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we are to believe the media, the Catholic bishops warned American Catholics
that if they voted for a candidate who supported abortion, their eternal
salvation might be in jeopardy. I don't think that's what they really said,
but, alas, the bishops generally have a hard time making clear what they
actually are saying. The media don't do nuance very well, and bishops have a
hard time conveying their intent in words that fit into a 750-word story or
a 90-second TV clip. Hence, they add confusion upon confusion, and many
Catholics simply dismiss them with a snide comment about the sexual abuse of
children.
Yet, let us assume that it is mortally sinful to vote for an abortion rights candidate. What happens, then, when the three New York candidates show up on the ballot next year -- Sen. Clinton, Mayuh Giuliani and Mayuh Bloomberg? |
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The only conclusion I can come to is that Catholics should not vote at all under those circumstances. Is this what the Vatican and the American bishops are telling us? In effect, American Catholics, faced with the New York choice, must withdraw from the political system? To many Americans it seems that the Catholic leadership is trying to use its political muscle to impose Catholic morality on that majority of Americans who do not accept Catholic teaching. Abortion, the response comes, is against the natural law. Everyone knows what the natural law is, and therefore abortion is self-evidently wrong. To which those who disagree will say that they don't think it is self-evident at all. Then the Catholic crusader will reply that if you don't admit that, then you are in bad faith and you are baby-killers. It is difficult to see what is accomplished by such an exchange. I subscribe to the position that abortion, no matter how nearly universal in human history, is morally unacceptable (as is infanticide, which was far more frequent). But I wonder if it is proper or prudent to try to impose this Catholic moral view on a whole society that does not agree with us, especially when we cannot even persuade most of our own people. Might it not be a wiser strategy to strive to persuade the Catholic faithful, four-fifths of whom do not believe that it is always wrong, before trying to make Catholic morality the law of the land? |
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While we're doing that, it will be replied, all those babies are dying, and we're letting it happen. Perhaps for the time that it would take to persuade our own, we may leave the embryos to God's loving care, the God who also must protect the vast number of embryos who spontaneously abort. However, we are not likely to convert anyone, Catholic or not, by apodictic ukases from men who have, perhaps irrevocably, tarnished themselves by the abuse scandal, men who are making a lot of noise to which no one listens anymore. Note that in this scenario, Catholics cannot vote against a war with Iran, the callous breakup of immigrant families, health care that does not reach everyone, domestic and world poverty and the death penalty, all of which issues the bishops in their statement -- insofar as I understand their prose -- say are also important in the voting decisions Catholics make. Let us assume that there are different candidates next November, maybe Michael Huckabee and Barack Obama. Does anyone think that the outcome of such an election could be affected in the slightest by a statement about abortion from Catholic bishops? No one who has studied Catholic attitudes and voting patterns over the past couple of decades could possibly believe that. Bishops have historically exercised political influence over the faithful that would not lead a pack of starving vampires to a blood bank.
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 A Stupid, Unjust, And Criminal War: Iraq 2001-2007 Father Greeley calls to task those who justified, planned and executed the war and reminds us that God weeps at the destruction of war, whether lives lost are ‘ours’ or ‘theirs.’  Order
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