Editorial
commonweal A CHANCE FOR ANDERSON? IS INDEPENDENT candidate John B. Anderson engaged in a fool's quest? Offhand it might seem so. The pages of history are littered with the names of...
...In 1912 Theodore Roosevelt, despite a late start, won 28 percent of the popular vote on the Progressive party ticket, running ahead of the incumbent president William Howard Taft but losing to Woodrow Wilson...
...The first assumption was that the measure was ultimately aimed at the political involvement of priests in Latin America...
...as the mayor in Dubuque, Iowa...
...It is quite possible that Drinan has been on a Vatican "list" for some time...
...In a time of national crisis, there is no telling how much appeal such a platform would have...
...The notion of Vatican decision-making in such a question becomes even more unreasonable when one discovers the range of possible applications...
...But let's begin at the beginning...
...Other commentators carefully eschewed such views, the New York Times, for instance, insisting in good liberal fashion that such a church affair was "truly a personal matter...
...much day-by-day politics was a matter of prudential judgment (and prudential compromise), which depended upon specific knowledge and experience and skill rather than theological training or religious authority...
...If exceptions there may be, the next question is who should decide...
...Should Father Drinan have left office once that period of intense concern with Vietnam had passed...
...on the City Council in Saginaw, Michigan...
...It was an issue that then demanded, and was receiving, a religious response at all levels, from civil disobedience and conscientious objection to electoral politics...
...Because a vote for independent candidate Anderson would be a wasted vote, say the spokesmen for the two major parties, predictably...
...Even worse, say others, because too many votes for Anderson would detract from the Carter total and put Ronald Reagan in the White House...
...The statement attributed to the apostolic delegate that the bishops of the U.S...
...There 23 May 1980: 293 are a variety of roles to be played, from thinking and teaching about the political significance of the Gospel to actual service in political office, and passing by intermediate tasks of community leadership, lobbying, and so on...
...Thomas Jefferson was elected this way in 1800, and John Quincy Adams in 1824...
...the religious patina which, linked to antiCommunism, was often given to the McCarthyist politics of the 1950s...
...Campaign funds will be something of a problem for Anderson...
...Anderson has already made it plain that he would immediately consider dropping out of the race...
...We believe that ordained ministers should avoid political office but can see good grounds for exceptions...
...Another problem for John Anderson will be getting an invitation to the 1980 nationally televised campaign debates...
...Polls show that in a three-way race Anderson would at this point draw 21 percent of the vote to 39 for Carter and 34 for Reagan...
...We have always defended the separation of church and state but not the dogmatic theory of a "wall" that precludes all religious presence in public life...
...Drinan has been attacked before...
...He is running as an independent, but he remains a Republican, anxious to keep his party from falling into the clutches of the deep-dyed conservatives...
...Nicaragua and other Latin American countries come to mind...
...In the state citizens have a right and duty to share in the political life...
...Given this unpalatable electoral choice, why not an independent or third-party candidacy...
...But suppose later polls indicate that the Anderson candidacy is indeed helping Reagan...
...The extent of the current interpretation of the prohibition on holding political office: does it apply to local offices— school boards, mayoralties, seats in state legislatures—and to nuns and brothers as well as priests...
...This means that in a three-month period a relatively unknown Illinois congressman became a national figure, able to run only 18 percentage points behind an incumbent president and only 13 points behind his own party's perennial candidate...
...It still seems so, even in a period when such individuals are more likely to get one-hundred percent ratings from the ADA or emerge from guerrilla struggles than be the creatures of princely courts or generalissimos...
...and other countries have no leeway in this matter flies in the face of previous policy, and the American bishops, had they any gumption, would say so...
...On the simplest level, there is a natural resentment of mysterious "orders from the top" turning out anyone who seems to be working hard and successfully at a chosen task, whether that person is a congressman or the president of a television network...
...Gallup reports a large upsurge in the number of those declaring .themselves independent rather than Democratic or Republican...
...By and large, such local offices do not pose the same problems as national ones—and canonically nuns are not in the same category as ordained ministers...
...A division of labor is appropriate...
...One justified exception was Father Drinan, who ran for Congress as an anti-war candidate at a time when the war in Vietnam had passed from an ordinary political issue to one that was being addressed—quite rightly, at that late date—in explicitly moral terms...
...Nonetheless the papal order to Father Drinan, followed by the similar order to former congressman and Nobertine priest...
...Numerous bodies: in the society probably feel that holding political office is incompatible with holding other positions, and insist that individuals choose one career course or the other...
...The deck is stacked against independent and third-party candidates in this country...
...Why did Rome, in fact, issue its fiat...
...The duties of the good Christian citizen .. . include positively contributing to the establishment of just laws and structures that foster human values...
...One way or the other, we would not count Anderson completely out of the race yet...
...For $10 or $12 million instead of $29 million Anderson figures he can run a tight but effective national campaign, and his backers expect little difficulty in raising that...
...Perhaps only those gifted with total recall will remember Congressman Anderson's large number of downright reactionary votes in past years...
...This would be a truly tragic development...
...Has Anderson no chance...
...In that case the Twelfth Amendment provides that a choice be made among the three top vote-getters with each state allowed only one vote...
...Local decision-making would at least have avoided issuing an order less than two days before the deadline by which potential successors to Drinan had to file their nominating petitions...
...Anderson will almost certainly take the matter to the courts, as he should...
...He would, he said, fill posts with the most able men he could find, regardless of party affiliation...
...Can Anderson bring it off...
...We second that statement wholeheartedly, at the same time recognizing that not every Christian has to carry out every political task...
...This is not to say that organizing such a campaign will be easy...
...For all these reasons, the genera/ principle against priestpoliticians seemed wise...
...and he will not receive the $29 million in federal funds that Carter and Reagan will have at their disposal...
...He was pursuing causes that arose from his original concern...
...Again the deck is stacked in favor of the two major parties...
...Democratic and Republican legislators in state capitols all over the United States have created a maze of laws to make it difficult for such candidates to get on the ballot—and this despite the fact that the Republican party itself commands the allegiance of only 22 percent of the electorate...
...The measure against Drinan also threatened to raise the ghosts of Paul Blanshard-style anti-Catholicism, with its implication that one cannot fully be both an American citizen and a Roman Catholic...
...It is early yet, but so far there is no indication that the sponsors of the debates, the League of Women Voters, intend to include Anderson, and again the regulations of the Federal Election Commission do not look hopeful for an outsider...
...nowhere else are there stronger grounds for exceptions to the general rule...
...But even here we have reservations...
...There are undoubtedly dozens of other such cases across the country...
...This is a matter of crucial importance for the independent candidate...
...An important challenge for the Christian is that of the political life," the pope declared earlier this month in Kenya...
...If he is not invited to participate, Mr...
...It is really too early to say that safely...
...But we can imagine difficult questions even in these cases—the point is that Rome is hardly qualified to settle the matter by blanket fiat...
...There are other grounds for exceptions—numerous instances in nations where the oppression is so stark that whatever leadership is available—and often the education or legal security of the clergy provides special opportunities for leadership—should be exercised...
...It was suggested that Father Drinan was being deprived of constitutional rights, in one case, unfortunately, by a spokesperson for the National Coalition of American Nuns...
...But Anderson fund-raising efforts have been phenomenally successful so far, a good measure of his popular appeal...
...Denials that such was the pope's intent were soon forthcoming, and speculation switched to the possibility that the pope wanted to discipline the Jesuits or that, perhaps, Father Drinan alone was the main target, with Father Cornell drawn in out of the need for consistency...
...The possible exceptions from this principle for Father Dri-nan and for others: are they justifie and, if so, on what Grounds...
...What he offers is the promise of a national unity administration, composed of leaders of both parties, one that could work with a Republican or Democratic Congress...
...The former are, by definition, exceptional procedures...
...This is not exactly compensation for the loss of Father Dri-nan's services, but it is certainly a departure for the Times editorial page...
...And while George Bush after Pennsylvania still has a fighting chance, Ronald Reagan will most likely be the GOP nominee...
...and after puzzling over the complexities of both papal policy and Father Drinan's submission to it, the editorialist concluded in what may have been desperation, by quoting Gerard Manley Hopkins's injunction to praise God for "All things counter, original, spare, strange...
...So far independent candidate Anderson has been running a campaign that is commendably issues-oriented, to the point of shaming 23 May 1980: 291 the other candidates...
...an exception seemed justified in the latter area as well...
...Father Robert J. Cornell, raises a number of serious, but separate, questions: The general principle discouraging priests from holding partisan political office: is it wise...
...A priest serves in the Colorado state legislature, another on the Schenectady, New York, county government...
...But in this instance, Rome erred, both in what it did and how it did it...
...Some advocates of liberation theology seem insufficiently alert to the dangers of a new clericalism of the Left replacing the old one of the Right...
...it makes all the difference in whether he will generally be regarded as a serious presidential possibility...
...Much of this journal's distinctive character derives from its rejection of the throne-and-altar alliances of Europe's ancien regime, alliances to which the Catholic church, even in this century, often looked with a misplaced nostalgia...
...Would it be out of order to appeal to the old notion of subsidiarity...
...He has not exploited his religious identification...
...in 1972 an article in L'Osservatore Romano appeared to single him out for criticism, misrepresenting his position on abortion legislation along the way...
...The pages of history are littered with the names of third-party and independent candidates who did not make it...
...Commonweal argued that while the Gospel clearly ruled out some political options and mandated others, there was a large area of political choice where Christians might well disagree among themselves...
...The constitutional rights notion should be quickly laid to rest...
...The point could be argued...
...Why should Rome, or the pope personally, rule on matters so clearly dependent on local circumstances...
...Two priests ran for local school boards in Brooklyn a few weeks ago...
...What of the wasted vote argument...
...Although virtually all political questions had a moral and religious dimension, one should hesitiate before translating them into explicitly religious terms ("God is on our side") — and certainly the direct participation of church leaders in electoral politics was a form of "language" that tended to do this...
...So far the polls indicate that Anderson support is drawn almost equally from the Carter and Reagan camps...
...There are many delicate questions involved—of responsibility to one's own conscience and of differing responsibilities to the church, either as a baptized member, a public representative, or an ordained minister...
...And to that a political cynic might add another: the traditionally short memory of the American voter...
...But are both or either of these propositions necessarily true...
...Eugene McCarthy faced this hurdle in the last election, and one of the many services he performed was to win twenty-four separate lawsuits aimed at such artificial obstacles to independent and third-party candidacies...
...Who can say what a vigorous and well planned campaign over the next six months might do...
...Nothing, however, is simple...
...Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how...
...Nonetheless, Anderson's prospects are not as hopeless as they might at first appear...
...it's a long way till November...
...Despite this fact and despite widespread disapproval of President Carter inside his own party, Mr...
...Commonweal approaches these questions from a special angle of vision...
...One distinct advantage for Anderson...
...Commonweal rejected the manipulation of religion in Franco's nationalist "crusade" and other right-wing movements promising to restore traditional values...
...According to the polls, 58 percent of the electorate are dismayed at the prospect of a Carter-Reagan choice in November...
...One thing candidate Anderson has made very clear is that he is not interested in starting a third party...
...Common weal: 292 The reasons behind the Vatican's taking this step at this particular moment: does it signal disapproval of clerical involvement in politics in Latin America or other third world areas, or was it aimed at Father Drinan in particular, or at the Jesuits generally...
...This still may be an exciting election...
...After ten years of impressive congressional service, his withdrawal might cause the very kind of confusion about political and religious vocations that the general principle was intended to prevent...
...We think it made sense for him to stay...
...Carter almost certainly has the Democratic nomination locked up...
...Walter Cronkite declares that the vocation of a newscaster and the vocation of an office-seeking politician are incompatible, and CBS undoubtedly agrees with him...
...Commonweal criticized...
...THE DRINAN DILEMMA The sudden and largely unexplained papal order refusing Father Robert F. Drinan permission to seek reelection to Congress left many Americans, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, puzzled and not a few of them angry...
...Nuns serve as state legislators in Arizona and Rhode Island...
...If that is the case, Mr...
...A strong Anderson race this time could at least throw the election into the House of Representatives...
...It seems that this is a matter well left to local bishops or to national hierarchies, or possibly to some procedure involving both with the Vatican...
...The Times could not repress its "curiosity," however...
...The manner in which the decision was made to revoke Father Drinan's and Father Cornell' s permission to seek political office: should it have been made in Rome, or involved local church officials, or been subject to appeal...
Vol. 107 • May 1980 • No. 10
