Politics & religion

...It would be worrisome if the archbishop had said, "Under pain of sin, no Catholic can vote for (etc...

...Those who op- pose such things are characterized as out-and-out secularists, as people who are against God, or at least indifferent to him...

...In all of this debate there seems to be a nearly deliberate confusion and equation of the terms "religious," "moral," "denomination," "private," and "sub- jective," and an equal confusion and equation of the terms"political," "secu- lax," "objective," and "public...

...True, a society which effectively denies the exis- tence of God or (it comes to the same thing) acts as if belief were a matter of complete indifference is in danger...

...Fashion does have something to do with this...

...The God who is worshipped "in spirit and in truth" has been betrayed again and again by people who assume that he is on their side, whereas our worry should be whether we are on his...

...he said, "I don't see...

...If it became fash- ionable or socially convenient to regard the life of the handicapped or the com- atose as inhuman, those who cared about justice could not simply ~ccept that view and allow a slaughter to begin, on the grounds that their own belief that such lives are human is religious and therefore cannot be brought into the public arena...

...The point is this: religious commit- ment may lead people to take up causes such as peace, opposition to abortion --or for that matter, the attempt to clean up TV, or ban pornography...

...We look with some dismay at those Mos- lems who want to base governments on Koranic principles...

...This requires a modesty and tentativeness with regard to specific programs and policies, not the complete absence of doubt about God's agreement with one's own view of things, the ruddy self-confidence which marks the speeches of that Teddy Roosevelt of evangelism, Jerry Falwell...

...I do not mean that people who are in favor of any or all'of the above take this attitude uniformly, but it is in the air, and certainly is a sentiment which has been appealed to by Ronald Reagan...

...Walter Mondale accuses Ronald Reagan of saying things that Ronald Reagan has not really said, and the Reaganites accuse a more foggy set of opponents of immorality and the desire to rid America of GOd, as if this could be done by liberal fiat...

...There are issues which will involve religious people politically, and that in- volvement will be annoying...

...The same liberals who applaud the Catholic bishops for their stand on nuclear weapons are appalled when Archbishop O'Connor says that he doesn't see how a Catholic can in good conscience vote for someone who openly advocates abortion...

...It may indeed have served well as a social control at certain points in the past, but that isn't what the prophets or the gospels are about...

...but what great discovery has led them to see at last that the child in the womb is not human...

...But it is possible to make an idol of God, and the God who requires specific political action, the GOd who needs Jesse Helms, or for that matter the victory of any lib- eral candidate, is certainly a God we use for our own purposes, not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob...

...According to News-week, Pat Boone has made commercials which say that GOd needs Jesse Helms, implying that God is something of a needy wimp...

...Religion at the social level has been that way too often in the past...

...it was a form of Prot- estant activism, the insertion of religion into public life, which began to make waves around that issue...

...So many of the terms involved here assume that we are all very clear about what religion is, or should be, and about how religion and the state ought to be related, or ought not to be...

...they would even be eccentric...

...Where is- sues which are matters of life and death are concerned --whether abortion or total war --religious people will be un- able to keep out of the fray, and their presence will irritate those whose secular assumption is that secularism is objec- tively true, while religion is a matter of private taste...

...there were moderates who personally deplored slavery but were willing to live and let live, for the sake of peace...

...The sort of liberal who thinks of relig- ion as something which can be kept out of public life or politics is wrong...

...In the matter of abortion, for example, the teaching of the Catholic church is seen as narrowly denominational, like the old laws against eating meat on Friday...

...It may not make for comfortable politics, but those who be- lieve that the life in a human mother's womb is human life cannot simply back away from the issue...

...Sec-ularism makes as many unfounded as-sumptions as any religious faith ever has...

...He was expressing an opinion which would hardly have seemed dangerous if it had come from anyone but an archbishop...

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...To be for God means to be for school prayer, anti-abortion legisla- tion, government aid (or at least tuition rebates) for parents sending their chil- dren to religious schools -- in short, for a conscious re-insertion of what some call religion into public life...

...It is impossible for those who see the life of the child in the womb as human to accept the killing of that life without doing something to oppose it...

...The problem with this is that it accepts a worldview which is impos- sible for a believer, a view which sees religion as a private taste or hobby...

...It is more than a religious idiosyncmcy...

...But if re- ligious traditions have one major public value it is that they can provide an alter- native to the spirit of the age, a perspec- tive which is more profound than that of the prevailing cultural drift...

...As they involve them-selves, as they should, in these ques- tions, religious people should also re-member the past abuses of religion, which more often than not occurred when religion and power got too cozy...

...The religious opposition to...

...And of course if that were the case, laws which seek to make abortion less fre- quent would not only be unjust...

...JOHN GARVEY tions which pervade the Koran . . . for "The only thing that niggles at the back of my mind is if God is on our side, why did example, the belief that values are sub- He give them the anabotic steroids...

...They are cheaper than churches and, given the state of contemporary church architec- ture, not as ugly...

...But this is not the argument which Geraldine Ferraro and those who favor free choice with regard to abortion have advanced...

...I am only saying that it is in its way a matter of faith, and untestable...

...Has it been demonstrated that the air in the hospital delivery room is what confers humanity...

...Some things are intolerable...

...A truth which is enforced is not really a truth...

...before you vote, read Plato's Gorgias and give voting a second though0...

...I have argued that way in the past, and Mario Cuomo made some of the same points in his speech at Notre Dame...

...What we have in so much of this de- bate is a case of pieties which are re- garded by those who make use of them as unassailable...

...This demon (which, I im- agine, looks something like a squid) has had the cooperation of liberals, conserva- tives, archbishops, fundamentalist preachers, candidates for public office, columnists (myself excluded), and edito- rial writers...

...but he said nothing of the sort...

...We should have enough fear of the Lord to know that we can know GOd only as GOd chooses to reveal himself, that we have no claim on him, that we are to "work out our salvation in fear and trembling...

...Too much of the rhetoric behind the desire to "return God to the classroom" or "get God back into our lives" assumes that we have fallen away from a better time...

...a child who parrots the right answers in school without understanding them has learned nothing...

...Are the conservatives who want to "bring God back into public life" cor-rect, then...

...The "separation of church and state" is offered to us as if it were something like "Thou shalt have no strange gods before me" --not an im- portant civic convenience, but a divine command...

...It is assumed by Ferraro that a rather clean cut can be made be- tween one's own personal religious con- victions and one's public obligation...

...Today Planned Parenthood's various newsletters sneer at this argument...

...I am not saying that I do not like the latter belief (I think the former is demonstrably stupid...

...It is God whose opinions are so miraculously like our own who lies behind the Inquisitions and pogroms and Cromwell's slaughter, a familiar and useful GOd...

...No: what has happened is that the cultural Commonweal: 584 climate has shifted...

...Geraldine Ferraro's equivocation on abortion is aimed at vot- ers more than at thinkers (a distinction between the two can, unfortunately, somedmes be made...

...but secularism as an ideology (one we aren't very good at seeing because it is so much in the air) is based on assumptions which are every bit as much matters of faith as the assump- jective matters of preference which have no reverberation outside of one's private life, or the belief that the public good is best sewed by assuming that the choice of the individual must be made an impor- tant focus of public concern...

...No one would now deny that religious opposition to slavery was important...

...As James Burtchaell has documented in his important book Rachel Weeping (Harper & Row, $10.95 paper), Planned Parenthood once argued that one of contraception's values was that it could help to prevent the tragedy of abortion, which Planned Parenthood did not hesitate to call the killing of a child in its mother's womb...

...Rarely has an important issue been dealt with so shallowly...

...Not everyone will be comfortable wffh what his neighbor defines as an important social, as well as religious, question...

...The cultural cli- mate of America was once capable of accepting slavery...

...They argued that slavery's opponents were fanatical and intolerant, and indeed they were...

...And if religion is there to guarantee an orderly society --if that is its highest role, its most important function --I'd suggest using cattle prods instead...

...Of several minds: John Gamey POLITICS & RELIGION HEIGHTENED RHETORIC, DEEPENED CONFUSION T HE DEMON in charge of trivializing public thinking has done a fine job of messing up the issue of politics and religion...

...But there has never been a truly Christian society, nor can one be created through the passage of the right laws...

...segregation and, later, op- position to the war in Vietnam were not opposed by liberals, but conservatives made some of the same accusations then that liberal editorialists now make: it was unseemly, even dangerous, for the church to involve itself with such politi- cal matters as whether blacks could be treated as semi-human or Vietnamese children should be napalmed...

...On the other side are those who speak of religion as an absolutely private affair, having no relationship to one's public commitments or political behavior...

...A good argu- ment could be made that laws against abortion will not work, will create a new Prohibition-like disrespect for the law, and that Christians should not use the coercive power of the state to make even the best morality prevail...

...The conservative picture of God is a little like Tinkerbell in Peter Pan --God will die unless we say we believe in him, applaud him into life...

...I doubt that the same outrage would be provoked if O'Connor had said, "I don't see how a Catholic can in good conscience vote for someone who is prepared to destroy civilian popu- lations during wartime...

...The desire to cast a wide net leads people who are running for public office to try to seem to mean as much as they possibly can without really being com- mitted to anything solid, and this leads to a rhetoric which is, putting it mercifully, not very precise...

...It betrays its nature and its deepest helpfulness when it is a token of belong- ing to the crowd of good citizens and respectable people...

...They argue, instead, that abortion is a religious concern, and there- fore private...