church is ready to label a public moral issue as one of those very few that are foundational or non-negotiable, then it should make no moral statements at all on the issue that would be politically unpopular (and thus "imprudent").  I always found that to be a strikingly extreme position of Christian timidity (and probably -- though theologians can correct me on this -- a degraded notion of "prudence").  I'm surprised that more conservatives didn't criticize him for the argument; it seems to me that people let their substantive support for the death penalty (and for Justice Scalia overall) obscure the implication of his position.

Tom