“Faithful Citizenship”
Archbishop George Niederauer of San Francisco has issued some forthright questions and answers regarding the new document of the United States Bishops. Here are two that especially struck me:
Q: Isn’t the Catholic Church really interested only in abortion and euthanasia?
A: No. The Catholic Church teaches that the primary human right is life. Without human life, no other human rights matter. Thus “Faithful Citizenship” concludes that abortion and euthanasia have become primary threats to human life and human dignity because they directly attack life itself. This moral preeminence of abortion and euthanasia must be reflected in the discernment of voters as they seek to form their consciences during the coming election campaign. Such a preeminence does not discard the moral importance of other issues in the 2008 campaign, but it does mean that abortion and euthanasia should exercise a special claim upon the consciences of voters.
Q: Doesn’t that answer sound as if any issue except abortion and euthanasia is a second – rate issue, undeserving of the Catholic Church ‘ s time, energy and attention?
A: In “Faithful Citizenship” the U.S. bishops teach that Catholics should avoid two errors. The first consists in making no distinctions among different kinds of moral issues involving human life and dignity. Such an error would lead someone to conclude that all issues have equal weight. For example, a politician might say in effect to Catholic voters, ” Well, I ‘ m with you on raising the minimum wage, so can’t you cut me some slack on abortion and physician-assisted suicide? ”
The second error to be avoided consists of reducing Catholic moral and social teaching to one or two issues, and refusing to be concerned about a wide range of issues. ” Faithful Citizenship ” states quite forthrightly: “Racism and other unjust discrimination, torture, the use of the death penalty, resorting to unjust war, war crimes, the failure to respond to those who are suffering from hunger and lack of health care, or unjust immigration policy are all serious moral issues that challenge our consciences and require us to act. These are not optional concerns that can be dismissed. Catholics are urged to seriously consider Church teaching on those issues. “
My local daily newspaper did a front page spread with candidate photos indicating that Ron Paul is the only contender to meet the two major criteria (abortion and euthanasia) for adherence to Catholic teaching. So, the degree of “preeminence” one assigns to these versus other issues is apparently where the rubber hits the road. The handout excluded the paragraph in the full document about our vote affecting our salvation.
This is the first time the bishops put out a non-voting-guide “voting guide” for the presidential primaries – even my pastor called it a voting guide. Is anyone else uncomfortable with this? Yes, the bishops have a teaching role, but I am profoundly uneasy with the practice. My pastor felt constrained to add that all pastors supported the initiative, in light of criticism about the moral compass of NH Bishop John McCormack in the sexual abuse scandal. Bottom line: an episcopal initiative needs to hide behind pastors’ robes to gain credibility.
Basically, I agree wholeheartedly with an article in the Chicago Tribune by Eugene Kennedy:
Catholic Bishops Should Worry
More about Their Souls than Ours
By
Eugene Cullen Kennedy
The nation’s Catholic bishops have warned their people this week that the choices they make in the voting booth are something like the sins they admit in the confessional booth. In an approach that even friendly commentators would hardly describe as subtle, the bishops warn the way a Catholic votes will have “an impact … on the individual’s salvation.”
The bishops feel pretty good about themselves about this action, according to reports, and Russell Shaw, once their information director, says that they are “looking for hopeful signs that they have turned the corner” from the sex abuse crisis and regained the kind of moral influence they had a generation ago when they issued thoughtful pastoral letters on nuclear war and the economy.
The bishops have turned a corner alright but it is into the same blind alley in which they have been milling about, unsure of what to do, since the still unresolved sex abuse crisis exploded almost six years ago.
The real reason they feel good is not because they seek to be visionary leaders but because they think that they have reasserted control over their people. Their idea of what has been wrong with the Church is what other authorities, including Church teaching, declare to be right: that mature faith is integrated as a master motive into the lives of believers so that, on their own they consult theological principles so that they can and, indeed, must follow their consciences in making their moral choices that include how they vote on election day. They don’t need to be told as if they had not reached the age of reason about the gravity of the choices about war and peace and life and death that they make when they vote.
The bishops should examine themselves about the moral implications of the choices they have made, for example, about dealing with the still smoldering sex abuse crisis by church personnel. What can Catholics make of recent pronouncements by Church leaders that seem like talking points rather than deeply held moral convictions? Cardinal Francis George has suggested that the pursuit of justice by victims through recourse to the law is only about money. Chicago Auxiliary Bishop John Paprocki, recently gave a talk in which he equated the lawsuits about sex abuse with attacks on the Church and suggested that such pursuits were the work of the devil himself. Shepherds who utter such judgments should be more worried about their own salvation than about that of their flock.
The bishops are bound by canon law themselves. Do they wonder if their own salvation is not at stake if they do not take canon 213 seriously? It states that Catholics have a right to the sacraments but on the present ecclesiastical watch bishops have allowed a scarcity of the sacraments to develop, cutting down on masses rather than finding ways to call more lay people to the priesthood, and closing churches. This nationwide pattern does not take into account the large increase in Catholics, mostly Hispanic, predicted over the next generation. The challenge will be to open rather than close parishes and schools to serve them. Whose salvation is at stake in whether the spiritual needs of millions of new Catholics will be met?
Many of the men who wear miters think that the best way to lead the Church to 2025 is by returning it to 1925. They want to repeal Vatican II and magically bring back the devotions and practices of a wonderful but permanently ended era in American Catholicism. They apparently feel that it is dangerous for Catholics to be adult and to take responsibility for their own decisions in life. They seem uneasy about conversing with a generation of Catholics who know as much or more theology than they do.
What they seem to view as a way to restore their authority is to assert control and to expect submission from their people. Submission was, however, one of the most dangerous dynamics in the development of the sex abuse crisis and the bishops should be as wary of demanding that as their people are of offering it. Most bishops are warm and healthy men who, after they get home from this week’s meeting and have a chance to clear their heads, will realize that by treating grown-up Catholics as children by putting their salvation at risk in the voting booth, they are dangerously eroding rather than recovering their authority.
Living in Archbishop Niederauer’s diocese, I admire him very much. He has a PhD in English literature and speaks and writes very well.
In his Questions and Answers, I disagree with the examples he gives to make his points. He uses raising the minimum wage as an example of a second level issue compared to abortion. However, the most common reasons women give for having an abortion are economic ones. Increasing the minimum wage, maternity leave, preschool for all children, universal health care, free access to state colleges and universities, all of these would cut down on the number of abortions.
In my opinion the battle to re-criminalize abortion in all of the states has been lost. While I don’t expect the bishops to come out and say that, many of them must realize it. It is time for them to start speaking seriously about ways to curtail the number of abortions through support for economic legislation that would allow women to make the choice to give life to a child.
Carolyn,
I’m curious. You write that the bishops “by treating grown-up Catholics as children by putting their salvation at risk in the voting booth ….” Do you really, truly, genuinely believe that the bishops, by this statement, put anyone’s salvation at any risk? I.e., that the bishops have such actual moral authority, such influence over God and the fate of any person’s soul, that anyone who takes an opposing view really does risk hellfire and damnation (or however you choose to define the opposite of “salvation”?) If so, how on earth do you disagree with the bishops? By your own convictions, you will be defying the people who have God’s ear and thus putting your own salvation in jeopardy!
Or perhaps you don’t believe the bishops have such power and were merely trying to make your point. Though weren’t you, then, treating catholics like children yourself by implying that the bishops can actually punish them in such an eternal, spiritual manner?
This is the dilemma–on the one hand, you seem to accept that the bishops hold some sort of moral authority but at the same time you seem to hold views contrary to the bishops’ views. You seem to want the bishops’ supposed moral authority to be on your side instead of opposed to your side … but why accept that they have any moral authority in the first place? Certainly their actions in the sex scandals–as you note–are not the actions of good and godly men. Why not just ignore what they have to say? Eventually, if no one is listening (ala the unheard tree that falls in the forest) perhaps they won’t make any sound at all.
I thank Carolyn for posting the full text of Gene Kennedy’s op ed.
As Congress adjourns, the Decider wins again and Harry Reid, after noting the record filibusters in the Senate, bumbles on about the fine bipartisan spirit there.
So nothing really changes and we can look forward to a new year of gridlock, a campaign dominated by big money and hateful attack ads and continuing war, torture, secrecy and more of the fear card.
While we talk about division between the secular left and the religious right, we assume secularists are ant-God, but they’re really anti the God put forward by many Church institutions. Folk are turned off because they see problems of not having their lives touched, not being listened to and, in short being treated like children.
Hence the relevance of Kennedy.
Meanwhile the only (putative) Catholic Candidate, Guiliani, is fading and we may well have two non-Catholics, one pandering to the evangelicals, the other to the secularists to vote for,
Does Faithful Citizenship deal with those realities and even if you think so, will it be preaching to the choir at best?
Apropos of another thread here, as I sat in the eye doctor’s office today, I glanced over Anna Quinfdlen’s end piece in Newswek, saying we’re desperately in ned of food for the poor, but where’s our political will to deal with that?
BXVI tells us to sail the ship of hope guided by Christ our light and Stella Maris.
He knows and notes we need other lights to guides us, But where are they?
I see many good individuals doing good, but leadership seems so sorely lacking in our divided country, both politically and religiously.
Is this document mis-titled? Instead of “Faithful Citizenship” should it not be called “Faithful Discipleship?” The way a person becomes a citizen in snot the same as the way he or she becomes a Christian disciple. The way a person properly deals with political opponents who are fellow citizens may very well not be the way a disciple properly deals with fellow Christians who hold mistaken religious beliefs. For example, political compromise is always worth considering. Doctrinal compromise is not so. Religious ecumenism and political compromise have different aims and different appropriate guidlines.
So far as I can see, the bishops’ document fails to make these crucial distinctions. In failing to do so, they fail to appreciate the distinctive importance of political life.