About a week ago, I was alerted to a recent sermon by the Bishop of St. Louis, the purport of which was: vote for McCain or roast in hell (full text here: http://www.stlouisreview.com/article.php?id=16208). He contended that this election (like all elections, as I believe he thinks) is a referendum on abortion, and that Catholics, in order to remain in communion with the source of salvation, must publicly declare their opposition to abortion by supporting the Republican party. I didn’t think too much of this sermon, until I saw a few conservative Catholic blogs link to it with approval. I thought to myself, “How could any thinking person, especially a young person, support this kind of thinking?” Then I heard from a friend that the priest at the mass she attended last Sunday invited any people considering voting Democratic not to take communion!
I want to write something, I thought, which can explain to 1) how there can be Catholics who do not desire to criminalize abortion; 2) how there can be Catholics who do not always support Republican candidates in elections. Pro-life Catholics need such an explanation in order to understand that they do not have a monopoly on God’s wisdom, and pro-choice Catholics need an explanation to be able to explain their own intuitions to others.
First, let us concede the fact that abortion is morally wrong. I will discuss this further in another article, but let us start from the standpoint that abortion is evil and should be stopped. It is a sin.
Beginning from that viewpoint, however, it is not immediately clear that the Catholic response should be to make abortion illegal. Law is, very simply, not the immediate Christian response to sin. I am almost embarrassed to appeal to Paul here – as I imagine every Catholic knows, almost his entire ministry was an assault on Law. “My brethren, you have died to the law through the body of Christ” (Romans 7:4). “He has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances” (Ephesians 2:14-5). “For I through the law died to the law, so I might live in God” (Galatians 2:19). “For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse” (Galatians 3:10). “If you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law” (Galatians 5:18). I could produce many more quotations, but this is enough to prove Paul’s vehemence on this point. The idea, of course, is not to give oneself up to immorality, freed from any constraint; nor is this merely an attack on Judaism – I can call on any Pauline scholar to back me up on that. The idea is to be filled with God so much that good behavior is not a duty but your actual inclination and joy – because without that Spirit, as Paul says again and again, you will never be able to obey the law anyway.
Consequently, the early Church was not involved in campaigns to repeal or alter Roman laws. Paul was a great saint and as a Roman citizen entitled to vote, but he never mentions the elections. The primary focus was on God, and the secondary focus was on what you do; making laws for other people to obey was way down the list. This should still be the main work of the Church. This is, I think, what most Catholics expect from their pastors: the “culture war” material can be a portion of the message, but the primary focus has to be falling in love with God first – godly behavior will follow, and the laws will take care of themselves, if our society consists of masses of people who truly know God.
Let us take adultery. We agree it is wrong. We agree it is a sin. It is probable that incidences of adultery can be decreased if there are civil penalties. Yet we have the Gospel declaring that the Lord himself prevented, by his words and example, the punishment of a woman taken in adultery! Again, this points to an entirely different role for the Church of God: the Good News is not about Crime and Punishment. “‘Vengeance is mine,’ saith the Lord; ‘I will repay.’” “In Christ Jesus there is no condemnation.” Criminalization is not a typical Gospel response to social problems.
But let us say that as members of a democracy as well as Catholics, we have to take a share in the formation of the laws, and that we cannot abandon this responsibility. Paul himself looked the other way when it came to slavery, but we today like to think of ourselves as better than men like Paul (always dangerous, but that is how most people think today). Still, even if we take part in the formation of the laws, it is rational to think that there are sins – even mortal sins, the type which will send people to hell – which the government has no place legislating or punishing. The basic premise is that conceding such broad legislative and punitive powers to a central authority tends to create more social problems than it solves. The Augustinian wisdom that the sons of Adam and Eve are likely to abuse great concentrations of power has created, in the West, a long tradition of limited government. There is a trade-off here. Limited government means tolerating sin. Even the most totalitarian government tolerates pride, or gluttony, or avarice, or hatred – though these sins kill far more than abortion or murder. Christianity was born in the cradle of limited government, the Mediterranean, and it is the Christian countries that have most espoused this idea – even the theorists behind the divine-right kings of the Gothic era gave civil law only a small place in God’s plan for humanity. Limited government goes well with the Gospel. Government will do what it must to create order, but not take upon itself God’s work of evaluating men’s souls. Limited government lets God work even through men’s mistakes, “so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven: for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). If that is so, who are we to judge? Tolerance and nonjudgement – the foundations of limited government – were also part of Christ’s Gospel.
Let me reiterate: limited government is consonant with the Gospel. And limited government means tolerating sin.
That deals with the general, philosophical situation. There are literally millions of Catholics who agree with one or both of the two main arguments above, and believe that they are reason enough not to make abortion the primary focus of Catholic witness to the Gospel. Now let us look at the particulars of the American situation.
The first thing to note is that the attainment of the pro-life movements’ goals will not constitute an overwhelming social transformation. Criminalizing abortion in America will not mean that the practice will cease. First, it will move to other localities; then, even if it is outlawed throughout the world, abortions will occur illegally. This is the reason why the Christian response has to be fuller than criminalization.
But there is no doubt that criminalization will reduce the number of abortions, and if that is the only Christian goal, then it is worthy. But there are other ways to reduce the number of abortions which also involve the ministry to souls and real preaching of the Gospel: adopting, loving, and cherishing orphans; parenting and mentoring young men and women in the sacredness of their sexuality; embracing a Gospel that allows people to transcend success-culture (which looks upon children as a thwarting of a woman’s career) and to be confident that no one will judge them for having a child, even out of wedlock. These things would be transformative. Criminalization of abortion would not be. The law cannot outwit sin.
Beyond this, it is fair to question the means the pro-life movement has settled on in its quest to criminalize abortion. It is a two-step process: 1) elect Republicans; 2) have them overturn Roe v. Wade. I question this plan. Republicans have had the presidency for 23 of the 35 years since Roe v. Wade. They controlled the legislature from 1994 to 2006; from 2000 to 2006 Republicans controlled both the presidency and Congress. During that time it has become clear that as a party they are far more interested in maintaining their own power than criminalizing abortion. The Republican legislature in Illinois passed a law against third-trimester abortions which did not include a provision for the health of the mother specifically so that the law would be overturned by a court. This way the Republicans could claim that they had done something about abortion, but it had been overturned by the courts, and dammit, you would just have to elect them again and again, and maybe in a few more decades those judges would retire. This charade has gone on long enough. Republicans have appointed seven of the nine Supreme Court Justices. Somehow, it’s never enough.
If abortion is so crucial to the moral character of our nation, there should be a pro-life party with that one plank in its platform. This is how the Republican party was formed: as a one-issue, anti-slavery party. That would be a legitimate political expression of the pro-life movement. But as it is, the Republican party cannot in good faith claim the allegiance of the Catholic Church. Its militarism, its “American exceptionalism,” its blatant favor of the class that will have more trouble getting into heaven than a camel would have getting through the eye of a needle, its promotion of money and competition as the solution to the problems of fallen humanity, its rejection of science, and its promotion of heretical forms of Christianity (fundamentalism), are all at odds with Catholicism. Now don’t get me wrong – the Democratic party has its list of sins as well. I am arguing for evaluating the claims of parties and candidates holistically and cautiously – I do not want the Church to be either party’s dunce, to be trotted out at election-time.
Let me deal with one important objection. Pro-life advocates will say that they agree that many sins do not need to be punished, but murder always needs to be, because it is necessary to afford life itself legal protection. I think this is good reasoning and I personally support it. But such reasoning applies equally well to the born as the unborn. It is fair, I think, to insist on protecting the lives of our enemies in war (a direct commandment from Christ), the innocent in war, those unjustly accused of crimes (and also those justly accused of crimes), the sick, the poor, the stranger, and so forth. You cannot limit such reasoning to the unborn. And once you recognize that fact, it becomes far more difficult to discern which political candidate to support.
These are the main reasons, I believe, why many members of the body of Christ will not listen to priests who tell them that they should not consider themselves in communion with Christ if they vote for a Democrat. It is one thing to commit the sin of aborting a child. But it is something very different to refuse to criminalize that act. And further, even if all Christians agreed to try to evangelize through the legal system of this country, there would still be a difference between criminalizing abortion in a strict referendum on this topic and giving carte blanche to one party which pays lip service to the pro-life movement.
Elections require us to choose between men, and to consider a variety of moral and prudential factors. The Catholic Church will never make good decisions about leadership until it encourages its members to make their decisions out of their entire selves. And the hierarchy will never be able to understand the full reality of the body of Christ until they understand some of the laudable opposition, within the body of Christ, to their political alliances.
Another good essay on abortion and the vote can be found at: http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php3?id_article=2355
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