Mirror of Justice

Thanks to Michael for linking to Eduardo’s piece in Commonweal.  At the risk of being thought by my friend Eduardo to be a “Republican partisan within the Church” or a “Republican Party apologist” – and making clear my view that faithful Catholics can, in good conscience and without being mere “apologist[s]” or “partisans,” disagree about how or for whom to vote – I have to say that I think Eduardo’s arguments are, in places, flawed.

Eduardo writes, “Republican partisans within the church have typically zeroed in on four controversial issues: gay marriage, euthanasia, stem-cell research, and abortion.”  This is, I suppose, “typically” true.  That said, a faithful Catholic might also believe that the Republican positions are strongly to be preferred on, for example, religious-freedom and education-reform questions.  (Indeed, the Church’s social teaching would seem to speak quite clearly on the question of school choice.)  Such a Catholic could easily conclude that an Executive Branch staffed by a Republican president, or a Congress in which Republicans hold the majority, is more likely to be friendly to religion in the public square and to, for example, conscience-based exemptions from general laws for religious believers and institutions.  Certainly, such a Catholic can (and should) regard the Democratic Party's position on school choice as inappropriately attentive to the narrow interests of teacher unions, and insufficiently attentive to social-justice concerns and low-income children's well-being.

Eduardo contends, “[o]n gay marriage, the parties don’t differ all that much; the Democratic Party’s most recent platform, for example, stops well short of endorsing homosexual nuptials.  On stem-cell research, Republicans generally oppose federal funding while Democrats typically support it, but there are dissenters in both parties, neither of which has called for its outright prohibition. Finally, physician-assisted suicide has been legalized in only one state and is more of a cultural bogeyman than a live political issue. That leaves abortion to do the heavy lifting for Republican activists who are trying to capture the Catholic vote.”  It seems clear to me, though, that morally questionable research is far more likely to be supported, and celebrated, if the Executive Branch is staffed by a Democratic President or if Democrats hold a majority in the Congress.  It is true that (thankfully) the euthanasia movement appears to have stalled but – as the recent dust-up involving the Attorney General’s effort to ban the lethal drug used in

Oregon

for euthanasia shows – this does not mean that there are not live end-of-life issues on which the two parties differ.

I do not believe it is the case that the “logic” of a Catholic who, given all the givens, supports Republicans – or, as Eduardo calls this person, a “Republican Party apologists” – is that “the issues where traditionally Democratic policy positions have tended to reflect church teaching-economic justice, the death penalty, war, environmental protection, and others-are issues for which the church’s positions are flexible, making policy disagreements permissible even among those who accept Catholic principles.”  That is, while such a Catholic probably does think that, on these matters (unlike abortion), the Church’s teaching calls for the exercise of prudential judgments, I doubt that he or she needs to concede that the Democratic policy positions on all these issues actually do reflect Catholic teaching more faithfully than do Republican policy positions.  (I am happy to concede, though, that they sometimes do, and sometimes have.)

Eduardo says that “certain aspects of the church’s just-war doctrine as well as what we are taught about the evil of poverty are . . . just as unambiguous as the condemnation of abortion” and that the “George/Bradley argument [for the priority of the abortion issue] would render irrelevant the entire breadth of the church’s social teaching.”  But, that the Church teaches poverty and unjust wars are evil does not, it seems to me, yield definitive answers on particular questions of policy (e.g., is this armed-conflict just?  Is this measure a good way of operationalizing our obligations to the poor?) in the way that the Church’s teaching on abortion does.  And, as we have discussed before, one might want to factor in the extent to which the Democratic Party, at present, tends to regard abortion as not only tolerable, but as necessarily connected to moral claims about autonomy, while the Republican Party, one might conclude, at least purports to endorse the idea that, say, armed conflicts must be morally justified.

With respect to President Bush’s alleged “failure to take extraordinary steps during his six years in office to put an immediate end to the slaughter” and the claim that his failure “makes him nearly as culpable as prochoice politicians,” I think I have, in other posts, explained as well as I can why the claim, in my view, is not very powerful.

Regarding judges:  Eduardo writes, “since abortion is a fundamental constitutional right protected by the courts, the election of antiabortion politicians is not likely to have a tremendous effect on the number of abortions performed. Even more tenuous is the argument that Catholics should vote Republican because Republicans will appoint antiabortion justices to the Supreme Court.”  This latter argument is, in my view, hardly tenuous.  The five Justices who will, we can expect, vote to uphold the ban on partial-birth abortion were appointed by Reagan or post-Reagan Justices (Republican presidents before Reagan never purported to be pro-life.)  Judges appointed to the federal courts (who are able, notwithstanding Roe and Casey, to improve the law by upholding reasonable regulations even under the undue-burden rule) by Republicans are far more likely to believe that abortion may be reasonably regulated.  More generally, I cannot accept the idea that, because the Democratic Party has made it an unmovable, foundational commitment that the Roe / Casey regime, which insulates abortion from democracy, must be preserved, pro-life Catholics should therefore vote for the Democratic Party, rather than for the Party that (Souter notwithstanding) is willing to take steps to ameliorate that regime.

With respect to Eduardo’s statement that “the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress have time and again made decisions that run directly counter to that teaching.”  Insofar as Eduardo is talking about the war in

Iraq

, it seems relevant that the Democratic Party did not oppose at the time, and even now does not oppose with one voice, that war.

On the treatment of detainees, I share Eduardo’s view that it is categorically immoral and unjustifiable to torture detained terror suspects.

I appreciate Eduardo’s recognition that, on questions of economic justice, “Catholic social teaching does not prescribe any one economic system or policy. Still, it does provide unambiguous guidance concerning the values by which economic decisions must be made, offering clear instructions as to which factors must be given the greatest weight.”  We agree that “intentions matter.”  That said, I believe that Eduardo is insufficiently open to the possibility that faithful Catholics, who are as informed about economics as he is and who endorse with no less sincerity than he does the preferential option for the poor, who are neither “incredibly naïve” nor “willfully blind”, to believe   really do believe that, on balance and all things considered, most “Republican” policies are better for the common good than most “Democratic ones.”  (That said, it seems to me that one would have to be “incredibly naïve” to think that the economic policies of the Clinton Administration were crafted – or that the policies of the Warner or H. Clinton Administration would be crafted -- always with an intention of operationalizing the preferential option for the poor.)   

Eduardo and I agree that “most Republicans are not racists” (neither are “most” Democratis).  This is one reason, of course, by the treatment by so many on the left of Justice Clarence Thomas is so offensive.  It is wrong to pander, as Republicans have done (and as Democrats have done in, for example, the

Newark

mayoral race or the

Louisiana

governor’s race, against Bobby Jindal), to voters’ racism.  It is not racist, though, to express doubts about, say, race-based affirmative action and it is, perhaps, quite cynical for Democrats to cast some Republicans’ doubts about affirmative action as reflecting racism.

With respect to environmental stewardship, I would note only that environmental policies involve cost-benefit analyses and trade-offs, and require us – no less than labor policy – to think about the impact of proposed regulations and taxes on the poor. 

Finally, we all agree that our votes ought not to reflect a “narrow fixation on abortion," or on anything else.  That said, and as the bishops have said clearly, we ought not to regard abortion as merely one issue among many, either.

Thanks to Eduardo for the provocative piece, which I regard as reflecting the decisionmaking of a faithful Catholic, and not merely the advocacy of a Democratic "partisan" or "apologist."