An Act of Cowardice

An Open Letter to Every Senator who Voted Against Background Checks:

I write to you with a heart aggrieved by your shameful decision this week to vote against the implementation of universal background checks for firearms’ transactions. This was a bill designed to close loopholes exploited by criminals and the mentally ill to purchase firearms to which they have no legal right at gun shows and over the Internet. It was also a bill that, contrary to the claims made falsely against it, did not infringe upon the Second Amendment rights of American citizens; indeed, little more than a decade ago, its provisions were openly supported by the National Rifle Association. It was a bill with overwhelming popular support (not to mention the support of a majority of your fellow senators), which you callously ignored because you were cowed and frightened by the shameless voices of mendacious bullies. This week, you perverted democracy.

Pro-Life Prayer in Münster

Yesterday afternoon, I participated in a Gebetszug or prayer procession here in Münster called “1000 Crosses for Life”. Organized by Euro Pro Life (European Voice of the Unborn Children: “Protect our Life”), it was one in a series of prayer marches that have been held by the organization throughout Europe. Founded a year and half ago, the organizers travel from country to country, a large white van in tow that contains one thousand white crosses, each about a meter tall and made of 1x4’s, weighing about ten pounds each. Although I would estimate only about three hundred people showed up for yesterday’s march, each of us bore a cross in hand to form what the organizers called “a moving cemetery” of the innocents. Although the organization is international, it was founded in Germany, and the inspiration for the 1,000 crosses comes from the fact that, on average, 1,000 unborn children die in abortion clinics in Germany each day.

The mustering of the march began in front of the Aegidiikirche at around half past three, and by shortly before four o’clock, we were formed in three single-file columns, each with a cross on our shoulders and led by an icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe (afterwards, the head of the march explained that, although the event was ecumenical, this icon was chosen because it represents the pregnant Mary praying to her Son—thus making her the ideal protectress of the unborn). We were instructed not to engage in conversation with passersby (though there were certain young people whose task it was to hand out explanatory leaflets), for this was primarily a time for prayer.

We set out singing the hymn “O komm herab, du Heiliger Geist” (“O come upon us, Thou Holy Ghost”), aided by the excellent male and female voices that were broadcast over a series of loudspeakers distributed throughout the train. After this hymn, we recited the “Way of the Blood of Christ”; this devotion involves seven stations (1: The Lord shed His Blood at His Circumcision; 2: The Lord shed His Blood in Prayer on the Mount of Olives; 3: The Lord shed His Blood at the Scourging at the Pillar; 4: The Lord shed His Blood at the Crowning of Thorns; 5: The Lord shed His Blood on the Way of the Cross; 6: The Lord shed His Blood at His Crucifixion; 7: The Lord shed His Blood and Water when His Side was Pierced), each of which begins with a passage from scripture and a meditation. The first six stations are followed by the recitation five times of the Lord’s Prayer, while the last station has four “Our Fathers”: the 34 total “Our Fathers” represent the thirty-three years of Christ’s life and the one year of His unborn life in Mary’s womb. Finally, each station was closed by the “Glory be”, sung in German to the tune of “Amazing Grace”. As we finished this devotion, we arrived in front of the Lambertikirche, where we halted (above photo). A meditation on the work of Blessed Clemens August Kardinal von Galen was read over the loudspeakers; Bl. Clemens August was the Bishop of Münster from 1933 until his death in 1946, and was beatified under Pope John Paul II. His motto, Nec laudibus nec timore (“Neither because of praises nor because of fear”), exemplified his stand against the oppression of the Nazis in his own time, and has become a watchword for the stand against the injustice of abortion today.

As we continued from the Lambertikirche, we sang two antiphons, Laudate omnes gentes, laudate Dominum (Psalm 117: “O praise the Lord, all ye nations”) and Misericordias Domini in aeterno cantabo (Psalm 89(88): “My song shall be always of the mercy of the Lord”); and we concluded with the Chaplet of Divine Mercy and a reprise of “O komm herab, du Heiliger Geist”. The entire procession took about two hours, winding its way throughout Münster and stopping up traffic at very points along the way. Most bystanders watched in respectful silence; some even joined us in reciting the Lord’s Prayer. A few teenagers and twenty-somethings either laughed at us or yelled at us about individual rights (the latter charge came from a group of punked-out homeless kids who routinely solicit money along the city’s streets).

Perhaps the most moving part of the experience, for me at least, was the little old lady who walked beside me the whole way. Though she must be in her seventies, she carted that cross the entire two hours, shuffling along with the rest of us, and never yielding to the oft-repeated offers to lighten her load. If the stiffness and aches in my limbs that greeted me when I awoke this morning are any indication, she truly bore her cross for Christ and for the unborn children yesterday.

At the end of the procession, which returned to the Aegidiikirche, the head organizer gave a short speech describing the efforts the group have undertaken in the past year, and inviting us to join them in their upcoming prayer marches throughout Europe. In addition to the events in Germany and Poland—yesterday’s march was cosponsored by “Adler”, a German-Polish youth group; I would estimate that up to a third of the marchers were of mixed stock, enough, at least, that one of the decades of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy was said in Polish—they have held marches in the Czech Republic and in Britain.

The lead organizer was especially keen to describe the march in London this past December 30, held to commemorate the 40^th anniversary of the legalization of abortion in Great Britain. He traveled to London a few days before Christmas to make the final preparations, in which he was being aided by an English group called the Helpers of the Unborn Infants. They wanted to end the procession in front of Westminster Abbey; since they needed the cooperation of the Anglican Church for this, he needed to meet with the Dean of the Abbey. To the astonishment of all, within five minutes of arriving at the Abbey, he was in the Dean’s office being offered the complete cooperation of the Church of England. The Dean suggested that they finish the procession at the Memorial of the Innocents within the Abbey itself; when the chief organizer demurred, since this would require the hundreds of people to squeeze through the small side doors of the Abbey, the Dean had a ready solution. Thus, when the prayer march arrived at the Abbey on December 30, the uniformed guards of the Abbey solemnly opened its great front portal doors, the same doors through which Queen Elizabeth passed on the way to her coronation.

The power of this pro-life movement, however, far surpasses the abortion debate. After the march in London, an elderly English chap approached the German organizer (“he look a bit like Winston Churchill”) to express his thanks. “I’ve held a deep hatred against the Germans for a very long time,” the Englishman said. “They did some horrible things to me and to my family in the war. But today, during this march, that all changed. The hate melted away.” The Englishman then embraced the German, who was speechless and blurry-eyed.

If this movement, founded upon the Christ’s love for all humanity, including the unborn, can bring relief to the deep-seated prejudices of old, what power has it not? Dare we to hope that in this movement, the Orangemen and the Catholics in Northern Ireland might finally be able to come together in common to support the innocent lives of unborn children? Perhaps thus we can bring also the Serbs and Croats together?

A Religion of Peace?

Yesterday in Jerusalem, an Islamic suicide terrorist walked into the library of the Mercaz Harav seminary, which was full of young Jewish men holding a celebratory feast in anticipation of the upcoming Jewish holiday of Purim, and proceeded to spray the room with bullets. As students ran to take cover behind tables and bookshelves, the gunman hunted them down, killing each student with a shot to the head at close range. Before the terrorist was brought down by a reserve paratrooper living next to the seminary, eight Israelis lay dead and another eight were seriously wounded. For those of you familiar with the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, nine years ago, the similarities are eerie: this, indeed, was Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold in Jerusalem.

I applaud Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for quickly condemning the massacre, and I know that many, many Muslims, including some whom I count my friends, are grieved at the continued, senseless loss of life. Yet, I am both astonished and horrified to note that President Abbas’ reaction was not shared by the inhabitants of Gaza, where news of the seminary killing was greeted with celebratory gunfire, cars honking their horns, and people passing out candy in the streets.

Islam, I am told, is supposed to be a religion of peace; indeed, the very root meaning of the word “Islam” is “peace”. I have met many devout Muslims in the United States and here in Europe who have expressed to me their abject horror and frustration that their faith has been hijacked by extremists to promulgate such vile, bloody, and inhuman acts as yesterday’s massacre.

Yet, these truly peace-loving Muslims whom I have met must, I fear, be counted themselves a minority among their religious brethren, for this is neither the first time, nor shall it be, I fear, the last when the tragic, truly evil murder of innocent human beings has been met in Muslim communities around the world with joy and celebration. No man’s death is occasion to celebrate, for every death is an evil, to be mourned either for the senseless loss of an innocent life or for that the death of a guilty man was made necessary in the first place.

I am forced, therefore, to ask this: can Islam today truly claim to be a religion of peace when so many of its followers rejoice at such evil? I wish it were not so; I wish with all my heart that every Muslim on this earth embraced the peaceful tenets of his or her religion and shunned any pretense to unholy violence in the name of God. Let us all, therefore, pray to God that He might effect a change in the hearts of men; that He might blot out with His Holy Light that restless shadow that overcasts their hearts and encourages them to revel in the evils of destruction; that he might bring peace to our time so that we might all greet one another in peace in His Holy Name, recognizing His image in each other, and embracing humanity according to the precepts of His Love.

It's still a human fetus

In an insightful and provocative story in this weekend’s issue, the New York Times Magazine examines the possible existence and extent of a fetus’ ability to suffer pain while in the womb. While approaching the topic initially from the perspective of fetal surgery (a fascinating and amazing example of the advance of medical technology), the article acknowledges and later examines the impact of the ability of a fetus to feel pain on the issue of legalized abortion. While I commend the entire article to my readers, I want to focus on an anecdote offered early in the article:

Most invasive of all is open fetal surgery, in which a pregnant woman’s uterus is cut open and the fetus exposed. Ray Paschall, an anesthesiologist at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, remembers one of the first times he provided anesthesia to the mother and minimally to the fetus in an open fetal operation, more than 10 years ago. When the surgeon lowered his scalpel to the 25-week-old fetus, Paschall saw the tiny figure recoil in what looked to him like pain. A few months later, he watched another fetus, this one 23 weeks old, flinch at the touch of the instrument. That was enough for Paschall. In consultation with the hospital’s pediatric pain specialist, “I tremendously upped the dose of anesthetic to make sure that wouldn’t happen again,” he says. In the more than 200 operations he has assisted in since then, not a single fetus has drawn back from the knife. “I don’t care how primitive the reaction is, it’s still a human reaction,” Paschall says. “And I don’t believe it’s right. I don’t want them to feel pain.”

Mr. Paschall is among several medical personnel quoted in the article (the most prominent being Kanwaljeet “Sunny” Anand, who has been a tireless advocate over the last three decades for infant and fetal pain management) who also support, at least in limited terms, a woman's right to have an abortion. Yet, what I find most provocative is Mr. Paschall's statement, “I don’t care how primitive the reaction is, it’s still a human reaction. And I don’t believe it’s right. I don’t want them to feel pain.” I would echo his words to say, no matter how primitive the fetus is, it’s still a human fetus.

This brings me, however, to a point on the debate over abortion that I've been meaning to make for quite a long time (and I should make clear before we start that in the following argument, I appeal only to human reason and the natural law; my conclusions do not rely on any revealed truths peculiar to Christianity). As I've alluded to previously, this year’s election once again represents a showdown between those who would protect human life at all stages of development (represented by their presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain), and those who insist that the government not guarantee the right to life that was once so eloquently named “inalienable.”

Supporters of candidates like Sen. Hillary Clinton will tout that she believes that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” Yet, what they don't realize is the logical contradiction behind such a statement. If one believes that a human fetus is an innocent human life (N.B. the adjective innocent indicates that the fetus is guilty of nothing by which it would deserve punishment, an assumption that I hold to be self-evident), then the natural law that informs us that homicide is immoral also informs us that abortion is immoral. To put it into syllogistic form: (A1) It is immoral and legally punishable to purposely kill an innocent human life. (B1) A human fetus is an innocent human life. (C1) Therefore, abortion (the killing of a human fetus) is immoral and legally punishable.

(N.B. I have included the adjective "innocent" in the major premise because, at least according to the natural law, there are certain situations where it is morally and legally permissible to kill a human life, e.g. in warfare. The revealed beliefs of religion may place additional restrictions on these situations, but as I have said, I am arguing here from the natural law.)

The corollary to this syllogism is that if one believes that abortion should be legal, then one denies either one or both of the premises. Since I've yet to meet an abortion supporter who denies the major premise (indeed, many abortion supporters offer more comprehensive versions of the major premise than some pro-lifers do, i.e. they extend the immorality of killing to capital punishment and even to warfare), then it is clear that abortion supporters must deny the minor premise, namely, that a human fetus is an innocent human life. Furthermore, since I've also never met an abortion supporter who claims that a human fetus is a guilty human life, then it is also clear that abortion supporters deny that part of the minor premise that declares a fetus to be a human life.

If, therefore, one believes that a fetus is not a human life, that is, if one believes that the fetus is simply an extension of the body of the mother, and that the mother therefore exercises the full sovereign rights over the fetus that she exercises over the rest of her body, then one's moral judgement on abortion is reduced to a judgement concerning those sovereign rights. The syllogism would then follow: (A2) Without extenuating circumstances, a human being exercises personal sovereignty over his or her body. (B2) A fetus is a part of a woman's body. (C2) Therefore, a woman exercises personal sovereignty over her fetus.

If this is really what Sen. Hillary Clinton believes, then her position in favor of abortion is logical. What is not logical, however, is her claim that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare." It is this last factor that leads her into trouble. She must have some reason for wanting abortion to be rare. Yet, as far her logical position is concerned, it shouldn't matter to her whether abortion is rare or not, just as it shouldn't matter to her whether a woman dyes her hair blond or black, or pierces her navel or her ears, or gets breast implants or breast reduction surgery. Each of these decisions are made out of the woman's sovereign rights over her body, and Sen. Clinton doesn't have anything to do with those decisions.

Yet, Sen. Clinton does say that she wants abortions to be rare. In fact, one is unlikely to meet any abortion advocate who claims that they don't want abortion to be rare. And the reason for this is simple: as much as abortion advocates try to delude themselves into believing their syllogism, they do not, in fact, actually hold to it. Despite their attempts to ignore the prods of the natural law, they do, in fact, conceive, at least subconsciously, of a moral dimension to the decision to have an abortion.

Where they in fact fail is in the first part of the major premise: Without extenuating circumstances. This caveat to the premise is necessary for its logical cohesion, because both individually and as a state we acknowledge that there are circumstances under which a human being does not exercice personal sovereignty over his or her body. For example, we place age restrictions on things like drinking and smoking and getting body piercings; we also admit that convicted criminals have abdicated, at least temporarily, certain of their rights, like the right of free movement; we even go so far as to refuse certain classes of the clinically and criminally insane of almost all their rights of personal sovereignty over their bodies.

For the abortion syllogism to hold, there must, therefore, be no extenuating circumstances. Yet, it is evident that there are extenuating circumstances when a woman is pregnant. Whether you believe that a fetus is a human life or not, we all agree that, if carried to term, it will be a living, breathing, moving baby. Furthermore, the woman cannot produce the fetus by herself; the fetus is as much the product of its father as it is the mother's. Finally, especially given our modern ability with ultrasound technology to visualize the fetus, we all do feel, despite our views on abortion, that twang of amazement, wonder, and awe when the fetus we have fathered or mothered sucks its thumb or kicks its foot in the womb.

The fact is, the natural law is squeezing its way into Sen. Clinton's views whether she likes it or not. What she doesn't realize is that in calling for abortion to be "rare", she admits that there are compelling reasons to discourage the practice. For these compelling reasons to exist, the logical syllogism that allows abortion to go unopposed falls apart. Sen. Clinton's own humanity undermines her support of abortion. Although abortion advocates will tell you that there is a grey area, they are simply trying a trick of sophistry in order to have their cake and eat it too. The choice is simple: either abortion has absolutely no moral consequences and should be perfectly legal; or abortion does have moral consequences, and the first syllogism that we proposed is the proper one. As we have shone the former conclusion to be false, there remains but one logically consistent, proper conclusion: (C1) Abortion (the killing of a human fetus) is immoral and legally punishable.

The Difficult Mix of Religion and Politics, Part II

In Festa Die Omnium Sanctorum

This post is to respond to a comment left on my previous post on this subject by Abu Daoud:

I will say though that IMHO the command for social justice need not and should not be accomplished through governments (the earthly city) but through the City of God and her instrument here--the Church.
When we ask the government to accomplish the duties of the church we harm both.

Mr. Daoud has hit on an excellent point, and given me the opportunity to say what I would have liked to say in my previous post, but which I couldn't fit in anywhere because of the train of thought within it.

My own (idealistic) self-styled political views would come under the heading of "Christian Libertarianism." That is to say, I would propose that we reform our system of government and society along two lines. First, the civil, secular government should be constructed along a strictly libertarian point of view, i.e. it should be extremely limited in its powers and functions to those which are strictly necessary to the civil, secular government, namely, providing for the national defense (a power which is reserved under natural law to the civil, secular government; it is unjust for either the Church or any private citizen to declare a war, the authority for which, under the just war doctrine, is strictly reserved to the lawful body of the government) and for a system of domestic criminal and civil law, with attendant courts; and, I would argue (though there is no ground in natural law for the necessity of such a governmental function per se), the provision of a national, civil infrastructure, e.g. providing for an interstate highway, and the regulation of such industries as air-traffic control and for the public utilities.

The civil, secular government should not engage in the provision of social welfare programs, which would include taking care of the sick, aged, and poor, as well as providing for education and emergency relief (things to which a great portion of our modern governmental bureaucracy tends). Such services should, in my idealistic opinion, be left to social organs other than the state, namely, to the Church.

The reason for this (drastic, some would say) redefinition of the responsibilities of government and society is based on the fundamental fact that any action of a civil government is, by its very nature, coercive. The civil government is supported in its duties and actions by means of taxes, and taxes are obligatory, not voluntary. This is, of course, as it should be; according to the natural law, the civil government has the right to collect taxes in order to carry out its responsibilities. Furthermore, the responsibilities of national defense, domestic security and law, and (I would argue) domestic infrastructure are placed upon the civil government by natural law—and we as citizens are, therefore, obliged by the natural law to support that government, even if we do not want to.

The functions of social welfare are not, however, incumbent upon the civil government because they are actions which spring not from the necessary obligation of natural law but from the gracious act of charity. (N.B. I say that they spring not from the necessary obligations of natural law, but not that they do not follow logically from it; indeed, as must be recognized from history, acts of charity are not limited to Judeo-Christian societies, and must, therefore, arise within societies acting only according to the bounds of natural law; furthermore, any shrewd observer of the natural law will note that acts of charity so become the well-being of a society that they must be at least somehow founded within the natural law—but such an observation does not prove, nor can it, I believe, that they are necessary obligations, but only prudent deductions, of the natural law.) By its very nature, the gracious act of charity cannot be coerced, else it ceases to be an act of charity—this is, of course, at the very heart of the Christian notion of charity (I use here the term "charity" in its root sense coming from the Latin caritas , the equivalent to the Greek αγάπη, which are the words used by Christianity to describe the love of God—see my post from Maundy Thursday of this year, Deus Caritas Est). It is this nature of a gracious act of charity that requires that it originate not in the edict of a civil government but from the hearts of the individuals who make up society. Furthermore, it is not for the civil government to direct these acts; rather, this authority falls to the Church. Acts of charity are most abundantly given and most thoroughly realized as acts of the spirit moved by love, and they fall, therefore, within the providence of the Church. This fact should be no clearer to us than today, the Feast of All Saints, in which the Saints of the Church stand before as most perfect examples of charitable actors.

The Gospel today is of the Beatitudes, and the homily preached by the Bishop of Münster, Dr. Reinhard Lettmann, focused on the Seven Acts of Corporal Mercy, namely, to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the imprisoned, and bury the dead (cf. Matt. 25:31-46). The point behind the Gospel reading and the Bishop's homily is that, as we celebrate today the saints of the Church, we are called most strenuously to imitate them, to carry out the implied command of the Beatitudes, and to live according the life of charity that characterizes a Servant of God. The Gospel calls on us all to be saints, and it is in the act of charity, that is, the life of love for God and neighbor, that we become the blessed Servants of God.

Furthermore, it is clear from the Seven Acts of Corporal Mercy and from the Beatitudes that the social ministry of the Church is the social welfare we enumerated before. The task of caring for the hungry and thirsty, the stranger and the naked, the sick and imprisoned, the poor and the oppressed: this is the ministry of the Church. There is no organization on Earth better suited to carry out this charism than the Church, and it is because the Church operates not according to the rights and responsibilities of the natural law (though she does no contradict them, either), but according to the graces of the divine law. This is why I have referred to acts for the social welfare as gracious acts of charity, for ultimately, they are enacted not by human ingenuity but by the grace of God working in us.

It should come as no surprise that the socio-political philosophy that I have here laid out reflects my study of the Middle Ages. As a medievalist, I can recognize the benefits of a medieval system in which the responsibilities of social welfare were left in the hands of the Church. No doubt, some of my readers are already reaching for the mouse to post a comment along the lines of, "You would have us return to the Middle Ages?" The answer to this question is both yes and no. I would not have us return to the Middle Ages if by that one means a return to a society in which the vast majority lived lives of painful poverty, whereas a tiny minority, enjoying the labor of those poor, lived a life of enriched pleasure. I would contend, however, that such a characterization of the Middle Ages, while perhaps a fair picture of the social conditions of the time, fails to recognize many features of the Middle Ages; the reality is far more complex. I would argue that a return to the Middle Ages is exactly the kind of thing our world needs, if by it one means a world in which the intellectual tradition recognized not the opposition but both the compatibility and necessary interdependency of faith and reason; a world in which belief in the supernatural power of God was held in esteem rather than derision; above all, a world in which charity was the greatest virtue (cf. I Cor. 13:13), as opposed to the accumulation of capital or the fight for the proletariat against the bourgeoisie.

Do I recognize that the relationship between civil government and the Church was not often ideal in the Middle Ages? Do I recognize that for most of the Middle Ages, as indeed for most of human history, the powerful have exploited the weak and trampled over them? Of course I do; any student of history and of the human condition sees that, from the dawn of man even unto today, nothing has been more constant than the injustices that have left the vast majority of humans oppressed by the powers of wealth and opportunity that have exploited them for the benefit not of the poor but of the rich.

It is part of the Christian project to recognize this and to fight against the injustice wherever it is to be found. But, unlike modern political theories like Marxism, and unlike such "politco-theological" systems as liberation theology (which, when it allows politics to trump the Gospel, is an abhorrence to the Church), the Christian is called by the Gospel to fight this injustice not by the means of power recognized by this world, not by violence and strength of arms, nor by playing the political game. No, the Christian is called to shun the powers of this world as the very weaknesses of the flesh, and to put on the true armor of light and love, the true strength of God found in humility and charity. St. Paul calls it the folly of the Cross: this world laughs at the Church, scorns her and holds her in derision, for she preaches the Cross, the ultimate sign in secular eyes of weakness. What strength is there, the world says, in a man, broken and beaten, who dies a most ignominious death? What kind of God is this who suffers a most humiliating and non-heroic death, for Christ died not in glorious battle but as a common criminal?

The answer calls from across two millenia, and the reality of victory is revealed to us in the lives of the saints: the martyrs who suffered as did their Lord; the confessors who were ready to do so; the hermits who rejected the pleasures of this world in order to find true happiness in purest poverty; the religious whose vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience are assailed by the world as the ridiculous abjurations of crazy people. And it is in the saints that we discover, finally, the key to putting together our new socio-political system of Christian Libertarianism.

We realize when we gaze upon their example that the way forward is in establishing a society in which every single member understands that he or she is called from womb to grave to be a saint. The way forward is for us to engender a revolution, not in the organs of state but in the very hearts of every individual member of society. It will not be a political revolution, nor even primarily a social one, but rather a spiritual revolution to transform the Zeitgeist from one that worships the almighty dollar and administers to the wealthy and successful to one that worships the Almighty God and administers to the poor and oppressed.

Finally, we must recognize that in this revolution we do not speak in terms of classes of society, nor of this section or that interest group. Rather, in this revolution, we speak of individuals, for we must recognize that far outstripping the importance of society as a blanket organ is the importance of the individual dignity of each human soul. The time has come to stop looking at society from the top down and seeing it is a collection of the masses—no more talk of "the American people", of "the working class", of "the bourgeoisie". No, we talk now of "the individual human being that is Nathaniel Campbell" and "the individual human being that is Abu Daoud", for it is the work of the individual soul that glorifies God. There is but one blanket grouping of humanity that remains important, and that is the Church, the Body of Christ, the Communion of Saints into which we each enter when we partake of the Eucharist, for the great common factor to every human being is the love God showed in creating him, which love we are therefore commanded to give to each other: "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." (John 13:24).

The Difficult Mix of Religion and Politics

In yesterday’s New York Times’ Sunday Magazine there appeared a lengthy article by David Kirkpatrick that examined the current crisis among the nation’s evangelicals and “religious right.” Kirkpatrick describes how the original vanguard of the religious right movement (Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, etc.) is fading, and that the evangelical Protestantism stands at a bit of a crossroads today; will they follow the conservative (both theologically and politically) route of the last generation, or is the future face of the religious right in fact the religious middle or slightly left?

Kirkpatrick documents the fact that among many evangelicals, the key issues of abortion and gay marriage are no longer just the key issues; he quotes Bill Hybels, one of the leading evangelical pastors of today, as saying, “We are interested in the poor, in racial reconciliation, in global poverty and AIDS, in the plight of women in the developing world.” Or as Rev. Gene Carlson put it, “There is this sense that the personal Gospel is what evangelicals believe and the social Gospel is what liberal Christians believe, and, you know, there is only one Gospel that has both social and personal dimensions to it.”

The split between liberal mainline protestants and conservative evangelicals goes back a century, when it was crystallized by the fight over evolution. As Kirkpatrick seems to demonstrate, a new split may be forming among the evangelical community, a split between those who seem to dictate that “Evangelical Christian” = “conservative Republican”, and those who see beyond the political label to realize that neither the Republican nor the Democratic Party has a monopoly on representing the Gospel.

The growing inner conflict amongst the evangelical community has also opened the eyes of the Democrats. As Kirkpatrick points out, all three of the leading Democratic candidates for president (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards) have talked about their personal Christian faith more on this campaign trail than has a Democrat since Jimmy Carter, the evangelical who, or so it is perceived, turned his back on the evangelical community when he got to Washington (because of his support for abortion rights, among other issues). (And I should note as an aside that, despite Barack Obama’s being a baptized Christian, Kirkpatrick quotes Kayla Nickel, a member of the evangelical parish Westlink in Witchita as saying, “Obama sounds too much like Osama. When he says his name, I am like, ‘I am not voting for a Muslim!’ ” Her statement thus confirms what I’ve been saying for more than a year now, that whatever his politics (he could out-do Jerry Falwell and it would still be true), some people will still vote against him for the very fact that his name rhymes with “Iraq Osama”; a sad fact indeed, but a pertinent one).

The problem facing the evangelical community is, oddly enough, one with which the Catholic community has long had to deal. Catholics in our country (and, despite my denomination as an Anglican Catholic, what I write here, though based mainly on the experiences of Roman Catholics, is nevertheless applicable to all Catholics, since the few matters on which we disagree are not pertinent to the topic at hand) have historically voted Democrat, first because the Democrats were the party of the immigrants and minorities at a time when Roman Catholics (mainly Irish and Italian immigrants) were heavily discriminated against; and later because the Democratic platform stood for social justice with a social conscience, echoing the emphasis that Holy Mother Church has placed in the last century on the social message of the Gospel (though they might not want to admit it, the Democratic platform has often, if only unconsciously, echoed Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical, Rerum Novarum, to which we will return below).

What has long irked Catholic politicians, however, is that the Democratic Party has often stood for things less than Catholic, and in those situations, the Republicans have often come through—I am thinking, of course, most especially about the issue of abortion. Before we continue, I should make it clear that Holy Mother Church always has and always will be opposed to abortion; it is not a matter of doctrine that is flexible (as has been, for example, the Church’s doctrines on usury), but rather a dogmatic statement of the value of human life that is absolutely central to the Christian message. The Church cannot now nor can it ever declare abortion to be anything but the sin of murder, and herein lies one of the key points of the entire argument: the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. The Magisterium is the teaching authority of the Church, granted her by divine revelation and the institution of her authority, invested in the Apostles by Christ in the Gospel. In other words, it is the authority by which the Church can teach the Truth.

The Truth is not something the Church, or anyone, can change. It is a permanent standard of what is reality, infinitely perdurable and infinitely unchanging. Unfortunately for those of us who live in the real world, however, very rarely do the decisions of our daily lives line up clearly with this Truth. This is never more so the case than in politics. Ask any politician, and he will probably agree that his party also seeks the truth—but in the political sphere, we speak of truth with a lowercase “t”.

Sometimes, we discover that the Truth aligns with the platform of the Republican Party—take abortion again as a capital example. Other times, it would seem to align with the Democratic Party—as when Christ proclaims the mission of social justice, to care for the sick and poor (as the Church has formally phrased it—and in a nice line of alliterative pentameter—“the preferential option for the poor”). Instead of identifying the Christian Truth with political truths, it might be better for us to do the reverse: a pro-life politician holds a view which coincides with the Truth, as does a pro-social justice politician.

A case in point is Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, which became the quintessential statement of the modern Church on the “Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor” (its subtitle), and the Gospel’s intention therefore. While Leo categorically condemned the unbridled competition of pure capitalism as socially unjust and therefore uncharitable (for the political pundits that are keeping score, that’s +1 to the Democrats), he also decried the violence inherent in the system of class struggle that Marxists seemed so intent on perpetuating:

The great mistake made in regard to the matter now under consideration is to take up with the notion that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict. So irrational and so false is this view that the direct contrary is the truth. Just as the symmetry of the human frame is the result of the suitable arrangement of the different parts of the body, so in a State is it ordained by nature that these two classes should dwell in harmony and agreement, so as to maintain the balance of the body politic. (Paragraph 20)

The political pundits should now remove that point from the Democratic column (and yes, I recognize that Marxist theory and the Democratic platform are not to be confused, but I ask you, when was the last time you heard a Teamsters negotiator praise the natural harmony between capital and labor?).

This dichotomy that has vexed Catholics for so many years seems finally to have caught up with the evangelicals. Abortion and gay marriage are important issues, yes, but the Gospel is about so much more than that, and Christ’s call to holiness is bound up with the entire message of the Gospel, not just bits and pieces (for the danger of a piecemeal reading of Scripture, just ask the Pharisees).

The problem, of course, is that both sides seem to engage in just such a piecemeal reading of Scripture. The Republican Party (and this is what is leading many evangelicals to reconsider their unwavering allegiance to it) has often of late skimmed over the social duties expressed in the Gospel. The issue of the justice of the war in Iraq is complex and certainly won’t be solved here, but the fact remains that warfare, the intentional destruction of human life (even if that life be guilty), is in some fundamental aspect morally wrong; even the most just of wars using the strictest of interpretations of just war theory still inflict a violence that is unsettlingly contrary to the principal message of the Gospel. Likewise, the Republican Party’s standard support of capital punishment, though technically justifiable under Christian notions of justice, seems to lend an unsettling appearance of hypocrisy to its pro-life message. The Catholics have this one figured out—even though it’s a nice political catch phrase, Sen. Sam Brownback’s “pro-life / whole-life” position is remarkably and refreshingly cogent: a Catholic Christian expression of respect for life at it’s every stage, from the moment of conception to a person’s last (natural) breath. Furthermore, most Catholics, and an increasing number of evangelicals, take the Party to task for its seemingly obstinate refusal to consider social programs that help the poor, the hungry, the AIDS-afflicted, the oppressed, etc.

Lest we should think that the Republican Party has left the Gospel behind, however, we must turn our attention to the often even more egregious piecemeal approach of the Democrats. Christ’s Gospel is all well and good for them when they want to oppose war and the death penalty and want to establish programs of social justice to help the helpless among us. But then they conveniently leave Scripture at the door when it comes to abortion (after all, they will help the helpless only if the helpless have already been born) and the promotion of lascivious lifestyles, whether they be heterosexual, homosexual, or anywhere in between.

Then there are issues in which neither side seems to support true Christian belief. The most significant of these are views on homosexuality. Democratic acceptance not only of homosexuals but of the homosexual lifestyle runs counter to a true understanding of sexuality. When the Catholic Faith expresses an opposition to the actively homosexual lifestyle (just as it expresses an opposition to the actively heterosexual lifestyle out of wedlock), it does so out of the ideals of compassion and charity. The Catholic understanding of the actively homosexual lifestyle is that it, as a state of sin, is harmful to its practitioner, for, in perverting the sexual act, it demeans and damages the order created by God and it harms the practitioner’s own sexual understanding. Therefore, the Catholic faith opposes that lifestyle out of a desire to help those who feel inclined to commit such a sin to refrain from it.

The Republicans, however, fare little better, for while preaching against homosexual acts, they go too far and preach against homosexuals themselves; Republican opinion is, quite frankly, founded more on homophobia than anything else. We must remember that it is not the state of being homosexual, whether secretly or openly, that is condemned as a sin; rather, it is the active, voluntary commission of the homosexual act that is a sin. Furthermore, the Catholic Faith calls upon its believers to practice their opposition to this sin in a compassionate, charitable manner. Any person whose opposition to homosexual acts is expressed without the love of God in his heart is not then a believer of the Catholic Faith.

Of course, from a truly Christian perspective, far more grievous than any support our modern society gives to homosexual acts is the support it gives to the perversion of heterosexual acts; the real epidemic is the general promiscuity that has followed in the wake of the sexual revolution, homosexual and heterosexual alike. As the Church teaches, a full understanding of one’s sexuality can only come through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, by whom and with whom and in whom all things were made and are, therefore, understood (this is the notion that sexuality, like all things, is “sacramental” in nature). In this context, one comes to understand that one’s sexuality is not some independent department of the self; rather, sexuality is inextricably bound up in the whole being of body and soul. Modern notions of sexuality on both sides of the fence present a sexuality that is missing its greatest context: Christ.

Voters, as good Christians, are obligated by their faith to vote for men and women who will uphold the message of the Gospel. This is why we had such a mess in the 2004 election over Catholic bishops telling their flocks it would be wrong to support a Catholic politician who supported abortion (i.e. John Kerry). The problem, of course, is reconciling the Truth with political parties that stand for only parts of it.

This reconciliation, between a Truth that must guide completely our lives and a political system in which nobody seems to stand for that Truth, will not be an easy one to effect. We are faced with a slate of candidates for the presidency who seem to wander every day farther from it. Rudy Giuliani supports abortion rights and is a lapsed Catholic multiple times divorced, and yet appears to be the best bet the Republicans have against the Democrats. All three leading Democratic candidates support abortion, and Hillary Clinton, at least, has shown repeatedly that she is not in the least bit dismayed by the moral licentiousness that permeates our culture (just check out her husband, whom President Gerald Ford, according to a recent book, called a “sex-addict”).

I thought I had found somebody that would work—the aforementioned Sen. Sam Brownback, who seemed to be step-for-step with the Church in his understanding of how to live a good Christian life in a flawed and sinful world, but his campaign never found traction (as the Sunday Magazine article points out, the man who should have been the darling of the religious right got left out on the front stoop by them; though Kirkpatrick attributes this to their desire to back a candidate with a greater chance for success, I think the reason for the religious right’s aversion to Sen. Brownback is at least partially attributable to that old anti-Catholic prejudice), and he has officially bowed out of the race.

The problem for me, of course, is that it would be near anathema to support a candidate who supports abortion; I am too strongly tied to my respect and love for the dignity of all human life to vote for men and women who disregard it so blatantly. Yet, that leaves me in the arms of a handful of Republican candidates whose anti-homosexual rhetoric is more homophobic than it is charitable and who seem to pay little attention to the Gospel’s imperative to care for the poor with a charitable heart (though they have their good intentions, it is hard to perceive just how their views on foreign aid and immigration mesh with the “preferential option for the poor”, a theological principle of action founded in Christian love and charity).

What is necessary, above all, is to breed in ourselves a renewed respect for the dignity of all people. When our society can find in Christian love the hallmark of humanity, then we shall be able to overcome this quagmire in which we languish. When we as individuals find our every action motivated by love of God and neighbor, then we shall find that the choice between one evil and another has been resolved, for there will be only one choice then. When we ultimately can submit ourselves wholly to the Will of God, then we shall discover that we need not think long and hard about our compromises, for only then will the Will of God—of Love—remain. The choice today between Republican and Democrat may not be clear, but the choice today between God and the world is. I do not yet know how I will vote a year from now, but what I do know is that I shall pray every day hence for the God’s guidance for me and for all of the men and women who govern our country.

Adveniat Regnum Tuum

The Lord, Holy Father, Almighty, Everlasting God is your King: the Kingdom of the Lord is at hand and you are His subject. Acknowledge God as your King: swear fealty unto Him.

The Kingship of God is an aspect of His Being that many modern Christians rather lightly skip over. Especially in America, where concepts of individual sovereignty are innate, we do not respond well to the idea that we are complete and total subjects of a King: the Founding Fathers have bred in us a distrust of Kingship.

But God is no "earthly king or potentate," as the Irish-American athlete and flag-bearer at the 1908 Olympic Games in London said. God is the eternal Lord of all creation: His authority is absolute over everything. As the song says, "He's got the whole world in His Hands": he is both a benevolent creator and an absolute monarch. He is the pantokrator, the one who holds all authority and power: in the West we think in terms of omnipotence, but the original Greek term indicates not so much supreme potential as it does supreme and absolute authority. God is King of all and holds all rights and privileges pertaining thereto.

The most important of those rights and privileges is our fealty: we owe our allegiance, above all earthly loyalties, to God and God alone. Should your earthly fealties come in conflict with your heavenly ones, you have but one option: to walk steadfast in the Ways of the Lord. For example, your King commands that you respect all life: any allegiance you have to an earthly power that calls on you to disrespect life or to uphold the rights of others to disrespect life are null and void.

Furthermore, it is on account of God's Kingship that we kneel before Him. Especially when we enter a House of God and come before His True Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar, we bend our knees before Him, acknowledging His preeminence and power over us. Likewise, during the Canon of the Mass, we kneel before him humbly in respect of the great mysteries occurring before our eyes. We, the subjects of the Lord, are unworthy that he should come under our roofs; yet He is a merciful God and has ordained by His mercy and His Word that we partake in His Kingdom.

So swear your fealty to God: swear allegiance before Him, and acknowledge Him always as your King.