Episcopal Modesty or Overreaching? Or Both?

Since an article from Foxnews.com has been up on the law school website, my inner self defensiveness prompts me to point out again that I did not say that “Catholic politicians have been excommunicated in recent years for not supporting positions consistent with the church’s teachings.” I actually referred to three segregationist politicians in New Orleans in 1962, but did note that many bishops have become more aggressive in saying that pro-choice politicians should not take communion. (Me misquoted by Fox seems to prove, again, that God has a sense of humor.)

But, as important as that may be to me, the larger issue is more interesting. The National Catholic Reporter has put up a story on comments by Catholic University historian Leslie Woodcock Tentler who criticizes the recent emphasis of many Catholic bishops on abortion and contrasts it with earlier treatment of social welfare policies and artificial contraception. Dr. Tentler argues that bishops in the first half of the twentieth century “didn’t push a single-issue approach to politics” and “spoke a pragmatic rather than a religious or doctrinal language” that “consistently framed the debate in terms of values that nearly all Americans shared.”

Dr. Tentler’s purpose was not only descriptive, but prescriptive. She seems to believe that a more multi-faceted episcopal role in politics communicated through something like Rawlsian public reason is preferable to the more sectarian privileging of life issues that we see today.

While I am not enthusiastic about clerical pressure on politicians, let me play, to use an inapt phrase, the devil’s advocate. It is not clear to me why bishops ought to invoke their authority and credibility as religious leaders to engage in broad political advocacy using secular arguments. As Dr. Tentler concedes, early twentieth century promotion of what Protestants called the social gospel (which, she says, sounds socialist to a 21st century Republican) “mostly ignored the wealth-generating capacity of the market and policies that might support this.”

Just so. Theology can tell us what values to pursue. One cannot be a Christian and be indifferent to the plight of the poor.

But theology cannot tell us what will best serve those values. There is no reason to believe that bishops will understand the “pragmatics” of social and economic policy by virtue of their episcopal authority. Nor is their any particular reason to believe that they further their pastoral role by engaging in secular argument about public policy.

Life issues may be different – at least when the overriding value is a particular view of the nature and sanctity of human life rooted in revelation and theological reasoning.

Seen in this way, the current episcopal emphasis on abortion (if that’s a fair description) is a more modest position than the earlier approach that Dr. Tentler describes.

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