Here’s my first question for you guys to discuss. Let me try to unpack the probably poorly-articulated question.
I don’t mean, “Is it too unrealistically oriented toward a greater good that can never be achieved?” No. I mean – is Catholic politico-talk, particularly in the present moment, as most of us are engaging in it, taking place essentially on the level of vague assertions, associations and concepts? And – are we avoiding and ignoring the way that government and political processes actually work?
In my mind, at least two aspects of this stick out:
1. Voting:
One of the smartest Catholic political-blogging bloggers out there is Erin Manning of Red Cardigan. Anyone who’s not discovered her – I encourage you to go read. However, one of the pithiest, most intelligent statements on her blog in the past few months wasn’t actually written by Erin, but by a commenter on this post, who wrote:
“We need to realize that politics is a practical science – oriented toward result. A vote is a vote for the RESULT, not any particular candidate.
For instance, it would be a completely moral action for me to vote for Hillary in a primary if she’s a weaker candidate in the general election, in order for a RESULT, which is, that that the ethically superior candidate might win. A vote is not your stamp of approval for any one person. It is not a marriage, or a contract, or a vow to a particular individual. It is a tool for a result.
It seems to me that much of what I’m reading out there comes from a completely different perspective: that my vote for a presidential candidate signifies that I belief this candidate to be a perfect embodiment of the finest humanity has to offer as well as an individual who embodies every value which I hold dear. Much sturm und drang, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments results. It’s one thing to agonize because you are torn between two candidates whose victories might result in positive or negative consequences of proportionate value, or because your vote might (realistically) contribute to a particular moral or immoral result, but to treat this as if we’re voting on a canonization case, your vote on which somehow shows the world something about you is silly.
2. Government and civic life.
Can we read St. Augustine, please? City of God and City of Man and all that?
It seems to me that some of our conversations about political life in Catholic circles ask far more from government than it is able to give (I’ll touch on this more in a later post, as well – probably several. It is a core issue, I think.), not only because of the proper scope of government but because of the limitations and VAGARIES of political, social and economic life. I do think conversations about health care are a perfect example of this, but I do want to do a separate post on this, so you might want to save your specifics for later.
I don’t want to suggest cynicism or hopelessness. I’m also not definitely suggesting that the law, for example, is useless or pointless in shaping our lives and choices. That’s just silly. I’m just sort of groping for a way towards a more realistic engagement between the way politics and government actually works and the way that we talk about it as Catholics, citizens of both Cities, at the moment.
Update:
All the comments so far have been good, but I want to highlight Liam’s, which says what I was trying to say far more knowledgeably:
The problem is that much Church teaching still indirectly assumes the idea of the single-willed sovereign in the political organism. And that notion simply doesn’t obtain in modern representative democracy with a panoply of checks and balances that are precisely designed to frustrate the application of any single will to political effectiveness. Someday, the Church may catch up on this, but it has only done so at the surface and at the level of very general goals.
One thing that may have to evolve is our understanding of the conditions for grave sin. We have a long-standing teaching about consent that still implies a single actor capable of having sufficient knowledge. In representative government, there are many actors, partial knowledge, and consent cannot necessarily be presumed to omissions because the array of consequences of omissions are too numerous to take into account. I do wonder if there are any serious moral theologians out there who are considering this aspect of the problem.
Finally, one always has the classic Catholic problem of moralism/ethicalism vs sanctification/theosis: that is, the tendency (dating to the time of Jesus own preaching, as testified in the Gospels) to settle for avoiding vice/cultivating virtue instead of the much riskier proposition of making room for God in our souls the way God wants for us, which often does not neatly align with a vices/virtue checklist.
The problem is that orthodox Catholics (and by “orthodox” I merely mean those who can pick up the CCC and say, I believe THIS, without exception) have no home in the American political system. We are neither liberal nor conservative. Thus, we wind up choosing based upon the pressing issues of our time.
I happen to believe that liberal, state-based solutions to social welfare problems are terrible and unworkable. I still think those problems are important and need to be addressed, but history has shown us that any kind of “War on Poverty” is not only doomed to failure, but likely to destroy the social fabric in the process.
Since American distributism is a mere pipe dream, the market-based approaches favored by conservatives are the only workable ones. As someone said, it’s the worst system, except for all the others.
Meanwhile, the anti-life policies (in all areas) of the Democratic party make them intolerable. I don’t see how any Catholic can, in good conscience, vote for a Democrat. It’s nonsense to say that they care more about the poor, when their solutions almost always increase poverty.
Great post, Amy. I agree on all counts.
Amy,
I am glad that you started this discussion. I don’t post in comboxes too often and I don’t do it on many other blogs, because I don’t like the intolerable atmosphere in some combox debates.
With that in mind, I agree with you. I also agree with our Bishops. There is no proportionate issue to the abortion issue in this election.
But, whomever wins this election will not bring us grace. Nor will the world come to an end. I think we as Catholics need to have a bigger world-view than what politics provides. We have to step back and understand that, while is it important, there are more important things, such as the salvation of the lost, that we need to focus on.
Also, worrying about what may happen in silly. The apocalyptic warnings I hear from both camps are just fear-mongering. We need to get past that kind of rhetoric if we are to have a fruitful discussion about real topics.
Thanks for raising this subject, Amy.
I’ve actually been blogging on this very subject, taking issue with the scrupulous argument that it is wrong to vote for any candidate (such as McCain) who supports any intrinsically evil policy (such as embryonic stem cell research) is always morally wrong, even if the other major candidate not only supports the same intrinsically evil policy but others also.
FWIW, here’s my latest installment:
http://jimmyakin.typepad.com/defensor_fidei/2008/10/elections-vot-1.html
Amy, thank you so much for the compliment, and the links!
The conversation about Catholics and moral duties in regard to voting has been an interesting one this year. Certainly the willingness of bishops to, as they did here in the DFW area, come right out and say that Catholics can’t vote for pro-abortion candidates when morally acceptable alternatives exist has been an exciting development, especially for Catholics who usually place life issues at the center of their voting decisions.
I find myself a bit conflicted, though; there are many things Republicans support and want that I don’t, but the Democrats are worse in nearly every area even if they weren’t completely impossible on life issues, as they are. It’s been helpful to me to hear the back-and-forth of highly educated Catholics on such questions as “Is voting for McCain (given his ESCR support) mediate remote material cooperation with evil in the absence of proportionate reasons?”
Even if you agree that the first is true (mediate remote material cooperation) the second (proportionate reasons) seems to depend on whether you think, as some do, that one’s individual vote is an overwhelmingly symbolic act with almost no practical effect whatsoever except its effect on your individual soul, or whether you take the (to me, slightly more reasonable) position that so long as one *intends* one’s vote to be a limiting of the greater evil then even if the reality is that you are not a swing voter in a swing state your intentions for good are what matter; you are not, in other words, giving a rubber stamp of approval to every policy and action of the new president, but are trying to keep an even more pro-abortion president from being elected.
While I don’t think we can ignore the moral ramifications of our votes, it seems to me that equating McCain’s rather unclear support for ESCR with all of Obama’s pro-abortion stances (including his pledge to sign FOCA as soon as he takes office) and then washing one’s hands of both of them is an error of some kind.
One of the basic principles of economics:
Examine incentives, not intentions.
applies to politics, too.
Amy
Very good. The problem is that much Church teaching still indirectly assumes the idea of the single-willed sovereign in the political organism. And that notion simply doesn’t obtain in modern representative democracy with a panoply of checks and balances that are precisely designed to frustrate the application of any single will to political effectiveness. Someday, the Church may catch up on this, but it has only done so at the surface and at the level of very general goals.
One thing that may have to evolve is our understanding of the conditions for grave sin. We have a long-standing teaching about consent that still implies a single actor capable of having sufficient knowledge. In representative government, there are many actors, partial knowledge, and consent cannot necessarily be presumed to omissions because the array of consequences of omissions are too numerous to take into account. I do wonder if there are any serious moral theologians out there who are considering this aspect of the problem.
Finally, one always has the classic Catholic problem of moralism/ethicalism vs sanctification/theosis: that is, the tendency (dating to the time of Jesus own preaching, as testified in the Gospels) to settle for avoiding vice/cultivating virtue instead of the much riskier proposition of making room for God in our souls the way God wants for us, which often does not neatly align with a vices/virtue checklist.
I think TL. McDonald has really engaged the issue here. The statement that orthodox Catholics: “have no home in the American political system. We are neither liberal nor conservative. Thus, we wind up choosing based upon the pressing issues of our time.” This is quite true. Right now, it’s abortion (and, sometimes, immigration). But we seldom reflect on what Catholics really need a society to be in order to prosper and advance and to create a culture that really is Catholic.
In many ways, Catholics were better off during the period before they became “part” of American society (i.e., before the 1960s). They did have their own little societies and had to exist in both really, but it gave them breathing room and a way to create a sustainable Catholic culture (which included education, charitable organizations, and hospitals).
Europe, for all of its secularism and hedonism is actually better off because it was created by Catholic Christianity and therefore has its roots in there. They can be rediscovered. We would have to create something like that here.
But right now, our options are quite limited, at least with respect to government. Buying into the belief that American democracy, jurisprudence, and capitalism are fundamentally compatible with Catholicism (a la Neuhaus, Weigel, et al.) is to attenuate or pervert the meaning of Catholicism and it will reduce Catholicism in the US to a civil religion.
That’s why Catholics in America, at least in the foreseeable future, will remain one-issue voters. Society as a whole is not constructed in a way proper to the expression of Catholicism.
Nice post, Amy. I have a love-hate relationship with politics. I love the ideas but hate the struggle and the inevitable disappointment. It certainly matters in the here and now and we have responsibilities to be good citizens but I think it’s potentially a worldly trap. It’s a temptation to imagine that if only the right President/Judges/laws etc were in place we’d have Utopia. The other extreme is to despair that voting or participating makes any difference an opt out entirely. It’s also a temptation to imagine the opposition as intrinsically evil themselves rather than regular people who are deluded into supporting an intrinsic evil.
I like the results approach. It focuses on the reality that modest positive change is possible and separates the personal from the goal. So voting for McCain, which I plan to do, is intended to prevent a worse outcome (a defensive modest result). I have no expectation that the likely Senate would make any McCain Supreme Court pick easy and even the most conservative presidents have selected stealth “pro-choice” liberals to the court. I’d like to think McCain can turn the court around given Roberts and Alito, but Judges surprise us too often. So while I’m confident Obama would select the closest person to Margaret Sanger he can find, I’m not sure McCain can really achieve a reversal of Roe with the next pick, assuming he gets one. And SGD is right McCain is flawed, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t obviously superior on abortion (and no other issue comes close).
For me at least voting Democrat isn’t even a real possibility. I won’t pretend to be open minded. I just don’t think the government is much good at problem solving, in fact I think it’s one often makes a bad situation worse. I think instead of more government welfare the Church should be the source of charity, then at least it has a chance of being given as an act of love. I’m less a Republican for positive reasons, than I am anti-Democrat for defensive ones. I could see voting third party as a kind of protest, but in a winner take all system like ours, it’s effectively like sitting at home. If this were a parliamentary system with a proportionate allotment of seats then voting third party would have a real world result. I like the result focus – it clears away the clutter.
I guess all of this is pretty standard opinion – no pithy novelty here, but it is how I think.
TL McDonald:
I’ve heard the term “distributism” only once before in connection to Chesterton. How is it (or is it?) different from socialism?
This is an interesting discussion in light of Amendment 48 here in Colorado. This amendment would basically define “person” as a human zygote. It’s an easy question to answer on the surface and the Church teaches that it is indeed a human person. Yet the Colorado bishops are united in opposing the measure. Here are two quotes from the same statement from the bishops of the Archdiocese of Denver (you may recall that Archbishop Chaput was the first bishop to correct Nancy Pelosi on her erronous statements about Catholic teaching on abortion):
“Separating a “fertilized egg” from the dignity of human personhood is bad theology and bad public policy.”
“Colorado’s Catholic bishops do not support this amendment because of problems with its strategy outlined previously through the Colorado Catholic Conference.”
I ended up going against the bishop’s recommendation and voting yes on the amendment. Perhaps I was too naive or simplistic, but when I saw the question “zygote=person?” I said “yes”. At some point, I have to do what I can and entrust the rest to God. I respect our bishops very much, and perhaps with more reasoning and sophistication I might’ve changed my mind, but I couldn’t vote against it.
Colorado Bishop’s Clarification
Liam – Good points.
The Bishops made a good point in Faithful Citizenship that has been pretty much ignored by most good orthodox Catholics. It is this – While the life issues are foundational, they are not the only issues to consider. It is a mistake to forget that the other issues are important.
Another area of concern, from my point of view, is teaching good Catholics that we can disagree on the prudential application of Catholic principles and still both be good Catholics – when it comes to many issues. For instance, immigration and health care. The underlying principles of the dignity of the human person, the right to political asylum, the right to access to health care, etc. are principles that we all agree upon. Yet, when someone disagrees on the application of these principles some Catholics tend to want to throw other Catholics under the bus because they may not agree with the popular application of the principles that govern our thought in this area. This is wrong to do so and we are stymieing progress when we do it.
I am not making a call for more civil debate, but for a more intelligent and less belligerent one, where merits of the application of principles can be debated.
Thanks.
I should probably clarify why I mentioned moralism/ethicalism, since it may not evident to everyone why it’s an issue here.
I think as Catholics we can get tempted to imagine that, if the Church hasn’t worked out the moral theology of an issue well, then we either cling like barnacles to what has been worked out not so well or we are out of the grave sin box. Both rigorism and antinomianism are informed by juridical notions of morality.
Whereas, in reality, we are supposed to be loving our Savior and doing his will. In the lovely words of the Universal Prayer: “I want to do what You ask of me, in the way You ask, for as long as You ask, because You ask.” This is not meant to be prayed as a response to a juridical decision. It’s meant to be prayed in the way a lover responds to the request of the Beloved, even (especially perhaps) when we are very unclear about how the request should best be honored.
This may well lead to different results than if we approach voting with a view to merely avoiding hell.
Answering Aggie:
Distributism is kind of like micro-capitalism. Rather than the state owning the means of production (socialism) or a relatively small number of corporations (capitalism), the greatest number of people own their own means of production. Small businesses, partnerships, and the old guild system are considered ideals.
It was largely the work of Belloc and Chesterton, inspired by Rerum Novarum (Pope Leo XIII) and some other encyclicals that escape me right now. It’s pretty much the opposite of socialism, since it exalts private property and distrusts the state. I’ve never seen it as a complete rejection of capitalism: more as a rejection of some of its excesses. It’s the economic system most in line with Catholic teaching. But we risk drifting O/T here…
I agree that juridical notions of morality are more basic than is the perspective of looking at decisions from the angle of sanctification. However, I think we have to remember that reaching those great heights of sanctification come only after a long and purgative path of trudging through a more basic way of living.
That is why I think that looking at issues from a moral/ethical standpoint is still important; not all of us have reached that unitive stage where we are able to transcend the more mathematical computations of the natural and moral law.
Follow-up:
To answer Amy’s question “are we avoiding and ignoring the way that government and political processes actually work,” I’d say read post #13 by some guy. That’s a big YES! Distributism may be an ideal for many Catholics, but it is as far away from the reality of the situation as we are likely to get.
Mark Shea, God bless him, is almost 100% right in his critique of the Current Unpleasantness. However, his medicine (the “third party quixotic candidate”) is bitter, and applied with a stubborn determination that ignores the realities on the ground. He must be very tired of hearing “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” but it’s still a saying that holds.
It’s exactly this question of results that makes it okay to vote for Obama.
McCain is unlikely to stop any abortions because he has not promised to litmus test Supreme court appointments. No one can know what a judge will do when they get on the court. Anthony Kennedy is a case in point. Packing the court, as we have seen, is flawed strategy.
It seems to me that much of what I’m reading out there comes from a completely different perspective: that my vote for a presidential candidate signifies that I belief this candidate to be a perfect embodiment of the finest humanity has to offer as well as an individual who embodies every value which I hold dear.
I think the reality is – as usual – somewhere in between. “Voting is nothing but a strictly utilitarian tool for expressing a preference for this outcome over that” and “voting represents complete assent to everything my candidate supports” are two radical extremes, neither of which seem even close to the reality.
Elections are a substantive civic ritual; voting is a concrete act of participation in that ritual, with many implications. I don’t know of anyone who thinks that voting for a candidate is endorsement of all of that candidate’s positions; but a lot of people seem to think that voting isn’t really a concrete act of participation in a civic ritual at all, but rather is some kind of pure undistilled intention with respect to a preferred outcome. Neither position makes any sense, but far more people seem to adhere to the latter than to the former.
While it is true that painting the opposing candidate as evil and stating that disaster will result from defeat typically is hyperbole in this particular situation I think a good case can be made.
I would put Obama and the people who support him in the same bucket as the liberation theology group. Note “by people that support him” I mean, not the vast majority of main stream liberal democrats, whom I tend to disagree with, but who are honest, patriotic people. I mean the small group of radical backers who desire the deconstruction of American civilization and are using the situation of the poor, especially poor African Americans, to attempt to disrupt American culture, and destroy our democratic form of government.
I have heard the comparison to Germany in the 1930s made and agree with it. Not because I think that we have a “Night of the Long Knives” coming, but because what the NSDAP did was gain power through democratic electoral success and then once in power dismantled the democratic institutions which they used to gain power.
That is the goal of the group backing Obama. The Main Stream Media and the Democratic leadership know this, but believe they can ride the tiger to achieve their own personal agendas. They don’t believe that an American president could achieve such an effect, I suspect because they control congress and the party apparatus. I fear they underestimate the problem.
Meanwhile from a Catholic perspective, if Obama wins, I expect to see it become illegal for an orthodox Catholic to be a doctor, or nurse, adoption specialist, or city clerk. Anyone who would stand up for Life, Marriage or moral teaching. The bishops will have to make a choice between cutting loose hospitals, adoption agencies, universities, as they have been doing, but should they choose to hold the doctrinal line I expect to see them facing jail time, for what will effectively be “thought crimes” like holding that abortion is wrong, or that two men can’t marry. Any regular person holding, and living those views will not be able to work in their profession, because an objection on the grounds of conscious will not be permitted.
Who will end up really running the country I don’t know. Obama is a talking suit. What will matter is who is around him. They are the people who will be running things.