The thorny issue of politicians and conscience

Last year's presidential campaign saw many Catholic politicians tiptoeing through a minefield of moral issues. Could it happen again?

One of the most controversial aspects of recent electoral campaigns in the United States has been the influence of religion on the political positions of candidates and voters. In the year leading up to the 2004 election, this issue received unprecedented attention, especially among Catholics, because of the presidential candidacy of John Kerry, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts who made a point of emphasizing his Catholic roots.

Because Kerry’s pronounced views on life-related topics clashed with Catholic doctrine, his candidacy placed the American bishops, priests, and the lay faithful in a delicate position. Over the course of several months numerous public statements issued from bishops attempting to help Catholic candidates and voters deal with party loyalties and the moral teachings of the church. What should be done should a clear conflict arise between adherence to a party platform and obedience to the Church?

Rarely have the responses to this question been sharper than they were in the public statements of Catholic politicians and Catholic bishops during the months of May and June, 2004. Consider these select examples:

On May 20, 48 Catholic members of the US House of Representatives, all of them members of the Democratic Party, took it upon themselves to issue a statement in the form of a letter to the Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick in his capacity as Chairman of a task force on Catholic Bishops and Catholic politicians. (1)

“All of us firmly believe,” the politicians declared, “that…each of us has the responsibility and the right to balance public morality with private morality without pressure from certain bishops… In public life distinctions must be made between public and private morality. Because we represent all of our constituents we must… separate our public actions from our personal beliefs [when] the views of our constituents… conflict with some of our personal views.”

Such a statement is in clear conflict not only with Catholic moral theology but also with the classical moral philosophy on which it rests. It also conflicts with the tradition of American democratic statesmanship, which includes the principle that elected representatives of the people have an obligation to educate their constituents, especially in matters so fundamental to the common good as the life issues at stake in the electoral debate. The vast majority of American citizens have always expected the persons they place in high office to lead and to enlighten public opinion, not simply to passively reflect it.

It is the apparent ignorance or indifference to that tradition and to fundamental principles of Catholic moral theology that was primarily exposed by this statement and by the campaign speeches of nearly all Catholic Democrats.

Now consider some select responses from members of the Catholic hierarchy who felt keenly an obligation to instruct their flocks—a majority of them affiliated by long family and working-class traditions with the Democratic Party:

On May 28, a week after the Catholic Democrats made their statement, Cardinal Francis George, the Archbishop of Chicago, made a statement to Pope John Paul II at the conclusion of a visit to Rome lamenting the scandal of “Catholics shaped by [secularized American] culture more than by [the Catholic] faith” who have made the Church “an arena of ideological warfare rather than a way of discipleship.”

He briefly explained to the Pope how “the public conversation in the United States… fundamentally distorts Catholicism and any other institution regarded as ‘foreign’ to the secular individualist ethos” with its insistence upon a private or personal morality that may conflict with the objective moral order. (2)

Catholic politicians often justified their understanding of the faith and its “value system” (meaning its implications for matters of public morality and policy with respect to human life) without realizing that the sources of their instruction in the faith had been badly corrupted when they had came of age by moral fallout from the cultural revolution of 1968.

As a consequence of this malformation, many politicians viewed their public life not as “a way of discipleship”, but as a service to constituents whose “values” might be inconsistent with their own Catholic beliefs. A statement issued by the US Catholic Bishops in June 2004 addressed that erroneous view (3):

“Those who formulate law have an obligation in conscience to work toward correcting morally defective laws, lest they be guilty of cooperating in evil and in sinning against the common good…. Catholics who bring their moral convictions into public life do not threaten democracy or pluralism but enrich them and the nation. The [institutional] separation of church and state does not require a division between [private] belief and public action... It is the particular vocation of the laity to transform the world,” not to succumb to its mistaken understanding of human life.

Besides misunderstanding fundamental elements of the Catholic faith and this essential element of democratic politics, the politicians were also ignorant of the distinction between the moral law common to all humans and the moral components of the Catholic faith. As Cardinal Avery Dulles put it in the human life issues debated in the electoral campaign “are not just ‘Church’ issues but are governed by the natural law of God, which is binding upon all human beings.” (4)

John Kerry’s defeat in November spared the Catholic leadership of the spectacle of a President so ill-informed about his faith and even about the responsibilities of that high office. The bishops have been given a reprieve. It remains to be seen whether their June 2004 pledge will, in fact, be fulfilled:

“With pastoral solicitude for everyone involved in the political process…we will persist in [our] duty to counsel in the hope that the scandal of [Catholic public officials] cooperating in evil can be resolved by the proper formation of their consciences”.

For as Archbishop Elden Curtiss of Omaha stated in his diocesan newspaper: “By publicly supporting immoral acts [a politician] has to be acting against his conscience if it is formed by [authentic] Catholic teaching. [Those who] take public stands against church teaching on essential issues… are no longer faithful to the Church.” (5)

“The proper formation of consciences” and re-education in the basics of elementary moral philosophy and of the democratic political process — this is the course now incumbent upon Catholics who aspire to serve in high office in the United States in a manner that is consistent with their faith and common humanity. To follow that course would, however, require a readiness to challenge a secularized culture, and therefore a measure of heroic courage not commonly observed in the history of American politics.

John A. Gueguen, Jr. is professor emeritus, political science, Illinois State University. He taught classical and modern political philosophy, modern ideologies, and American political thought from 1958 to 1996.

Notes
 1 Letter from 48 Democratic Congressmen to Cardinal McCarrick. May 10, 2004.
 2 “Church’s Ability to Evangelize Is Diminished”. June 1, 2004.
 3 “Catholics in Political Life”. June 2004.
 4 “Cardinal Dulles on Communion and Pro-Abortion Politicians”. June 29, 2004.
 5 “More bishops weigh in on politicians and Communion”. Catholic Post. May 13, 2004.