Conscience and Democracy: Continuing the Dialogue with Father Araujo

Thanks to Father Araujo for his response particularly his citation to John Courtney Murray. I respond because I think Father Araujo may misapprehend my position. He makes a number of points which disagree with positions I have never taken (though he appears to think I have). I am sorry if I was unclear.

He says, “[I]f the Catholic candidate were to promote not the theological but the moral teaching that is of general application, I do not see a Constitutional impediment, nor do I envisage any prudential problem that would make the Catholic candidate unelectable for exhorting this moral perspective in his or her campaign.” I agree and have never taken a contrary position.

He says, “I would add that there appears to be little if any problem when people in public life, be they office holders or not, promote concerns about the environment, public support for educational initiatives, care for the elderly, and access to medical care, etc., that are also founded on principles from the moral teachings of the Church. Why should moral arguments dealing with abortion, euthanasia, or embryonic stem cell research be any different?” I agree and have never taken a contrary position. And, by the way, I have not offered a conclusion about the teachings of the Vatican on abortion, euthanasia, or embryonic stem cell research (though I have done my best to prompt a dialogue on abortion and embryonic stem cell research).

Father Araujo says, “I share Steve’s view that ‘the Church can play a prophetic role; it can be influential; it can speak truth to power.’ I also realize that the Church, regardless of whether it has internal division, exists in a pluralistic and often pragmatic country. But, this realization is no excuse that the Church and its members who exercise a public life must be silenced from participating in our national society when they speak from and contribute on the basis of the Church’s rich moral teachings.” I agree and have never taken a contrary position.

As I said in response to Richard, “I believe that Catholic citizens have a religious duty to act on their religious beliefs in political life and a moral right to express their religious views in political life.” As to American democracy, I said much “depends on why the person has followed the Magisterium. If the person has followed the Magisterium through an exercise of independent judgment accompanied by deference, I do not think such deference is incompatible with good citizenship or American democracy (though many might disagree). I do think it is hard to reconcile absolute submission to the Magisterium with American democracy.”

That said, it would never occur to me to maintain that citizens who engaged in absolute submission to the teachings of the Vatican should be “silenced from participating in our national society when they speak from and contribute on the basis of the Church’s rich moral teachings” even if there conclusions were based on absolute submission to Vatican teachings. As I said, I do think that if Catholics generally held to such a position that anti-Catholic prejudice would increase and that any candidate who stated that he felt an absolute obligation to conform his views to the moral teachings of the Vatican could not be elected. As I said before, however, I do not think that the test of the rightness of Catholic ecclesiology is whether it conforms to American conceptions of democracy. I am simply observing that the ecclesiology does not fit with American conceptions of democracy.