"Blessed Are the Peacemakers": Church Authority and Social Questions

8/12/2019 "Blessed Are the Peacemakers": Church Authority and Social Questions

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Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Church Authority and Social Questions

Steven P. MilliesAssociate Professor of Political Science

Chair, Department of History, Political Science, and PhilosophyUniversity of South Carolina Aiken

471 University ParkwayAiken, South Carolina 29801-6389

803.641.3383 (direct) 803.641.3461 (fax) [email protected]

Proposed for InclusionCatholic Social Teaching and Human Rights

Villanova UniversityMarch, 2012


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There is an idea afoot in Catho lic life that, the call for dialogue too often amounts to a

prescription for slow- motion surrender of what writers like George Weigel call Catholic

identity (what Weigel also has called the Catholic brand with no apparent irony at all in his

own context of a deeper commitment to Catholic faith, while describing Catholicism in the

same way advertisers talk about developing brand loyalty to toothpastes). 1 The idea has deep

roots. In 1996, Bernard Cardinal Law responded to the Catholic Common Ground Initiative

begun by Joseph Cardinal Bernardin by observing that its fundamental flaw was its appeal for

dialogue as a path to common ground. 2 Cardinal Law observed, famously, that, Dialogue as

a way to mediate between the truth and dissent is mutual deception. 3

It is worth noting that Called To Be Catholic (the Common Ground Initiatives

founding document, to which Cardinal Law responded) suggested dialogue as an approach to

several topics of internal interest to the Church (the role of women, the nature of the Eucharistic

celebration) and some issues of the Churchs relationship to the external world (the implications

of human sexuality, the way the Church is present in political life). Cardinal Laws insistence on

truth over dissent, therefore, is as applicable to how Catholics engage political questions as it is

to how they obey dogmatic and doctrinal principles inside the life of the Church. That

application is in continuity with Weigels prescriptions in 2011, since Weigels subject wa s the

controversy over an abortion performed at Phoenixs St. Joseph Hospital and the role of Catholic

identity at that institution. But, in a greater sense, Weigels essay comes back to ensuring that

1 George Weigel, January 5, 2011, Reaffirming Catholic Identity, On the Square: Daily Columns from First Things Top Writers , http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2011/01/reaffirming-catholic-identity.2 Bernard Cardinal Law, The Church Already Has Common Ground: On the Catholic Common GroundProject (12 August 1996), Bostons Cardinal: Bernard Law, the Man, and His Witness , ed. Romanus Cessario,O.P. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002), 249.3 Ibid, 250.


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Catholics no longer to be fully in communion with the church are practical at all in these

cases.

There are, therefore, a few separate questions. We must consider first the nature of a

Catholic identity in political life. Then, we must determine whether ecclesiastical penalties and

are available and, if they are, whether it is prudent or advisable for Church leaders to rely on

them. Next we must examine whether other avenues toward achieving justice and peace through

the political establishment may be more prudent and effective. Finally, we must appraise the

Catholic political tradition since the Second Vatican Council to ask how the Church understands

itself to stand in relation to the state, and especially in relation to free, democratic, pluralistculture.

CATHOLIC IDENTITY IN AMERICAN POLITICAL LIFE

In the space of only two centuries, Catholics have gone from being a statistical outlier

during the colonial period (less than 1% of the population) to a widely-persecuted minority in the

nineteenth century after waves of European immigration, and finally achieving acceptability and

gaining influence in the twentieth century, only to see that influence beget an identity crisis in

American politics about who is really Catholic enough at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

Orestes Brownson diagnosed the vexing problem of Catholic identity before the Civil

War, decades before Catholic immigrants came to populate American cities and before Catholics

became assimilated into American life a century later. Brownson found it perplexing that so

many in the Catholic world sought to keep Catholics a foreign colony in the United States. 7

Even in those long-ago days, the impulse to maintain a Catholic identity as a people apart was

strong. Much of that impulse could be credited, no doubt, to the dissonance between a

7 Orestes Brownson, Public and Parochial Schools, Brownsons Quarterly Review 21 (July 1859), 351.


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traditionally medieval institution like the Roman Catholic Church and the aggressively modern

character cultivated by the early United States, defining itself against the old powers of Europe

and their history. Not all Catholics sought to define themselves as Catholics so rigidly against

the prevailing mores of colonial and nineteenth century America. Modernists like Brownson and

Father Isaac Hecker sought a Catholic Church in the United States no longerencumbered with

the obsolete forms of the Middle Ages, one open to what is true and just[in] Liberalism and

Socialism. 8 The idea of Catholicism in the United States making a break with European

understandings and traditions did not begin with Brownson or Hecker, of course. Bishop John

Carroll had advocated a trustee system in parish and diocesan governance a century earlier for precisely the same reason, that Catholicism in the United States should proceed along the lines of

an American inspiration and not be bound to the peculiar institutions of the European past. 9

Always within the Church on American shores there has been the tension between

modernizing reformers like Brownson, Carroll, and Hecker and others like Robert George and

George Weigel who seek to affirm a more traditional Catholic identity. It is notable, though,

that the instinct toward ghettoization Brownson identified so long ago has persisted with such

consistency. Yet it should diminish the notability of that consistency very little to observe how

unsurprising it is that The question of id entity has been central to the development of

American Catholicism. 10 Catholics in the United States have been compelled by their history to

8 The Rambler, Brownsons Quarterly Review 13 (July 1856), 400-402. Also: Count de Montalembert to

Orestes Brownson, November 1, 1855, I-3-l, cited at: John T. McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Ltd., 2003), 48 n.27.9 See: Thomas W. Spalding, The Premier See: A History of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, 1789-1994 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 24-31.10 Elizabeth McKeown, Apologia for an American Catholicism: The Petition and Report of the NationalCatholic Welfare Council to Pius XI, April 25, 1922, Church History 43:4 (December 1974), 514. Also: TheAmerican experience of pluralism has shaped the unique public presence of the Church in the United States. Theheart of the matter was self- consciousness, at: David J. OBrien, The Church and American Culture Dur ing Our

Nations Lifetime, 1787 -1987, The Catholic Church and American Culture: Reciprocity and Challenge , ed.Cassian Yuhaus, C.P. (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1990), 4.


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reconcile their identification with those obsolete forms of the Middle Ages with the Novus

Ordo Seclorum proclaimed by the American founding, and a preoccupation with that identity

only can seem natural. In the words of one commentator, In the more integrated, traditional

societies of Catholic Europe before the nineteenth century, the church had a clear pu blic role,

but the modernity of American social and political life has imposed an uncomfortable kind of

introspection on Catholics, one that has compelled them to weigh the traditions of their faith

against their religious identity. 11 Hyper-awareness of that identity is a natural result.

More recently, these efforts to identify and uphold a Catholic identity have intensified.

The contemporary period began with struggles between bishops and theologians at Catholicuniversities and brought questions of Catholic identity front-and-center in the consciousness of

American Catholics. It is impossible to separate this phenomenon from the larger divisions that

have emerged within the Church since the Second Vatican Council, but the academic conflict

had a particular resonance because it spoke directly to the question of what it means when we

call a per son or an institution Catholic even as it restored the place of modernism in

discussions of the role of Catholicism in American public life that had been displaced at the end

of the nineteenth century. Because of their wider applicability, these questions have spilled out

of the faculty lounges and administrative offices, into the culture of Catholic campuses, and

beyond into every corner of the Catholic world in the United States and beyond. Indeed, what

had been at one time a uniquely American preoccupation with Catholic identity now has become

a global confrontation with a dictatorship of relativism, or a struggle between a hermeneutic

of continuity and a hermeneutic of rupture, all centered on the problem of distinguishing what

is part of the Catholic tradition from what is not Catholic identity.

11 OBrien, 4.


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Of course, those internal, ecclesiastical squabbles over identity have become a familiar

part of the American political debate today. Perhaps, in the years before the contested period we

have entered in this era of heightened identity awareness that has emerged over the last five

decades, the Church might have rested on the comity among Catholic citizens that verged on a

unanimity. In those days, when the Church knew no serious internal divisions, there was little

question about Catholic identity either ad extra or ad intra and the establishment of an identity

was less apt to rupture the unity of the Church while Catholics lived in a largely-ghettoized

Catholic world. Those days have gone. The number of Catholics who disapprove of abortion

today is indistinguishable from the non-Catholic population, according to recent polls conducted by the Pew and Gallup organizations, as well as by the Center for Applied Research in the

Apostolate. There has been considerable disagreement among Catholics concerning the morality

of contraception since the 1968 release of Pope Pauls encyclical letter, Humanae Vitae . And, of

course, a range of other issues (just war, the death penalty, torture) also divide Catholics as much

as they suggest that a Catholic point-of-view does little to identify who is or is not a Catholic. In

a 1996 symposium sponsored by The Catholic University of America, polling expert Stuart

Rothenberg pronounced all efforts to identify the Catholic vote futile. Catholics have been

assimilated into American political, social, and cultural life beyond any measurable difference

from non-Catholics. 12

After decades of assimilation and now that the public role of the Church has been

disintegrated from the life of the state, in the separated church-state environment of American

constitutionalism, the Church must find new ways to assert its identity. The casting-about for

12 A more recent analysis also verifies The Myth of a Distinct Catholic Vote, at: Matthew J. Streb and BrianFrederick, The Myth of a Distinct Catholic Vote, Catholics and Politics: The Dynamic Tension Between Faith and

Power , eds. Kristin E. Heyer, Mark J. Rozell, Michael A. Genovese (Washington, DC: Georgetown UniversityPress, 2008), 93-112.


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policy. 15 Those comments fed a narrative that began developing with Archbishop Bernardins

1976 press statement, and would reach its apogee in John Kerrys 2004 presidential campaign .

Catholic politicians were to be held accountable for their public actions by bishops, and personal

opposition would not be enough to satisfy the requirement of a Catholic identity if it were not

verified by political action aimed at policy changes.

It is particularly interesting and instructive to examine the language used by Catholic

bishops who announced they would forbid John Kerry to receive the Sacrament while in their

dioceses because of his public actions on the issue of abortion. Then-Bishop Raymond Burke of

LaCrosse, Wisconsin described his own action against Sen. Kerry by saying that, for theCatholic politician to receive Communion when he or she has publicly violated the moral law in

a grave matter like procured abortion risks leading others into thinking that they can accept

procured abortion with a right conscience .16 Bishop Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs

wrote a letter to the faithful of his diocese in 2004 explaining why Sen. Kerry would not be

welcome to receive the Sacrament, inviting them t o pray for those politicians who claim to be

Catholic yet continue to oppose the law of God and the rights of persons that, by the grace of

God, they will be converted once again to the full and authentic articulation and practice of the

faith. 17 The acc ent, in each of these bishops determinations that Sen. Kerry should not receive

the Sacrament, laid on his public witness as a Catholic, that his Catholicity should be authentic:

those who claim to be Catholic may not be Catholic enough, and scandal that risks leading

others into thinking in similar ways must be avoided by means of publicly identifying and

denying the Sacrament to dissenting public figures.

15 Mario Cuomo, Religious Belief and Public Morality: A Catholic Governors Perspective (John A.OBrien Lect ure, 13 September 1984, Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana).16 Raymond L. Burke, Prophesy for Justice, America 190:20 (21-28 June 2004).17 Bishop Michael Sheridan, Pastoral Letter to the Catholic Faithful of the Diocese of Colorado Springs onthe Duties of Catholic Politicians and Voters (14 May 2004).


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These controversies over giving the Sacrament to Catholic public figures who have not

aggressively sought to reverse Roe v. Wade reveal the depth of the instinct toward asserting

identity that exists in Catholic life in the United States. But it also signals a particular anxiety

facing Catholic bishops in the United States in this time. Quite often they are not the most

visible or the most influential representatives of Catholic faith, and those facts tend to heighten

the apprehension unleashed by the advent of modernity which saw Catholics like Brownson,

Carroll, and Hecker seek a Church less attached to medieval forms and structures that would

otherwise tend to accentuate the office of bishop. The public role of the Church is, for these

reasons, perhaps more uncertain today than ever before, at least in the United States. The effectsof changes in politics, philosophy, and theology which have come with modernity only have

been exacerbated by advances in communication that have, in many ways, reduced the Church to

the status of being just one among many Catholic organizations issuing press releases and taking

public positions. If John Kerrey or Nancy Pelosi are known not to oppose the Roe decision

vigorously in their political positions and, at the same time, are known widely to be practicing

Catholics, the situation raises inevitable questions.

While the bishops may no longer be able to monopolize the public face the Church

presents to the world, they do hold a monopoly on the authority to pronounce ecclesiastical

penalties. For this reason, perhaps more than any other, arguments about the Catholic role in

public affairs or questions about who or what authentically represents the Church increasingly

come back to asking who is Worthy To Receive the Lamb, the title of a 2004 letter on

Catholics in Political Life and the Reception of Holy Communion issued jointly by

Archbishop John Donoghue of Atlanta, Bishop Robert Baker of Charleston, and Bishop Peter

Jugis of Charlotte. That letter sought to clarify yet once more that Catholics in political life


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have the responsibility to exemplify in their public service this teaching of the Church, and

[b]ecause of the influence that Catholics in public life have on the conduct of our daily lives and

on the formation of our nation's future, we declare that Catholics serving in public life espousing

positions contrary to the teaching of the Church on the sanctity and inviolability of human life,

especially those running for or elected to public office, are not to be admitted to Holy

Communion .18 Much like pronouncements made by Bishops Burke and Sheridan, Worthy to

Receive the Lamb lays the same emphasis on the matter of authenticity and the question of

scandal. But where it speaks of a special responsibility borne by Catholics in political life,

Worthy to Receive the Lamb carries that often -made argument for the appropriateness ofecclesiastical penalties to a conclusion that, while logical and unavoidable, remains altogether

novel in the experience of the Church in the modern age.

What is the special vocation of Catholics in political life that it creates a special

responsibility? Can ecclesiastical penalties be invoked against a Catholic in political life who

has failed at his or her responsibility to exemplify in their public service the teachings of the

Church? There are precedents for invoking ecclesiastical penalties against secular leaders, of

course. Pope Gregory VII excommunicated Emperor Henry IV in 1076, and there have been

countless others. Yet, the balance of historical judgment suggests that Henrys punishment had

more to do with a political dispute over the temporal power of the Church than with any failure

of his responsibility to be an exemplar of Catholic faith in public life. Indeed, it is difficult to

find in recent or older history an example of an ecclesiastical penalty invoked against a public

figure for failing to be a pro per examplar. 19 More recent Church teachings have referred to the

18 Archbishop John F. Donoghue, Bishop Robert J. Baker, and Bishop Peter J. Jugis, Worthy to Receive theLamb: Catholics in Public Life and the Reception of Holy Co mmunion (4 August 2004). 19 To offer just a few examples, Fidel Castro was excommunicated in 1962 for suppressing Catholicinstitutions in Cuba. Juan Pern was excommunicated in 1954 because he expelled two priests from Argentina who


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tasks accompanying responsibilities in social and political institutions that demand a strict

and articulated commitment that is able to demonstrate clearly the absolute necessity of the

moral dimension in social and political life .20 Yet even here, the accent of emphasis is on the

layperson in public life acting according to ones own conscience, and not on the example

provided by that layperson as a representative of the Church. Even the Congregation for the

Doctrine of the Faiths expansive 2002 Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the

Participation of Catholics in Political Life makes no mention of this special resp onsibility.

Indeed, the only place where a Church document comes close to identifying this responsibility

is in the Catechism of the Catholic Church where it addresses scandal (2284-2287). To causescandal in this way, in the words of the Catechism , can be a grave offense, particularly if it

leads others to scandal. Unquestionably, under the 1983 Code of Canon Law, bishops are within

their rights to apply penalties to preclude or repair scandal (1399).

Looking to those sections of the Catechism pertaining to scandal and how the Code of

Canon Law permits penalties to preclude or repair scandal , it may seem reasonable that

Catholic bishops have chosen to bar Catholic politicians from the Sacrament for their public

positions on abortion. This is, in fact, the strongest foundation of their argument. Yet these

sections of the Catechism on scandal, while they specifically mention political leaders (those

who establish laws), never delve into the subtler question the distinction between a political

figure s public role and his or her conscience, as he or she has expressed it. We might ask

whether it should not be enough for a Catholic in political life to say, I oppose abortion,

has instigated opposition to his regime. To look back farther to the nineteenth century and the period of theRenaissance and Reformation is to see a train of excommunications linked to political or schismatic issues, nonedirectly touching on the problem of whether a public official provided a good, Catholic example.20 Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (Washington,DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2005), 566. Cf.: Congregation for the Doctrie of the Faith,

Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Polit ical Life (24 November 2002),6: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Vatican City, 13.


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personally. I dont like abortion. I be lieve life begins at conception, as John Kerry told the

Boston Globe in 2004. Yet, Kerry was to be barred from the altar. Does scandal and, thus,

Catholic identity hinge not on what the Catholic in public life believes but, instead, on the

demonstrability of his or her actions? Whether he voted to confirm a judge who would uphold

the precedent of Roe v. Wade ? Would the reverse be more acceptable (a Catholic who secretly,

in his or her conscience, supports abortion rights, yet opposes it publicly)? To view the question

this way finally comes down to finely split hairs, asking us to weigh the relative merits of the

internal disposition of conscience against the exercise of political leadership in a pluralist state

within the bounds of constitutional law. More than an entirely novel way to conceive the role oflay Catholics in secular, political life, this also seems cumbersome and impracticable. Indeed, to

return to the Doctrinal Note of 2002, it even would appear to be contradictory. The Doctrinal

Note stressed the conscience of the political leader which, in this example of Sen. Kerry, appears

to be in good order on the strength of his testimony. What remains really are political

disagreements about the range of possible actions available to promote the moral law through the

available legal mechanisms in the secular world. Yet, strangely, the preoccupation with Catholic

identity has elevated those prudential disagreements to the point that they mark the boundaries of

Catholic identity. Nearly two hundred years after Orestes Brownson lamented how some in the

Catholic world wanted to keep Catholics a foreign colony in the United States, today that

colonys boundaries are marked by extraordinary straw man arguments and fits of hyperbole,

rhetorical excesses that conflate a judgment that the bounds of constitutional law prevent a

lawmaker from opposing the Roe decision with actual moral support for abortion as a practice.

The idea that ecclesiastical penalties can maintain effectively that boundary of identity

appears to be deeply troubled by these complications. Yet, Catholics today who are committed


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excommunication by calling the Church a front for clever Jews. 22 These three Catholics did

more than oppose desegregation as a matter of public policy. They held hateful opinions contrary

to Church teaching, and they turned their fire on the Church for proclaiming her teachings. Their

excommunications should surprise no one, for those three did more than uphold laws requiring

segregation. They agreed with those laws enthusiastically. More than just their public positions

on political issues, their consciences were implicated in morally objectionable opinions.

Archbish op Rummels decision to oppose publicly those political officials indeed was

courageous. However the differences between his actions and the actions of more contemporary

bishops are revealed upon a closer look at the circumstances. Indeed, the excommunications ofPerez, Galliot, and Ricau much like a 1956 excommunication Archbishop Rummel declared

against a segregationist Louisiana legislator, William Willie Rainach was not based at all on

holding opinions inclined toward racial hatred. In that earlier case, a front page editorial in the

New Orleans archdiocesan newspaper cautioned Rainach that he might be subject to

excommunication for having written the bill, invoking Canon 2334 under the 1917 Code of

Canon Law (those who directly or indirectly impede the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction

incur excommunication latae sententiae ).23 In a similar way, the excommunications incurred by

Perez, Ricau, and Galliot were not for their segregationist opinions, but rather for ecclesiastical

disobedience (similarly interfering in the archbishops authority over the schools in his

archdiocese). 24 Those conflicts between Archbishop Rummel and segregationists in public life

highlighted by Professor George and others to lend support to invoking ecclesiastical penalties

22 Glen Jeansonne, Leander Perez: Boss of the Delta , 2nd Edition (Lafayette: The University of SouthwesternLouisiana, 1995), 226.23 R. Bentley Anderson, Black, White, and Catholic: New Orleans Interracialism, 1947-1956 (Nashville:Vanderbilt University Press, 2005), 165-166.24 Archbishop Rummels excommunication order cited Perezs, Gaillots, and Ricaus attempts throughword or deed to hinder [Archbishop Rummels] orders or provoke the devoted p eople of this venerable Archdioceseto disobedience or rebellion, as reproduced in: New York Times , 17 April 1962, A16.


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against pro-choice Catholics today in fact reveals the novelty of what American bishops more

recently have done.

It is notable, and far from an inconsiderable detail, that neither the 1917 Code of Canon

Law provided an ecclesiastical penalty for racial hatred, nor did Archbishop Rummel censure

any of those four Catholics in public life for their deficient consciences. Neither, further, were

the proclamations of those excommunications based on the idea that those public officials

provided inadequate witness to Catholic teaching in public life. At best, we might link those

excommunications to the more recent actions taken against Sen. Kerry by recalling that

Archbishop Rummel named provok[king] the devoted people of this venerable Archdiocese todisobedience or rebellion. But that is not an articulated concern for scandal so much as it

evidences a preoccupation with the status of the bishop as the teacher of Catholic faith, the duty

of his flock to listen to him, alone. This bishop, in this case, defines Catholic identity. Public

figures must obey the bishop, and that is the extent of their special responsibility. What

changed most to distinguish the events of 1962 and 2004 was the sureness of the bishops of their

role and ability to define identity.

Other cases cited by George Weigel include Archbishop Joseph Ritter of St. Louis who

threatened excommunication for anyone who opposed his desegregation of archdiocesan schools

in 1947. Yet, again, any excommuncations would have been premised (there were none) on

Obedience to ecclesiastical authority. 25 Lawrence Cardinal Shehan of Baltimore issued a bold

pastoral letter in 1963 that called on Catholics to support racial justice but threatened no

excommunications.

25 Pastoral letter of Archbishop Ritter to the faithful of St. Louis, as quoted in: Caution! Time Magazine (29September 1947).


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At a minimum, therefore, we can say that these cases make a bad comparison to more

recent events in the engagement of the Church with American political life. Not only were the

circumstances and the penalties different, but so were the censures (when there were censures)

and, necessarily, the thinking that underlaid those punishments. Those differences, in part,

reflect a change in circumstances: once more, the advances of communications and technology

that have diminished the public voices of bishops and enhanced the ability of lay Catholics to

represent the Church. But even more, those differences suggest to us a more fundamental

problem. Ecclesiastical penalties are not a very effective or appropriate mechanism by which to

establish Catholic identity. Indeed, such penalties as appear to be available do not seem well-suited to solving the problems that face bishops.

If bishops attempt to maintain Catholic identity by imposing excommunication on errant

public officials, they will succeed to make the Churchs moral position known to the faithful, as

happened in the cases of Archbishops Ritter and Rummel and with Cardinal Shehan. Indeed,

given the headlines earned in the New York Times and Time Magazine by these events, the

identity even can be broadcast widely to non-Catholics. Yet those penalties do not succeed to

reform segregationists like Gaillot, Perez, Rainach, or Richau. Even in St. Louis where

Archbishop Ritt ers threat of excommunication blunted opposition to his plans for desegregation

there is no reason to believe that any of the Catholics who wanted segregated schools changed

their minds about racial justice when they retreated from a conflict with their archbishop. To

remedy the problem by means of penalties did not assure any pastoral success and, because of

that pastoral failure, invoking penalties also failed to resolve the underlying problem of racial

injustice within the Church. Racism continued to exist within the Catholic Church throughout

succeeding decades. It had been condemned by Catholic bishops and then gone quietly


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implication is that Senator Kerry was penalized for what Archbishop Burke found to be his

gravely and persistently sinful cooperation in the murder of innocents.

The problem is that Sen. Kerry s formal cooperation in abortion is, at least, arguable .

This is an important point that must be noted, since it is the necessary condition which must be

present to find his actions sinful. Kerry certainly has not sought to diminish access to abortions

through his actions as a legislator, and he has spoken often of his belief that the Roe decision was

correct on its constitutional merits. These positions should not cheer Catholics, or anyone who

takes the right to life seriously. But neither do they bespeak an enthusiasm for abortion. Indeed,

the evidence tells us that his conscience was not morally deficient in any measurable way. Kerryhas spoken of his personal opposition to abortion. That opposition either is sincere, or not. But

failing to credit the sincerity of his claim seems like a dangerous position: no one can know John

Kerrys mind and conscience, or anyone elses , and to presume he was lying starts down a

perilous path that would give grounds for scrutinizing each and every communicant who presents

himself. It is the tradition of the Church to take those claims at face value. For these reasons,

Kerrys own bishop observed that , The Church presumes that each person is receiving in good

faith. It is not our policy to deny Communion. It is up to the individual." 27

Even so, personal opposition to abortion does not come up to the standard set by

Archbishop Bernardin in 1976, and it may also run afoul of the Congregation for the Doctrine of

the Faiths 2004 d octrinal note (quoting from John Paul IIs encyclical, Evangelium Vitae ) which

observes that Catholics are obligated to oppose an intrinsically unjust law even if the unjust

thing is permitted by civil legislation. 28 Yet this gets into territory that is more fraught and

tinged with gray than it may at first appear. Every sworn federal official except the president

27 Archbishop Sen OMalley, O.F.M. Cap., Press Statement (29 July 2004). 28 John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae , 74.


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either group are disposed to take that dialogue up. Yet, not only the role of the Catholic in

political life but also the prudential questions of how to promote the Catholic view on human

rights issues would be served far better by a more robust and honest dialogue.

DIALOGUE AND IDENTITY

If the foregoing analysis has succeeded to make anything clear, perhaps it is that the most

persuasive argument available against the link between Catholic identity and ecclesiastical

penalties is the way in which that link tends to preclude genuine dialogue between Catholic

bishops and Catholics in political life about important social and political problems. What isequally clear is that there are many Catholics, lay and clerical, for whom the precluding of

dialogue is perfectly alright. They are those who describe dialogue as mutual deception or a

slow-motion surrender to the enemies of Church teaching. Yet, now in the seventh decade

since Archbishop Ritter and his threats of excommunication, it is not yet clear that ecclesiastical

penalties have done much more than enforce the boundaries of the Catholic brand. They

appear to have done little to change attitudes within or outside the Church on important social

issues such as racial justice or abortion. If achieving those goals matters more to us than the

Catholic brand, or if we have reasons to feel that the Catholic brand would be served

better by achieving those goals, there are good reasons to explore other avenues.

There are other reasons to give serious consideration to the merits of dialogue. Those

reasons begin with the role of the Catholic in political life who believes his or her oath of office

requires her or him to support and defend a constitutional right to something m orally

abhorrent, such as abortion. That judgment that he or she must support and defend the Roe

decision would derive from a secular analysis of the civil law according to more-or-less


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consistent and neutral principles of constitutional interpretation recognized throughout the legal

world. Those principles are taught in constitutional law textbooks and have changed little for

more than a century. Different interpreters may employ those principles to reach different

conclusions, but that is only so surprising as the variations of prudence we find in all sorts of

reasoning that humans undertake. What is most important to understand is that reaching the

conclusion to support the Roe decision need not indeed, in most cases it certainly would not

proceed from any zeal for abortion. Instead, it would proceed from legal competency that owes

its roots to enthusiasm for a strong bulwark of individual liberties aimed at assuring the

maximum space in which citizens may be free to make decisions in their lives according to theirown moral compass. To follow the trail of precedents that led to the Roe decision is to see that. 30

The Roe decision, for its many flaws, emerges from a legal tradition in the secular world aimed

at securing the very same liberty of conscience that permits Catholic bishops to speak freely and

exercise their religious beliefs. In a constitutional sense, these all are cut from a same cloth.

It is not remarkable or wrong that Catholic bishops should not see matters that way. The

Catholic tradition, in fact, sees much quite differently. The Catholic political tradition speaks of

persons, not individuals. An individual owes nothing to anyone else, while person is meant to

connote a human being understood within a network of relationships that form the human

community. Thinking of persons in this way, it is impossible to reach a conclusion that abortion

is an expression of any sort of liberty that deserves the name. Yet, American law does not

30 It is generally known that the Roe decision was built on a foundation established by the U.S. SupremeCourt in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) where a right to privacy was found to be protected by the Constitution. Alook at the Griswold decision would reveal that identifying that right to privacy depended on decisions in Weiman v.Updegraff (1952) that determined the First Amendment protects the freedom of inquiry, freedom of thought, andfreedom to teach, and Snyder v. Massachusetts (1934) which said that, the Due Process Clause protects thoseliberties that are so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people, such as those found in the First Amendment. The legal history of the Roe decision can establish the conclusion that the Constitution protects a rightto abortion without any consideration for the value of human life. That must disturb us as much as it indemnifies thelegal minds that reached that conclusion, for it verifies the sterile neutrality with which they made it.


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construe persons in this way. No amount of wishful thinking can change that. What Catholics

must rely upon is the Catholic conscience of Catholics in political life, granting some measure of

trust that those public officials will work within the framework of American law as best they are

able to achieve the moral outcomes that all Catholics want. The competencies of Catholics with

knowledge of the secular world must weigh for something here, just as the competencies of

Catholic bishops who know and teach the Catholic faith also must have their right weight. In

other words, this is why dialogue is so important.

Earlier this essay documented some of the history behind the current impasse between

Catholic bishops and Catholic political leaders, and it would be fair to say that very little in thatrelationship has changed since Archbishop Bernardins press statement in 1976 after meeting

with Gov. Carter. In those 36 of the 39 years since the Roe v. Wade decision, the insistence on

an all-or-nothing commitment that sees Catholic identity only in total rejection of the Roe

decision has yielded virtually nothing in measurable results. Not only, to all appearances, has

not one abortion been stopped by that approach. 31 Further still, the voice of the Church across

the range of other social and political issues has been drowned out by all of the shouting over this

one, very important issue. 32 The Churchs effort to be a force in social and political questions is

stuck in a deep rut, worn down into the ground by the constant drumming away on abortion to

the exclusion of all else and the litmus testing of all politicians, but Catholics most especially.

To succeed in the world of U.S. national politics requires a specialized set of

competencies. To be sure, ranked high among those competencies is the ability to speak in

31 Perhaps the most significant victory for the pro-life movement in these decades has been the Casey v. Planned Parenthood (1992) decision that created a legal basis for placing some restrictions on abortion. Of course,while Casey made that important breakthrough, it also went to pains to confirm the essential holding of the Roedecision: the Constitution cannot permit broad restrictions on abortion.32 This conclusion has been reached by many thoughtful Catholics. To name one, we might point to socialactivist and courageous opponent of racisim, Msgr. Geno Baroni, who deplored this single -issue politics, andsaw no profit in Catholic bishops telling political leaders, either youre with us absolutely on abortion or wellwork to defeat you, no matter where you are on other issues, in: ORourke, Geno , 124.


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a Catholic politician with that well-formed Catholic conscience who can serve the Church and

promote justice in the human community.

Predictably, there may be objections that this hopes for too much from the typical

politician. Many people seem comfortable assuming that Catholics like John Kerry or Nancy

Pelosi support abortion not from legal conviction but from craven cynicism, and perhaps they are

correct. 33 Such cynical motivations are not likely to yield much serious dialogue, if those

suspicions about Catholic politicians are correct. Yet, if cynicism darkens the prospects for

dialogue on the side of Catholic politicians, the certitude that disposes American bishops toward

penalties and identity over effectiveness offers little hope either that they are any more disposedtoward dialogue than the politicians. In other words, feet of clay can be found under both

gleaming giants. Questioning the motivations or good faith of Catholic politicians or Catholic

bishops gets this discussion quickly nowhere. Only dialogue, at this juncture untried and little

considered, promises any hope of better results.

A model for this dialogue may be found in the ongoing difficulties experienced between

Catholic bishops and lay theologians. Much like the way in which social and technological

changes have altered the balance between the bishops who once held a monopoly on speaking

for the Church and Catholic politicians who now are visible representatives of Catholicism, the

last four decades have seen an explosive growth in the number of lay theologians who,

increasingly, compete in the public mind with the bishops to be authoritative interpreters of

Catholic doctrine. Rev. Robert Imbelli, a theologian teaching at Boston College, has offered

some suggestions for renewing dialogue between theologians and bishops, in light of recent

33 A 2009 Wall Street Journal editorial attributed a pattern of Democratic cynicism on abortion to, change[s]in the early '70s, when Democratic politicians first figured out that the powerful abortion lobby could fill theircampaign coffers (and attract new liberal voters), at: How Support for Abortion Became Kennedy Dogma, WallStreet Journal (2 January 2009).


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controversies, that bear some comparison here to the problems facing Catholic bishops and

politicians over political issues. Those suggestions are:

1) a renewed affirmation that theology is an ecclesial discipline and that the vocation of

the theologian is a distinctively ecclesial one.

2) [emphasize] the intrinsic connection among three crucial dimensions of the churchsmission: [preaching], catechesis and theology.

3) the new social situation of theology, referred to above, only gives wider relevance tothe following declaration of the council: Under the light of faith and with theguidance of the Churchs teaching authority, theology should be taught in such a waythat students will accurately draw Catholic doctrine from divine revelation,understand that doctrine profoundly, nourish their own spiritual lives with it(Optatam Totius, No. 16). 34

Political life in the secular world is not, exactly, an ecclesial discipline, and neither is the

vocation of a political leader one that inspires that description. But Jerome Kerwin, a Catholic

political theorist writing in the mid-twentieth century, looked back to the medieval period for

inspiration when he observed that, For the Christian the state becomes a holy order with an end

and purpose of its own. It is a perfect society like the Church itself. It therefore has a sanctity

above all other human institutions. 35 Seen this way, there can be no surprise that monarchs

were anointed by bishops or crowned by popes. These practices continue today, after a fashion,

in the way that we expect to see political leaders take their oaths of office with hands placed on

the Bible. The invocation of the sacred over the affairs of the state, for all that secularism has

done in the last two centuries, holds a powerful sway over the imaginations of most citizens. 36

34 Robert P. Imbelli, Continue the Conversation: Suggestions for Theologians and Bishops in Search ofCommon Ground, America (30 May 2011).35 Jerome G. Kerwin, Politics, Government, Catholics (New York: Paulist Press, 1961), 9.36 As an aside, an amusing incident illustrates this serious point, and has some connection to the question ofCahtolics in political life: In 1961, when John F. Kennedy was taking his oath on a Douay Version of the Bible (anauthorized Roman Catholic translation) that had belonged to his grandmother, he inadvertently moved his hand fromthe Bible to his side, and afterward some people questioned the validity of his oath. But the White House patientlyexplained that the Constitution didnt prescribe the use of the Bible a t the inaugural ceremony and that it was simplya tradition that had begun with George Washington. Paul F. Boller, Jr. Presidential Inaugurations: Behind the


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expertise that goes beyond the teachings of the Church. Knowledge of the practical world is

indispensible if it is practical success that is sought.

With this basis in dialogue, acknowledging the role and special competency both of

bishops and politicians, there can be a hope for progress that avails political life not only of the

firm teaching of the Church but also the prudential wisdom that comes from knowing the law,

the political process, and the temper of the public whose assent to the laws gives them their

force. A bishop may say to the Catholic politician that abortion is intrinsically evil, and cannot

be tolerated in public policy. A Ca tholic politician may say to a bishop, I agree, but not every

member of the public is a Catholic. Fewer than half of the voters agree with us. I am bound byoath to support and defend the civil law, which also does not agree with us. I will work toward

fewer unwanted pregnancies. I will work toward improved neonatal and child healthcare. I will

work toward better economic conditions that support families. I will speak everywhere against

abortion and for the cause of life . If the bishop can see the prudence of these actions, this can

be a profitable partnership in good faith, one that can aim toward a reduced number of abortions

and whose primary goal is incremental progress not toward a change in the civil law (which will

not end abortions), but toward an evangelization of the public consciousness that changes

attitudes toward the life issues as a whole the work of the public square that lies at the heart of

democratic societies . A Catholic politician would owe the bishop enough honesty to say, If I

frustrate the enforcement of Roe I will violate my oath and, perhaps, lose the political office that

permits me to do what good I can . A Catholic bishop owes the candor and support that holds

the Catholic politician accountable to Church teaching while recognizing the limits of what is

possible in secular government at a given moment.


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The only drawback might be that the role of the Church in public affairs would embrace

the uncertainty and murkiness, the complexity, that already characterize it, in fact. Greater

demands would be made on Catholic bishops, Catholic politicians, and Catholic citizens to sort

through the difficult issues without the reassuring promise of a simple solution. The only

casualty would be the univocal notion of a Catholic identity.

CONCLUSION

If the Catholic Church hopes to have an impact upon any of the vital human rights issues

about which it teaches it is imperative that the Churchs teachings can be known, understood,assented to, and sought as public policy outcomes. The foregoing pages have argued that the

greatest enemy of achieving those goals is the priority of identity over dialogue, Catholicity at

the expense of Catholic social teaching, purity over prudence, and obedience above solutions

found in charity and justice.

So many authors have pointed to the courage of Archbishop Rummel and his brother

bishops who faced down segregationist Catholics that one more close look at what they, in fact,

did seems to be in order. In his 1953 pastoral letter, Blessed Are the Peacemakers, Archbishop

Rummel wrote, let there be no further discrimination or segregation in the pews, at the

Communion rail, at the confessional and in parish meetings, just as there will be no segregation

in the kingdom of heaven. 37 This is precisely the sort of exhortation one hopes always to hear

from a Catholic bishop, just as Catholics pray always for bishops who will have the courage to

be so outspoken. Yet, Archbishop Rummel wrote also that, Peace is the existence of order and

coordi nation.[P]eace [is not] achieved without sacrifice between individual, between the

37 Archdiocese of New Orleans Archives, Archbishop Rummels Pastoral Letters, Blessed Are thePeacemakers, 15 March 1953, 5.


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Church, a question so much in need of thoughtful attention and dialogue, only further becomes

confused and complicated.

It need not be so. These are the words of Gaudium et Spes , the Pastoral Constitution on

the Church in the Modern World:

It is very important, especially where a pluralistic society prevails, that there be a correctnotion of the relationship between the political community and the Church, and a cleardistinction between the tasks which Christians undertake, individually or as a group, ontheir own responsibility as citizens guided by the dictates of a Christian conscience, andthe activities which, in union with their pastors, they carry out in the name of theChurch.The Church and the political community in their own fields are autonomousand independent from each other. Yet both, under different titles, are devoted to the

personal and social vocation of the same men. The more that both foster sounder

cooperation between themselves with due consideration for the circumstances of time and place, the more effective will their service be exercised for the good of all. 42

The Council had much more to say about the relationship between the Church and the temporal

order, of course, and the whole teaching should not be reduced to this short passage. Yet neither

should this short passages unmistakable accent on cooperation and action in union

withpastors that recognizes the autonomous and independent competencies of the ecclesial

and political vocations. This is a call for the sort of dialogue described above. Not a call for

slow-motion surrender or mutual deception, for Catholic teaching enjoy the deference it

rightly deserves. The bishops, as teachers of those doctrines, similarly enjoy the deference due

to them. But the political community and those Catholics who lead it, so far as their consciences

are well-formed by Church teaching, also should enjoy the deference due to those whose

competencies may make some progress toward justice possible.

Only if we can become these blessed peacemakers in this sense can we hope to build and

come into possession of the Kingdom of God.

right, at: Editorial, An Illiberal Mandate, Commonweal (20 December 2011), accessed at:http://commonwealmagazine.org/illiberal-mandate.42 Gaudium et Spes , 76.


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"Blessed Are the Peacemakers": Church Authority and Social Questions

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