As the recent situation with Catholics and pro-choice politicians illustrates, theology impacts politics in many ways. How should this interplay be handled by the leaders of the political and religious realms?
As best as I can understand it, Francis W. Porretto says that religious leaders should refrain from imposing theology that might influence politics (emphasis his).
A lawmaker faced with such a moral challenge has nowhere to hide. He must be explicit about his reasons for his positions, both moral and legislative. He must be willing to weather the storm from both the opponents and the proponents of the dubious practice. Sometimes, that one issue will be enough to sink him; the electorate hasn't got much taste for the sort of analysis that leads to a bifurcated position such as that.I agree that a religious leader shouldn't use his power to attempt to directly affect politics, but I disagree that any action that makes a lawmaker's job more difficult is morally unacceptable.But it is a lawmaker's sworn duty to argue and vote as he deems best for his nation. That's the burden of office. That's the price of its prestige and perquisites. For anyone to make that burden worse in an attempt to coerce the lawmaker into changing his position against the dictates of his conscience is deplorable. It is morally unacceptable.
A theologian should interpret theology without any concern for the effect his interpretation has on politics. He should focus simply on what is true and what is false. Continuing this example, if the Catholic Church thinks it's wrong to serve Communion to pro-choice people (or even just to pro-choice politicians, or to people with red hair, or whatever) then they should prohibit it and do what they see to be right, regardless of its popularity or political impact.
Most religions, including Catholicism (although I'm not a Catholic), are revealed -- that is, God tells us about himself and how to relate to him, we don't make it up ourselves as we go along. How we want to relate to God is unimportant, as are the effects we want religion to have. (This is all predicated on a belief in the revealed truth. If one believes that man creates God in his own image rather than vice versa, one most likely feels free to change God's preferences according to his own whim.)
If God were to command everyone to become a vegetarian on pain of eternal damnation we might not like it, but our complaints would have no bearing on the truth God had revealed. Cattle ranchers might object to the sudden loss of business, and the economy might struggle with the change, but none of those would invalidate God's command. A religious leader's responsibility is to tell people what God expects from them. Listeners can believe the revelation or not, accept it or reject it, but no human action has any effect on the truth. A revelation that is particularly hard to accept may result in people leaving the religion, and Jesus faced a similar situation. (As it so happens, this passage is directly related to the revelation of communion. Read earlier in the chapter for more details.)
John 6:60-69When Jesus taught something that was difficult to accept, many of his followers decided to leave. He then asked his twelve disciples if they intended to leave also, and Peter's response is the only rational reaction to revelation. If you believe God has revealed something, it doesn't matter if you like it or not. Where else can you go?On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?"
Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, "Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. He went on to say, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him."
From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
"You do not want to leave too, do you?" Jesus asked the Twelve.
Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."
Religious leaders need to pass on God's revelations, regardless of the consequences. Each individual, and each politician, can then decide for himself how to respond, and when it comes to politicians each voter can decide whether to elect him or not.
No, Michael, your interpretation is not at all what I meant. However, several others have reached the same conclusion, so perhaps there's something wrong with the way I approached the matter.
The foundation of Christian moral thought is moral individualism: Smith's sins cannot be laid on Jones's shoulders, ever, for any reason. (In legal terms, incitement to riot cannot be used to exonerate the rioters.) In terms germane to the Kerry / Arinze controversy, no woman who had an abortion could shift the moral burden onto the shoulders of Justice Harry Blackmun or the members of the United States Senate simply because those parties had made -- or kept -- abortion legal.
It is what Kerry himself has done that determines his standing in God's eyes, and by extension, must determine his standing as a Catholic.
1. Has John Kerry had an abortion?
2. Has John Kerry facilitated an abortion? That is, has he assisted a woman in obtaining one?
3. Has John Kerry exhorted a woman to abort her baby?
Let's assume the answers to all three questions are "no." (I think we can be pretty sure of #1.) Under those circumstances, John Kerry is innocent of the sin of abortion, or any of the sins that pertain to it. That he believes that, as terrible as it is, it must nevertheless remain legal, does not indict him of any theological offense.
To claim that Kerry is guilty of the sin of abortion, or facilitating or exhorting others' abortions, one would have to have a "yes" answer to one of the three questions above. If all three can honestly be answered "no," then, while anyone can argue with his stance on political or legal grounds, no one can attack his moral standing.
Kerry's posture that, while abortion is morally wrong, it must remain legal for political reasons does not pollute his moral standing. It's his pronouncement as a legislator on what is legally and politically best -- or least costly -- for his nation. As long as he is personally unstained by the sin of abortion, then if he truly believes that criminalizing abortion would bring about worse consequences than allowing it to remain legal, then he's done his duty both as a good legislator and as a good Catholic. Moreover, there are many other Catholics who hold similar positions.
(Ick! I hate to defend that waste of flesh, but it's a moral duty to defend those who are attacked unjustly, even if they're personally unworthy for other reasons.)
For the Church to deny the sacraments to a man for his political posture, rather than for his personal behavior, is an indirect stab at theocracy. It also implies that a Catholic legislator must agitate to have everything the Church condemns made illegal, and everything the Church commands made obligatory, or be excommunicated. Who will be the first to argue that a Catholic legislator must agitate for taking God's name in vain or envying one's neighbor to be made illegal, or for Sunday Mass attendance and the corporal works of mercy to be made mandatory?
Let it not be forgotten that when John F. Kennedy ran for President, one of the objections raised by his opponents and detractors was that "he'd take his orders from Rome." What the Arinze pronouncement does is to solidify that thesis, by providing evidence of theological coercion to bend the postures of Catholic legislators.
"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." -- Jesus of Nazareth.
FP: I understand your position better now, but I think you underestimate his role as a legislator in facilitating abortions. It may be proper to condemn a man for failing to save a life when he had the opportunity to do so, depending on the circumstances. If the Catholic Church decides that Kerry (and others) share in the blame for abortions (abortions that wouldn't have happened had the procedure been illegal), then their condemnation seems easily justified.
Contrariwise, making lying illegal probably wouldn't do much to reduce the number of lies told, so failing to criminalize it hasn't really facilitated anything.
Let me first say that, when John Kerry begins marching with pro-lifers to show how morally wrong he believes abortion to be, I'll believe that he's opposed to it. His position is not, as far as I've seen any indication, that abortion cannot be halted by law without creating greater evils; it's that each person has "the right to choose" abortion. That's not a political consideration; that's a statement of rights, and if one believes, as Catholics are supposed to do, that the unborn are human beings with their own right to life, then women do not have a right to kill them. Really, Mr. Porretto, do you believe that Kerry believes as he says?
Second, the idea that nobody should attempt to coerce lawmakers into changing positions is ridiculous. It's contrary to our natures and, more specifically, to the aspect of our natures on which our Founders sought to structure our government. A group devoted to encouraging tax reduction, to switch context, would be entirely justified in barring Kerry from its annual banquet.
Third, for a Catholic, the Church ranges from suggesting to declaring what "the dictates of his conscience" should be. Abortion is an area in which that dictate is declared. From where do you suppose Kerry derives the principles of his conscience if not from his religion?
Fourth, I remind you that incitement to riot is a crime in its own right, even if it is not the particular one of which the rioters are guilty. No woman can shift the burden of blame for an abortion onto a politician, but that doesn't mean that the politician can shift his own burden onto that woman.
Fifth, in preventing laws against abortion (laws, I remind you, with a long-standing precedent), Kerry has indeed "facilitated" abortions. Did he let a woman borrow his car? I don't know. But he let the abortionist open for business.
Sixth, considering that Kerry's support for "choice" has been vocal and strong, rather than qualified and reluctant, he has arguably exhorted women to abort.
Seventh, the idea that this "implies that a Catholic legislator must agitate to have everything the Church condemns made illegal, and everything the Church commands made obligatory, or be excommunicated" is foolish. The Church, itself, attributes weights and devotes significant effort to deciding what is prudential and what is obligatory. In the case of abortion, it has declared specifically that political support for abortion is itself a sin that pulls the politician sufficiently out of communion with his Church that he shouldn't present himself for Communion.
You may not trust the Catholic Church not to expand its strategy if successful, but those internal boundaries are not for you or John Kerry to decide. If it were, then there would be no freedom of religion.
If his conscience differs from what his Church requires, Kerry can change his Church, or at least accept that morality requires him to break with it, but that doesn't justify exacerbating the break by declaring that he alone and individually can determine what the Church's teachings state.
Kerry can do as his conscience requires, and if that means that he can't run as a Catholic, hey, that's the burden of leadership. And if the argument becomes that he couldn't become elected without the deception, last I checked, self interest wasn't an excuse to sin.
JK: Very well said.
Disputations has a very thoughtful post on the subject of scandal. Disputations' post isn't about Kerry, but it is a nice exposition of the natural consequences of sin.
As a post-Kennedy Catholic, I was raised with the formula that the Pope is an authority only on issues of morality and religion and could not interfere with politics. I think that's a fair formula for defining the limits of accommodation between Church and State in the conscience of a believer. So what's changed? Has religion advanced its borders into areas that were previously thought to be "political?"
Obviously not. What's changed is that the State has moved into areas of traditional morality and is dictating that individuals shape their conscience and behavior to fit that new morality. For example, one case in California punished an elderly woman who did not want to rent out her guest house to a cohabiting unmarried couple. Her freedom of conscience over her small bit of property was sacrificed in the interest of greater social policy. Likewise, in another case a Protestant aka Christian minister was fired from San Francisco's Civil Rights Commission because, as a fundamentalist, while he could formulate a "love the sinner, hate the sin" distinction, he couldn't go so far as to say that Leviticus was not inspired. This case involved a clear attack on freedom of conscience - there was no evidence that the minister had or would discriminate, but his views were out of line with the State and out he went.
So while I'm sympathetic with Mr. Porreto's concern about burdening political leaders with the moral implications of their faith, the fact is that the issue arises only because the political order is burdening the faithful with the logical implication of their politics. There is no doubt in my mind that, all things being equal, Kerry and his political allies would in short order put people like me in a position where we would be forced to compromise our ethical views through the coercive powers of the state, such as is happening in Canada which might enact a hate speech law that would make reciting the Bible a crime. When that happens, I suspect that we would hear little sermons about how our neanderthal religious views weren't worth protecting, about how we had to be made to join the modern era.
PSB: Excellent point about the encroachment of politics into religion. Should religion retreat and cede all the philisophical terrain to politics?
Perhaps I'm wrong (and someone will correct me) but hasn't the Catholic church always held thought as well as action to be within its domain? Haven't they always held the position that to think about something is the same as doing it?
Like I've said before, I am anti-criminalization, but I am not pro-abortion. That doesn't mean, however, that I think the church should be making allowances for politicians -- it is the politicians who should be making allowances for the church.
In the days of the new church of Christ, the early Christians had to decide who to obey, God or man. The Jewish religeous leaders had ceased from following God even to the point of ignoring facts like miracles which God used to support the witness of the Christians. Christians had to choose between God's righteousness and political correctness.
For example:
Acts 4:15 But when they had commanded them to go aside out of the council, they conferred among themselves,
16 saying, "What shall we do to these men? For, indeed, that a notable miracle has been done through them is evident to all who dwell in Jerusalem, and we cannot deny it.
17 "But so that it spreads no further among the people, let us severely threaten them, that from now on they speak to no man in this name."
18 And they called them and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus.
19 But Peter and John answered and said to them, "Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge.
20 "For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard."
21 So when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding no way of punishing them, because of the people, since they all glorified God for what had been done." NKJV
This scripture shows Apostles Peter & John choosing God's side. Christians then and now often lack the courage to obey God rather than face the displeasure or hatred of the enemies of righteousness. The same is still true.
Today we have many government and religeous leaders ignorant and/or distainful of God's Book.
The most pitiful are those who claim to believe in God, but follow or give lip-service" the teachings of corrupt "establishment of religeon" led by self-serving leaders teaching doctrines not found in the Bible. It takes knowledge and courageous obedience to please God.
2. Has John Kerry facilitated an abortion? That is, has he assisted a woman in obtaining one?
Define 'facilitated', within the context.
One could certainly argue that he has done so if you count his actions while in government. I will not question his morality, here, but I will openly question his intelectual honesty on the matter.
The crux of the larger issue, for me is the question of how much religion should affect us in our daily lives... both personally and professionally.
We live in the world that is while we wait for that world that is to come. Our religious belief is supposedly at the foundation of our existance... it is by definition the most closely held concept in our existance. It is to the believer, foundational truth. If it is so, then how can one abandon it in their daily lives, inclduing their professional lives? Can someone simply check foundational truth at the door of their job?