After Super Tuesday, John Kerry has completed a near sweep of primaries and caucuses and will be the Democratic Party nominee for President; indeed by the polls of the moment (ever changeable thought they are), he is the frontrunner to be the next Chief Executive of the nation. It seems an appropriate time to cautiously and in the context of an appropriately thoughtful, faith-based, and intellectual forum raise a question or two about what this may mean for the Catholic Church in America, for Church teaching as it relates to public obligations and public policy, and for the reception of Church teaching by the faithful. Although little public attention has been drawn to his affiliation thus far, I suspect that John Kerry soon will be recognized, at least for a time, the most prominent Catholic in the country. As several of my fellow bloggers know, from off-blog discussions, I have been hesitant to raise these questions previously, for fear that it might be perceived as a partisan attack or understandably cause some of the diverse participants in this blog to bristle. (And in the interests of candor, I will confess at the outset that I will not be casting my vote for John Kerry in November). But knowing most of the participants on this blog, I am convinced that we can discuss it here in a non-partisan manner, while at the same time forthrightly addressing the potentially far-reaching implications for Catholic teaching and values as a meaningful influence within the American public square.
Forty-four years ago, another Roman Catholic was a candidate, successfully, for the nation’s highest office. In the course of the 1960 campaign, John F. Kennedy told the Greater Houston Ministerial Association: “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute -- where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act.” He later quipped that the Pope wouldn’t seek his advice on religion, and he wouldn’t seek the Pope’s advice on politics. As many have discussed in many contexts, scholarly and otherwise, Kennedy thereby effectively promised that his Catholic faith would be irrelevant to his public life. As Father George Rutler has described it, people may “think that Kennedy made it possible for a Catholic to become president, when he only made it possible for a Catholic who behaves like a modern Episcopalian to become president.”
John Kerry, at first, might appear to fall into the same mold as Kennedy, but in actuality, Kerry bring the matter to the next level further by actively opposing, not simply ignoring, fundamental Catholic teaching and values and by coming into direct conflict with Church leaders. In language parallel to Kennedy’s, Kerry has told the Boston Herald: "It is important not to have the church instructing politicians. That is an inappropriate crossing of the line for this country.” That Kennedyesque viewpoint is troubling enough.
But while Catholic teaching may have been irrelevant to Kennedy, Kennedy was not publicly on record in firm opposition to Catholic teaching nor was Kennedy ever refused the sacraments by the Church. Kerry, however, has been a visible proponent of the abortion license to the most radical extreme, not even willing to draw the line at partial-birth abortion, supporting public funding of abortion, insisting that he will impose a litmus test for Supreme Court justice to preclude the possibility that any state in the future may ever provide protection to unborn human life. On same-sex marriage, his position has been more ambiguous, saying that he opposes it while supporting homosexual civil unions and standing squarely against any meaningful effort to defend traditional marriage (not only by opposing any federal constitutional amendment but also being among the tiny minority of federal legislators that opposed the Defense Against Marriage Act signed by President Clinton).
Kerry’s own bishop in Boston has asked pro-abortion elected officials to voluntarily refrain from taking Communion. (While stopping short of actually banning priests from conferring the sacrament upon pro-abortion politicians, Archbishop O’Malley’s words have been most forceful: “These politicians should know that if they're not voting correctly on these life issues that they shouldn't dare come to Communion.”) When Kerry was campaigning in the Missouri primary last month, the archbishop of St. Louis went a step further and told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Kerry would not be permitted to take Communion in that diocese. Kerry’s response in an interview in St. Louis was that “what I believe personally as a Catholic as an article of faith is an article of faith,” but that he would refuse to legislate his “personal religious beliefs for the rest of the country.” (Despite this indirect suggestion that he might accept Church teaching on abortion as a matter of personal faith, I have never heard John Kerry express any public qualm about abortion, much less condemning it as immoral, or offer any encouragement for various non-political movements to discourage abortion and offer alternatives to women, while instead he has eagerly sought out the acclaim of and regularly associated himself with the most pro-abortion elements of the pro-choice movement in the country; if I am wrong in this understanding, I hope I will be corrected.)
Let me interject here by acknowledging that the other major party candidate, President George W. Bush, is perceived by many as holding views contrary to Catholic teaching as well. That might be a great subject for discussion on the blog as well, that is, which of the candidates as a package of viewpoints is most or least compatible with Catholic social and moral teaching. But it is a different subject from the topic that I am introducing here, which has to do with the particular implications flowing from a Catholic public leader who departs from the Church and the Church’s responsibilities thereto. In other words, from a CST perspective, Bush may not be orthodox either, but then again Bush is not a Catholic, Bush has not presented himself to the public as a person of the Catholic faith, Bush is not making claims about what it means and does not mean to be a Catholic who is also a civil servant, and Bush’s position will not be portrayed as a direct challenge to Church teaching.
Herewith the questions: How much harm to the Church’s moral witness on abortion and other matters might result from such a high-profile Catholic emphatically rejecting the Church’s teaching? What obligation do the bishops and faithful Catholics have to contravene such a concerted and visible effort to divorce social and moral teaching from public policy? In other words, if a Catholic public official openly rejects the obligation of every faithful Catholic on certain fundamental public-regarding matters, should it have any public consequence? Does the responsibility of the Church and its leaders to make a public statement or take firm action become greater if the politician in question were actually to succeed in attaining election to the nation’s highest office? In the least, if a politician who has separated him or herself from the Church by public deed were then nonetheless to present him or herself to the public as a practicing Catholic (thus attempting to obtain political advantage from an affiliation with the Church), would not the Church then be obliged as a matter of integrity to dissociate itself from that politician? And, as a pragmatic matter, how can the Church and its faithful people respond in a manner that is not in either in substance or in reasonable perception partisan in nature?
I have contributed a short essay on the recent decision in the Catholic Charities case. In my judgment, the case is quite troubling. In the essay, I focus on a particular aspect of the case, namely, the fact that the "religious employer" exemption to California's contraception-coverage requirement rests on a premise that "inculcation of religious values" is the purpose and function of religious institutions, rather than activism, engagement, etc. As I see it, the exemption is, in a real sense, an effort by government to define -- and thereby to confine -- the nature and object of religious commitment. The exemption's premises are, I believe, profoundly un-Catholic (for reasons that have nothing to do with the morality of contraception), in that they embody an individualistic, privatized version of religion.
For another take on the decision, surf over to the Volokh Conspiracy, where Professor David Bernstein has posted his own analysis.
By the way -- A few years ago, I advanced a similar argument with respect to tax laws' restrictions on "political" activity by tax-exempt churches. I don't have a link, but the article was called "A Quiet Faith? Taxes, Politics, and the Privatization of Religion," 42 B.C. L. Rev. 771 (2001).
Rick
Tuesday, March 2, 2004
I have not had a chance to read, let alone consider, yesterday's California Supreme Court decision regarding Catholic Charities and contraceptives (the text of the judgment is here), so if any of my co-bloggers have thoughts about the decision itself or the larger context of the case, please share them. What will happen as a result of this decision, both for Catholic Charities in California and for the multitude of other Catholic Church-related employers (e.g., universities, social services, hospitals) elsewhere? What is the current situation in the many other states where state laws already mandate that private-sector insurance plans cover contraceptives? I am less interested in the merits or problems of contraceptive coverage in itself, but very curious and concerned about the implications of this case for the relationship between religiously-affiliated institutions and civil law more generally. Any pearls of wisdom?
