Church Must Do More Than "Rock the Vote"
Yesterday, Virginia voters elected two Catholics as Governor and Attorney General. Bob McDonnell and Ken Cuccinelli did not hide that faith, even as it came under assault from Virginia Democrats and a compliant press, hopeful that voters in Northern Virginia would be turned off by their social conservatism. Even as The Washington Post stirred the pot over Bob McDonnell's graduate school thesis, McDonnell ran television ads noting his family's ties to the University of Notre Dame. And Cuccinelli never shied from his faith, even with the Post calling him a bigot for affirming the Catholic Church's longstanding teachings about human sexuality.
At times with additional emphasis due to these candidates' Catholicism, the Catholic Dioceses of Arlington and Richmond in recent weeks have been active instructing the flock of their obligations as Catholic citizens. These words have been charitable, instructive, and appropriate. Yet as the Church reflects on its increasingly active role in educating the faithful on their civic duties, it must take care to consider her tone, lest she come to be perceived as a mere appendage of the Republican party.
Thankfully, ordinary citizens rarely display the shocking ignorance of Church teaching voiced by some Catholic politicians. Still, Catholic citizens too often fail to "appreciate the difference in moral gravity between policies that are morally intrinsically unjust (e.g. abortion, euthanasia, and the deliberate destruction of human embryos) and policies involving prudential judgments about which people of good will may disagree concerning various means of promoting economic justice, public safety, and fair opportunities for every person." In other words, they do not grasp that the right to life is essential, and that the right to a public option or a 35 percent top marginal rate is not.
That said, the Church does not tell citizens who to vote for. She might remind the faithful that in most instances they cannot vote for a politician supportive of abortion rights. But the Church does not then tell the faithful that they must, therefore, support the pro-life candidate.
Unfortunately, this important distinction is often lost in the presentation as Catholics and non-Catholics alike mistakenly assume that the Church's prelates and parish priests are using their homilies as pep rallies for Republican candidates.
As the Church exercises her teaching authority and reminds congregations of their civic obligations, preachers must remind parishioners that while a liberal Catholic might be precluded from voting for a pro-choice Democrat, he might also reject the Republican candidate for failure to provide adequate provision for the poor or immigrant communities.
This subtle shift in presentation would more properly capture Church teaching and reconfirm for the faithful that the Church might be in the world, but is not of it. The Catholic Church might instruct her members of their civic obligations. But the Church can never view voting as MTV does, an activity to participate in for the mere sake of participation. Rather, voting is an activity meant to effect a larger objective good beyond that of civic participation. And if neither candidate promises to pursue that good, then Christian Catholics can testify to the inadequacy of these candidates by not voting.
And while secondary to the Church's interest in being true to herself, this shift in tone would also make the Church a more effective institution, reestablishing with the faithful the Church's truly catholic character as an institution with universal aspirations, a witness to something greater and more comprehensive than the interests of America's necessarily parochial and ideological party system.