Et cetera: Protestants
Coming in the June 4 issue: Catholics & birth control: an exchange JOHN HAGEN & LESLIE TENTLER & more on POLITICIANS & BISHOPS Catholic politicians. If the USCCB doesn't act as a body, it will...
...At the same time, only a small minority wants to outlaw abortion in every instance...
...Politics must deal with the possible...
...McCarrick and his committee should speak out soon...
...Laws that do not reflect a moral consensus are inherently unstable, even unjust,and the police and prosecutorial action of the state in such circumstances will inevitably threaten other liberties...
...If the USCCB is unable or unwilling to act, individual bishops should challenge Myers and Burke on their notion that abortion trumps every other issue when Catholics consider a candidate's merits...
...Now is not the time to revert to extreme rhetoric and draconian sanctions against those who support abortion rights...
...Novak quoted an anonymous, supposedly highly placed priest, saying that bishops would "finally 'out' liberal Catholics for what they are at heart, Protestants...
...In welcoming Novak into the fold, however, someone forgot to tell him that policing the Communion line is just not very, well, Catholic...
...The more difficult question, however, is what steps can realistically be taken to end abortion practice as we know it...
...If the USCCB doesn't act as a body, it will be assumed by many that Burke and Myers speak for the church as a whole...
...The damage done by the unrestricted abortion franchise cannot be undone by suddenly and broadly recriminalizing the procedure...
...But it is a tragedy that will end only with a change of heart, not just a change in the law...
...Writing in the New York Post (May 3), Novak accused Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who had met with Kerry but failed to denounce him, of "giving cover" to politicians who were defying church teaching...
...The committee need not issue its full report, but it should at least let Catholics and others know that no simple equation can exist between Catholic principles and a vote for any one candidate...
...II Syndicated columnist Robert Novak, a vehement convert to Catholicism and an old hand at invective, recently joined the right-wing chorus demanding that bishops refuse Communion to prochoice politicians like Senator John Kerry...
...Does the anathematizing of Kerry and McGreevey by some bishops make it more or less likely that the prolife message will be heard...
...A politician's views on war, capital punishment, care for the needy, and other life issues must all be weighed in the balance...
...Bishops have every right, indeed a duty, to challenge self-identified Catholic politicians, such as Kerry, who dogmatically champion unrestricted abortion rights...
...Respect and protection for the life of the unborn will only be regained gradually...
...The question all but answers itself...
...As the passage of the ban on partial-birth abortion demonstrated, the campaign to restrict abortion has made strides in recent years by patiently informing the public of what abortion, especially late-term abortion, entails...
...Instead, bishops should patiently continue to make the case that for women, as well as for their unborn children, abortion is a great and unnecessary tragedy...
...Even President George W. Bush, whose prolife credentials are rarely questioned, has acknowledged that "the culture has [not] changed to the extent that the American people or the Congress would totally ban abortions...
...It is no secret that certain conservative Catholics would like the American church to be purged of so-called liberal Catholics, reduced to a kind of holy remnant...
...Here the prudence that has traditionally characterized the Thomistic approach to criminal law can be a guide...
...Most Americans now support some restrictions on access to the procedure...
...Abortion is a grave moral evil, but it does not follow that it should be criminalized in every instance, or that support for its criminalization is the only moral, let alone the only "authentic" Catholic response...
...If bishops want to change that culture, they will refrain from banning prochoice politicians from Communion, which in all likelihood will only revive fears of the church's authoritarian and antidemocratic character...
...As Aquinas wrote, there are limits to what the criminal law can do to compel virtue...
...That would spell disaster, much as happened when Cardinal Bernard Law's egregious handling of sexual abuse in Boston came to be widely, if erroneously, accepted as the measure of the church's actions nation-wide...
...May 11, 2004 TER A PROTESTANTS...
...Commonweal 6 May 21, 2004...
...The attempt to enforce a law opposed by the majority of citizens is futile, and breeds contempt for the very idea of law itself...
Vol. 131 • May 2004 • No. 10
