Catholic Voters

I read this article in the NYT. I think it does a good job discussing the morla dilemmas in this election

Voting Our Conscience, Not Our Religion
By MARK W. ROCHE

Published: October 11, 2004



South Bend, Ind. — For more than a century, from the wave of immigrants in the 19th century to the election of the first Catholic president in 1960, American Catholics overwhelmingly identified with the Democratic Party. In the past few decades, however, that allegiance has largely faded. Now Catholics are prototypical 'swing voters': in 2000, they split almost evenly between Al Gore and George W. Bush, and recent polls show Mr. Bush ahead of Senator John Kerry, himself a Catholic, among white Catholics.

There are compelling reasons - cultural, socioeconomic and political - for this shift. But if Catholic voters honestly examine the issues of consequence in this election, they may find themselves returning to their Democratic roots in 2004.

The parties appeal to Catholics in different ways. The Republican Party opposes abortion and the destruction of embryos for stem-cell research, both positions in accord with Catholic doctrine. Also, Republican support of various faith-based initiatives, including school vouchers, tends to resonate with Catholic voters.

Members of the Democratic Party, meanwhile, are more likely to criticize the handling of the war in Iraq, to oppose capital punishment and to support universal heath care, environmental stewardship, a just welfare state and more equitable taxes. These stances are also in harmony with Catholic teachings, even if they may be less popular among individual Catholics.

When values come into conflict, it is useful to develop principles that help place those values in a hierarchy. One reasonable principle is that issues of life and death are more important than other issues. This seems to be the strategy of some Catholic and church leaders, who directly or indirectly support the Republican Party because of its unambiguous critique of abortion. Indeed, many Catholics seem to think that if they are truly religious, they must cast their ballots for Republicans.

This position has two problems. First, abortion is not the only life-and-death issue in this election. While the Republicans line up with the Catholic stance on abortion and stem-cell research, the Democrats are closer to the Catholic position on the death penalty, universal health care and environmental protection.

More important, given the most distinctive issue of the current election, Catholics who support President Bush must reckon with the Catholic doctrine of 'just war.' This doctrine stipulates that a war is just only if all possible alternative strategies have been pursued to their ultimate conclusion; the war is conducted in accordance with moral principles (for example, the avoidance of unnecessary civilian casualties and the treatment of prisoners with dignity); and the war leads to a more moral state of affairs than existed before it began. While Mr. Kerry, like many other Democrats, voted for the war, he has since objected to the way it was planned and waged.

Second, politics is the art of the possible. During the eight years of the Reagan presidency, the number of legal abortions increased by more than 5 percent; during the eight years of the Clinton presidency, the number dropped by 36 percent. The overall abortion rate (calculated as the number of abortions per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44) was more or less stable during the Reagan years, but during the Clinton presidency it dropped by 11 percent.

There are many reasons for this shift. Yet surely the traditional Democratic concern with the social safety net makes it easier for pregnant women to make responsible decisions and for young life to flourish; among the most economically disadvantaged, abortion rates have always been and remain the highest. The world's lowest abortion rates are in Belgium and the Netherlands, where abortion is legal but where the welfare state is strong. Latin America, where almost all abortions are illegal, has one of the highest rates in the world.

None of this is to argue that abortion should be acceptable. History will judge our society's support of abortion in much the same way we view earlier generations' support of torture and slavery - it will be universally condemned. The moral condemnation of abortion, however, need not lead to the conclusion that criminal prosecution is the best way to limit the number of abortions. Those who view abortion as the most significant issue in this campaign may well want to supplement their abstract desire for moral rectitude with a more realistic focus on how best to ensure that fewer abortions take place.

In many ways, Catholic voters' growing political independence has led to a profusion of moral dilemmas: they often feel they must abandon one good for the sake of another. But while they may be dismayed at John Kerry's position on abortion and stem-cell research, they should be no less troubled by George W. Bush's stance on the death penalty, health care, the environment and just war. Given the recent history of higher rates of abortion with Republicans in the White House, along with the tradition of Democratic support of equitable taxes and greater integration into the world community, more Catholics may want to reaffirm their tradition of allegiance to the Democratic Party in 2004.


Mark W. Roche is dean of the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame.

I thought this was an interesting response to the NYT article, and in fact, more representative of the Church's view.



Not In Good Conscience

By Robert P. George and Gerard V. Bradley

“History will judge our society's support of abortion in much the same way we view earlier generations' support of torture and slavery.' These words appeared Monday in an essay published in — are you sitting down? — the New York Times.


You can get back up. There is an explanation. The point of the piece was to explain to Catholic citizens why they can in good conscience — indeed, why they should — vote for John Kerry.

But, you may be asking, isn't John Kerry in favor of legal abortion? Indeed, doesn't he support the public funding of abortions? Hasn't he consistently voted against efforts to prohibit partial-birth abortions? Didn't he even vote against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act that would have held murderers of pregnant women and their unborn children liable for both deaths?

Doesn't John Kerry vigorously support embryo destruction for biomedical research? Doesn't he condemn those who oppose this killing for putting 'right-wing ideology' ahead of curing people? Indeed, going beyond the killing of embryos currently stored in assisted-reproduction clinics, hasn't Kerry proposed to create, at public expense, massive numbers of human embryos by cloning in order to use them as disposable research material?

Hasn't John Kerry voted against every effort to place meaningful restrictions on the practice of abortion or embryo-destructive research? And hasn't he attempted to implicate Catholics and other pro-life citizens in the slavery-like evil of these practices by paying for them with taxpayer dollars?

By what logic, then, does the author of the New York Times essay conclude that Catholics should vote for the United States Senate's most faithful supporter of what he says ought to be regarded, and some day will be regarded, as an injustice on a par with the evils of torture and slavery?


NO COMPARISON
The answer: He reaches his conclusion by very shoddy logic. Having conceded the gravity and scope of the evil of abortion, the author, Mark W. Roche, dean of the College of Arts and Letters at Notre Dame, unwittingly makes the decisive case for reelecting George W. Bush — the candidate who will be vindicated by history for his opposition to injustice on the scale of slavery prior to its abolition by the Thirteenth Amendment.

Dean Roche opens his case for Kerry by saying that while President Bush and the Republicans have the superior position on abortion and embryonic-stem-cell research, 'the Democrats are close to the Catholic position on the death penalty, universal health care, and environmental protection.'

This argument doesn't work. Neither candidate would abolish the death penalty, though Kerry would invoke it in fewer cases than Bush. But even assuming, as we are willing to do, that Catholics should oppose the death penalty on the basis of the Pope's recent development of the Church's historical teaching, no one can say that this teaching has the same status or urgency as the Church's teaching against the direct killing of the innocent, whether in abortion, embryo-destructive research, euthanasia, or the deliberate targeting of civilians in warfare. Nor is the degree of injustice the same or even close to the same. Nor is the scale of the wrong anything approaching 1.3 million deaths per year by abortion plus thousands more, if Kerry gets his way, in embryo-destructive research.

On questions of universal health care and environmental protection, the Church does not presume to bind its members to specific policies as matters of strict justice. True, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has developed policy proposals on health care, environmental protection, agricultural policy, immigration, tax policy, the minimum wage, and a host of other issues; but the bishops fully acknowledge that reasonable people of goodwill — including faithful Catholics — may legitimately reject these proposals in favor of alternatives. Many bishops themselves reject them. No Catholic is bound by them in the way that every Catholic is bound to oppose policies that license the injustice of deliberately taking innocent human life.

Roche's next move concerns the war in Iraq. He suggests, without ever quite saying so, that President Bush's decision to use military force to remove Saddam Hussein violates 'the Catholic doctrine of 'just war.'' It is true that the Pope opposed the use of force. But he did not declare the war to be unjust; nor did he forbid Catholics from supporting it or Catholic soldiers from fighting in it. He respected the teaching of the Catechism and the entire tradition of Catholic thought about just war: It is up to the leaders of nations, and not to Church officials, to make the crucial prudential judgments as to whether a threat is sufficient to warrant the use of military force, and whether the legitimate alternatives to force are exhausted or will prove unavailing. Of course, Catholics needn't think that President Bush made all the right prudential judgments, nor need they agree with the president's strategic conduct of the war. But no one can legitimately claim a moral equivalence between Bush's decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein and Kerry's efforts to preserve, pay for, and even extend the practice of killing innocent human beings in utero and in vitro.


CREDIT NOT DUE
Roche's final bit of argument is the least promising of all. He says that 'politics is the art of the possible.' Then he argues that the best way to reduce the number of abortions is to elect liberal Democrats like Kerry — the most virulent and uncompromising supporters of this slavery-like evil — because their social policies lead to lower abortion rates. His main piece of evidence for this remarkable claim is that 'the overall abortion rate was more or less stable during the Reagan years, but during the Clinton presidency it dropped by 11 percent.' So he suggests that the pro-life thing to do is to vote against the pro-life party and in favor of the party that would (1) implicate Catholics and other pro-life citizens in the evil of abortions by paying for them with taxpayer's money; (2) make sure that every single one of its Supreme Court nominees will support the virtually unlimited abortion license created in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton; and (3) create a massive industry in the production and destruction of embryos for purposes of biomedical research.

The truth is that Clinton and the Democrats cannot fairly be credited for the decline in the abortion rate in the 1990s. All that Clinton can legitimately claim on this score is that he generated a voter backlash resulting in a Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. Thus, he unwittingly paved the way for actions that have indeed had a positive effect on both the rate of abortions and our national debate. Above all, by raising the issue of partial-birth abortion and enacting a ban on this horrific practice (a ban twice vetoed by Clinton himself — a veto upheld only because of near Democratic unanimity in its support in the Senate) the Republicans placed the focus on the victim of abortion, and awakened the conscience of many Americans to the homicidal nature of the practice.

At the very same time, technological developments — above all prenatal sonography — vividly revealed to Americans, including expecting parents and grandparents, the beautiful and undeniably human life of the child in the womb. Clinton didn't invent the sonogram, nor did he join the pro-life effort to save babies by distributing sonographic equipment as widely as possible.

Clinton's efforts on abortion were in an entirely different direction. He supported a so called Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) that would have overturned even modest state restrictions on abortion, and proposed federal taxpayer funding of abortions via his wife's planned nationalization of the health-care system.


REALISM OVER RECTITUDE?
Near the conclusion of his op-ed, Roche advises 'those who view abortion as the most significant issue in this campaign' to 'supplement their abstract desire for moral rectitude with a more realistic focus on how best to ensure that fewer abortions take place.'

But would he have said the same thing about efforts to ban slavery? Would he have lectured those who sought to ban it about 'their abstract desire for moral rectitude'? Would he have proposed economic policies to reduce the market demand for slaves, as some opponents of abolition suggested, rather than supporting the party that promised to extend to all human beings — regardless of race — the equal protection of the law? Somehow we doubt that he would have regarded the cause of abolition as a mere 'abstract desire for moral rectitude.'

In answering the question about abortion in the second presidential debate, John Kerry claimed to 'respect' the views of pro-life citizens. He took the occasion to call attention to the fact that he himself is a Catholic and once served as an altar boy. But Catholic citizens should remember this: No one in American public life has a worse record on abortion and embryo-destruction than John Kerry. No one — not even Hillary Clinton — is to his left on these issues. When it comes to Supreme Court appointments, Kerry has made it clear that no Catholic lawyer — however superbly qualified — who believes what the Church teaches about the sanctity of human life need apply. They are ineligible. And this same John Kerry is proposing to expand embryo killing far beyond abortion by funding embryo-destructive research, and even the creation of embryos by cloning for experimentation in which they are subsequently killed.

Roche is right that abortion is in our day what slavery was in Lincoln's. To vote for John Kerry in 2004 would be far worse, however, than to have voted against Lincoln and for his Democratic opponent in 1860. Stephen Douglas at least supported allowing states that opposed slavery to ban it. And he did not favor federal funding or subsidies for slavery. John Kerry takes the opposite view on both points when it comes to abortion. On the great evil of his own day, Senator Douglas was merely John Kerry-lite.

— Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. Gerard V. Bradley is professor of law at Notre Dame and recently served as president of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars.

There was also a front page article in the Times today about the archbishops who are trying to get catholics to vote for Bush, telling them it's a sin to vote for Kerry and that they need to go to confession if they do. That really makes me sick as a Catholic. I understand the unwavering support of illegalizing abortion. I respect that wholeheartedly, but I can't understand or agree with anyone who believes that this is a one issue election, or that ANY election is that simple that you can choose one litmus issue and say 'ok, I am voting for this person' ignoring all other issues. It makes me feel sick to my stomach that people are wielding teh church's power like that. I think it's totally amnipulative. people do look ot church leaders for spiritual guidance, but to suggest that voting one way or another is a sin, I think infringes on people's basic rights as a citizen. it really leaves me uneasy.

Whomever you decide to vote for, you really should recognize that the decision is not and should not be cut and dry, there are MANY issues in this race, and I happen to disagree with the fine archbishops about whicha re the most important ones.

I'm on the fence about aortion, but it's not my 1 issue because I don't believe that illegalizing it is the way to stop it.

Also, the archbishops say that same sex marriage is 'non-negotiable', but death penalty, war, aren't non negotiable.

How many people has same sex marriage killed? ZERO.

How many innocents have war and the death penalty killed? COUNTLESS

If john kerry were in support of the Death penalty, and GWB were not, then I bet you a million dollars that the 'Death penalty' would be on the list if 'non-negotiables.'

I just have to lose all respect when people try to intimidate others with religion, and whatever your views on the subject, same sex marriage has never killed anyone and never will, while war and the death penalty take precious lives every day. Just as you can't call yourself 'pro life' ad support abortion rights, you similarly shouldn't be called 'pro life' if you support unjust wars and the death penalty.

Edited for typos

You certainly do not have to agree with their statements but how could their exercise of their First Amendment rights be 'infring[ing] on people's basic rights as citizens?' I do not think this statement makes sense.

As I see it, Catholic leaders are just as entitled to express their views on politics as anyone else. Do you have a similar problem with Kerry campaigning with Sharpton at southern Black Protestant churches this past weekend? Is that manipulative and improperly wielding the church power? Or are there 2 different standards to be applied to church leaders depending upon which candidate that they advocate??