There was a good article on the NCR site today: Editorial: US bishops made a bad deal with the GOP | National Catholic Reporter (ncronline.org)
"The alterations to the abortion plank in this year's Republican Party platform provide a telling lesson about political reality and the difference between church teaching and doomed episcopal politics."
"The GOP, previously absolute in its advocacy for a national ban on abortion, backed off that once unchangeable position, leaving the matter to the states. The word "abortion" itself went unspoken during the length of their recent convention, according to an analysis by The New York Times. The reason? Politics. Winning elections. The party has come up against the harsh reality that when placed on the ballot in deep red states, voters overwhelmingly approved wide access to abortion. Even in Kansas."
"That consequence is, arguably, the unfortunate lasting legacy of Catholic episcopal politics. No other cultural entity has spent as much money and political capital fueling the war over abortion as the U.S. bishops. No other group has staked its identity during the past half century to a single issue to the same degree as the U.S. bishops."
"But, amid the endless fighting, any serious teaching, any opportunity to persuade, has been lost. We are faced, instead, with inflexible binary choices that do not reflect the majority of people who would prefer a more substantive societal discussion as well as more nuanced politics and laws on the issue. That broad middle, fairly consistent for decades, has always been the lost voice. It also contains a hefty representation of Catholics.."
"Church teaching on abortion is not the same as church politics on abortion. Teaching involves instruction, persuasion, example and toleration of errors. Teaching is not accomplished by coercion or threat of punishment. Good teaching also involves encountering and understanding the other."
"...This has all left many Catholics homeless politically. They may care deeply about social justice issues addressed by the Democratic Party but feel more than a little uncomfortable when the issue most talked about is unrestricted access to abortion."
"Or they may feel abortion is their most important issue — but are more than a little uncomfortable in a Republican Party which either ignores or opposes most justice issues and is led by a man held legally liable for sexual assault, a convicted felon who paid a porn star and Playboy model for silence and incited an insurrection."
"In the encyclical Deus Caritas Est Pope Benedict XVI gave instruction on the place of Catholic teaching in the public square. It is an instruction you won't find touted by those who wish to have abortion remain the sole non-negotiable."
"This is where Catholic social doctrine has its place: It has no intention of giving the Church power over the State. Even less is it an attempt to impose on those who do not share the faith ways of thinking and modes of conduct proper to faith. Its aim is simply to help purify reason and to contribute, here and now, to the acknowledgment and attainment of what is just," wrote Benedict."
"...The U.S. bishops have been badly used and manipulated in their political bargain. Surveys over decades show they've persuaded almost no one, not even their own flock. Surveys show about 60% of U.S. Catholics say abortion should be legal in all or most cases."
"..Their primary achievement has been to stoke division within the Catholic community and in the wider culture.... That doesn't mean abandoning concerns or involvement in issues. It does mean recognizing that being a devout Catholic in the United States does not require adherence to a single political ideology or party."
"Church teaching on abortion is not the same as church politics on abortion. Teaching involves instruction, persuasion, example and toleration of errors. Teaching is not accomplished by coercion or threat of punishment. Good teaching also involves encountering and understanding the other."
ReplyDeleteThat was heartening to read.
Respect for life starts with talking with your kid (and sometimes your kid's girlfriend) about sex, love, respect, responsibility, and consequences. It's about keeping that communication open. It means not freaking out, throwing fits, or making threats when you hear things that need info, correction, and guidance.
I have never been as worked up over the legislative aspects of abortion as a Good Catholic is supposed to be. I hope I did better on the teaching aspects.
The law is a blunt force. I would rather have people do the right thing because it is the right thing.
DeleteOf course I realize there have to be guard rails, but there is a problem if the only thing we have working for us is fear of punishment.
DeleteMaybe I'm living in a bubble of naivete but I don't see the US Bishops as particularly partisan. I see them as standing up for the truth of abortion. The political winds have sometimes been at their back and sometimes against them. At one time, Democrats were considerably more pro-life than they were now. At one time, Republicans had a pro-choice wing that was bigger than it is now. My understanding is, the bishops have worked with whichever politicians have been willing to collaborate with them.
ReplyDeleteTo be sure: the Democratic Party arguably has trended more hostile toward Catholicism, and undoubtedly a big part of that is because of the church's insistence on teaching the truth about abortion. Thus Democrats have come out against conscience protections; have tried to embed abortion subsidies in healthcare entitlement programs; have tried to bounce Catholic Charities from serving as a government contractor for various social welfare programs.
Jim, with all due respect, I do think that you live in an ecclesial bubble. The American bishops as a group are pretty pro- trump. They manage to barely stay within the laws regarding endorsing candidates from their pulpit. Many parish priests don’t stay within the lines from what I’ve read. When they all say that no Catholic can vote for a pro- choice candidate without incurring a mortal sin then it’s pretty obvious.
DeleteThe current folk going after Catholic Charities are the Republican governor of Louisiana and the AG of Texas with the approval of the Catholic governor of the state.
When the government puts out RFPs for social services contracts, the RFP lists in detail the specific requirements. If those requirements include referring clients to abortion or contraceptive providers, or mandates non- discrimination for gays who wish to adopt, and a competitor for the contract refuses to comply with these requirements, they won’t win the contract. They aren’t discriminating against Catholic Charities. Other social services contractors will comply with all of the requirements, not only some of them.
I don’t agree with Democratic opposition to some conscience protections as long as the patient has reasonable alternatives immediately available and if it’s not a life- threatening situation. So if a rape victim needs a morning after pill and was taken to a Catholic hospital, it might be ok to transfer her elsewhere . If it’s a pregnant woman who is in danger of dying because of her miscarriage then she needs an abortion ASAP. If a man or woman seeks surgery - a vasectomy or to have the fallopian tubes tied - they could be referred to another hospital. Unfortunately women in many states with abortion bans have to travel very far to get an abortion even in life- threatening circumstances and the doctors are afraid of being arrested if they perform an abortion to save her life.
I have never heard of a bishop suggesting anything other than that ending a pregnancy after the moment of conception is a mortal sin. I have never heard of bishops collaborating with anyone to seek a compromise on this issue. If you know of one, please give us references.
Jim, not all bishops are partisan. But some of them totally are. Maybe in Chicago you don't have to listen to any partisan homilies. But I've head some that weren't even dog whistle (to be fair, not lately). When Obama was running for president there were some clergy who would say that voting for a pro-choice candidate was a mortal sin. Didn't matter what your reason was.
DeleteIt is true that in the past there were a lot more pro-life Democrats and some pro-choice Republicans. But that has changed due to the partisanship that we are in now. And part of that partisanship has been a concentration on single issues.
I might have said something like the comment I just made to certain family members (but not all of them!) And I wouldn't make it to anyone in our parish or in our town, even friends.
DeletePS. The Republican gov of Louisiana is also a Catholic. There are a lot of Catholics out there who aren’t necessarily very christian.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to argue about abortion per se, but certainly here in Michigan neither Church leaders nor Right to Life-Michigan made any kind of "seamless garment" appeal when a repro rights amendment was on the ballot.
ReplyDeleteThe bishop made a basic abortion-unforgivable-sin-of-murder argument and RTL argued that repro rights was leftwing code for doing sex change operations on children.
Haranguing people about the sanctity of fetal life while ignoring or trivializing any sacrifice a mother might be required to make, or fear mongering about slippery slopes are tactics that people just aren't buying.
When challenged, anti-abortion proponents say they will help pregnant women adopt. This help amounts to giving them the number for Christian Cradle. No nod to health care assistance, discussion of keeping the baby, day care leads, etc. Not even a starter bottle of prenatal vitamins.
In states that have hardened abortion rights with constitutional amendments, the ONLY way anybody's going to prevent destruction of fetal life is through meeting women one-on-one and walking with them.
How about assuring them that the pro- lifers will provide an income subsidy for 18 years If the poor moms to be ( and 2/3 are poor) see no way to afford to support a child even through its first birthday.
DeleteDo CEOs really have to make 250 x more than their average employee? That's the highest ratio in the world. Taxpayers should not be gouged for wage and benefit subsidies when corporate execs are making that kind of dough.
DeleteExecutive salaries - and their golden parachutes even after they’ve destroyed a company - are one of the worst aspects of the system. The only way to change i5vmight be to organize a huge number of stockholders to go to annual meetings and threaten serious boycotts or whatever. Not easy to pull off .
DeleteJim said:
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'm living in a bubble of naivete but I don't see the US Bishops as particularly partisan.
To be sure: the Democratic Party arguably has trended more hostile toward Catholicism, and undoubtedly a big part of that is because of the church's insistence on teaching the truth about abortion.
The decision of the bishops to place the right to life pre-eminent over all other issues was a political decision that allied them with the Republican party. I am sorry but a whole host of other moral issues, the environment, climate change and nuclear warfare, poverty etc. are just as important in making political decisions. And in my opinion, those issues come down to voting for Democrats and rejecting Republicans.
The Republican party is most hostile to all these other issues which I think means they are hostile to Catholicism at least as I live it. I think most of the Democrats are far more open to what I regard as Catholicism whether they are Catholic or not.
When Bernie Sanders was running the first time he was so impressed by Pope Francis that he decided to articulate his program in terms of moral values in the hope of attracting Catholics. I thought at the time if the Bishops had endorsed Pope Francis program on social issues rather than the Republican program they might have attracted youth as Bernie did.
The current American Catholics bishops are a disaster; the history books will not treat them kindly.
I am not a very partisan person. If McCain had defeated Obama I would not have been disturbed. He had a good reputation as a maverick in the Senate. If Romney had defeated Obama I would not have been disturbed. After all he had a health insurance program in Massachusetts. But voting for Trump was making a pact with the devil. The bishops and my fellow Catholics and all the Evangelicals have a lot of repentance to do to redeem themselves in my eyes. My disagreement with them is not simply political it is moral and religious. Do we worship the same God? Do we believe in the same Christ?
Hi Jack. I haven't been able to bring myself to vote for Trump - and I may be placing more weight on the abortion issue, relative to other issues, than you do (I'm just inferring that from your comment).
DeleteI have no argument with your weighing the various issues . That is our job as citizens. The bishops' job is to teach Catholic teaching as faithfully as they are able - and then to trust citizens like us to absorb the teaching and make prudential judgments about how to order our public life.
For some decades, the US bishops obviously have judged that abortion is among the most important moral issues of our time - perhaps the single most important. So that is what they have been teaching, via their "Faithful Citizenship" documents and other media. But how we receive that teaching, and how we use it as input for our voting and advocacy decisions, is not something they can dictate. (Despite the fact that some of them apparently would very much like to!) We are creatures of God as they are, blessed with reason, judgment and so on, and filled with faith as we hope they are. At some point, they need to respect us and they need to trust us to do our best. Or so it seems to me.
Party membership and partisanship complicate our ability to receive and interpret what the church teaches. Is that good, or bad, or perhaps some mixture of good and bad? On the whole, I think the partisanship that exists in the US today is unhealthy. It sows division and mistrust. I really think we would be well-served if those with teaching authority would teach (and model!) the duty to rise above partisanship. My sense is, partisanship is a "kingdom of earth" value. God's kingdom should emphasize other, better values.
"For some decades, the US bishops obviously have judged that abortion is among the most important moral issues of our time - perhaps the single most important."
DeleteDo you (or anyone here) see a problem with the bishops picking one issue as paramount above all others?
It seems to me that it encourages people to think that, whatever else they're doing, at least they're not doing that super bad sin. It gives people a false sense of their own virtue.
In addition, picking one issue to focus on distracts bishops from the broader needs of their people--poverty, illness, injustice, etc.
In the Middle Ages, bishops got preoccupied with the correct date of Easter, getting the Muslims out of the Holy Land, and the stamping out of various heresies. A lot of time, treasure, and lives were sacrificed to these causes that might have been better directed elsewhere.
I think abortion is certainly worth the bishop's time, but singling it out as the very worst problem today perhaps helps stoke divisions. If abortion is the line in the sand that faithful Catholics must not cross when they vote, then those who weigh other factors are wrong sinful baby killers.
Just my outsider opinion, I guess.
I should also have added that the work of a bishop has a long history of evangelization, and this was the focus of so many bishop saints in the Middle Ages. Can a bishop who seems focused on culture war issues bring lots of people to Christ? Certainly not people like me. I want to hear that God loves me and that the Church will help me do better. I don'tbwant to hear that my movie club people are perverts and my college friends (and my 50 yo neighbor with diabetes) who had abortions are going to Hell.
DeleteJean, in answer to your question above, the main problem I see with the bishops putting the abortion issue above all others is that when they (and we) do that, we are expecting people who don't share our faith to prioritize a teaching of it. We do have a Scriptural basis for a belief that our lives begin at conception, and even before (Jeremiah 1:5, Isaiah 44;2, Psalm 139, Galatians 1:5, Ephesians 1:4). But we believe those things by faith, and we don't get others who are not believers in that sense, on board. When there are things such as an actual heart that beats, and a physical resemblance to a baby, people are more likely to reach a consensus. Hence the bell curve, that more people feel that abortion should be legal in the first trimester, and not in the third, or approaching viability, except in the case of rape or danger to the mother.
DeleteIf we want people to respect life all through pregnancy we really do have to walk with women and support policies that make it possible and believable that their pregnancies can be carried to term, and that they will be able to care for their children after birth. Laws do need the consent of the governed.
I understand Church teaching on abortion, and I might be more enthusiastic about it if the bishops stopped emphasizing it and "othering" women who have them. At least they could emphasize that abortion is a sin that involves not just women but their partners. Catholic men who get women pregnant MUST be taught that they will step up to support the mother and take on single fatherhood if that will save the fetus. I have never heard that before, but that is the line I took with The Boy. But in Bishop Land all the condemnation is saved exclusively for women and sometimes abortion doctors.
DeleteI don't believe in "othering" anybody, and yes, men must be held as responsible as women.
Delete"Do you (or anyone here) see a problem with the bishops picking one issue as paramount above all others?"
DeleteI think it's been a two-edged sword. It's possible, perhaps likely, that even less progress would have been made against abortion had the bishops not elevated it to such a high priority.
On the other hand, I think a lot of people hear "pre-eminent" and hear "single/only issue". In their defense, the bishops' primary teaching document, the Faithful Citizenship series, has been very far from a single-issue document; if anything, it mentions so many moral and social issues that voters can be forgiven for thinking that it becomes clear that no candidate is a "perfect match".
Then, too, the real-life dynamic is that very few American Catholics actually bother to read the Faithful Citizenship document. Whatever they know about it tends to get filtered through others: bishops, priests, deacons and religious; media; social media; what they hear from their local Respect Life ministries; and so on. And of course, Republicans are only too happy to put forth the idea that one must vote Republican to stay in the bishops' good graces.
Thanks, Jim. That seems like a very sensible summary of the situation. I wonder if the Faithful Citizenship document would make a better voters guide than the distillation of issues that get distributed by dioceses and anti-abortion groups. It's here in case anybody wants to look:
Deletehttps://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/faithful-citizenship/upload/forming-consciences-for-faithful-citizenship.pdf
The diocesan magazine under the previous bishop listed several issues to consider. Under the current bishop, only three issues are highlighted: abortion, gay marriage, and another one I keep forgetting. I read the guides when they come out. But, like all Bad Catholics, how a candidate stacks up based on the four or five issues that matter most to me trumps whatever the Bishop says.
Jean - “ Catholic men who get women pregnant MUST be taught that they will step up to support the mother and take on single fatherhood if that will save the fetus. I have never heard that before, but that is the line I took with The Boy”.
DeleteThat’s the line we took with three Boys. I also crossed my fingers a lot, and prayed a lot.
The bishops and a whole lot of conservative Catholics seem to think women get pregnant on their own. The women are the guilty parties, and the men are never mentioned.
If I'm not mistaken, the issue of immigration has risen to the top-ranked issue in at least some public opinion polling. This is an issue on which the church has some very important points to make - and an issue on which, in my view, current public opinion is running against what the church teaches. It;s a little disconcerting, and dismaying, that Biden has more recently been taking several pages from the Trump playbook on immigration policy. It seems pretty urgent for the church to speak up on behalf of immigrants. It needn't temper its message on abortion to do this. The church should be able to speak on more than one topic at a time.
DeleteThanks for mentioning that, Jim. I went over to the diocesan site to see what they have. Migrant camp outreach and immigration legal services. They coordinate with the larger Lansing immigration group.
Delete“ But voting for Trump was making a pact with the devil. . The bishops and my fellow Catholics and all the Evangelicals have a lot of repentance to do to redeem themselves in my eyes. My disagreement with them is not simply political it is moral and religious.Do we worship the same God? Do we believe in the same Christ?”
ReplyDeleteI completely agree, Jack.