Religion and Politics

Charles J. Chaput, the Catholic Archbishop of Denver who said that catholics who vote for Kerry are commiting a sin, has written an article in the New York Times defending using religious beliefs to inform political positions. Not being Catholic, I am not qualified to comment on the Catholic theological issues as to whether John Kerry's pro-abortion stance makes it a sin to vote for him, but Archbishop Chaput did have some interesting points on the basic question of how much religion should effect politics.

Lawmaking inevitably involves some group imposing its beliefs on the rest of us. That's the nature of the democratic process. If we say that we "ought" to do something, we are making a moral judgment. When our legislators turn that judgment into law, somebody's ought becomes a "must" for the whole of society. This is not inherently dangerous; it's how pluralism works.

I disagree to an extent with the Archbishop. I think this is inherently dangerous. Not that that means we should never to it, sometimes we have to do dangerous things but you should always be careful turning your 'oughts' into 'musts'. His larger point though, that Catholic 'oughts' are as valid as Pro-choice 'oughts' or Vegan 'oughts' and that they have as much right as anyone to convince a majority to turn their 'oughts' into 'musts' I agree with.

The civil order has its own sphere of responsibility, and its own proper autonomy, apart from the church or any other religious community. But civil authorities are never exempt from moral engagement and criticism, either from the church or its members. The founders themselves realized this. The founders sought to prevent the establishment of an official state church. Given America's history of anti-Catholic nativism, Catholics strongly support the Constitution's approach to religious freedom. But the Constitution does not, nor was it ever intended to, prohibit people or communities of faith from playing an active role in public life. Exiling religion from civic debate separates government from morality and citizens from their consciences. That road leads to politics without character, now a national epidemic.

I will never claim that one has to be religious to be moral. Religion however is certainly one way of arriving at morality and a valid means of making moral judgements. It is interesting that one of the major claims for immorality of the Catholic Church as an institution is their failure to condemn Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. It is interesting that many who criticize the Church for this (and rightly so) also complain that they are 'injecting their morality' into today's issues. I can see how you could logically fault the Catholic Church for either of those positions, but it seems to be a logical fallacy to fault them for both.