Suppose I were to tell you that I am opposed to the use of the death penalty,
and refuse to vote for any political candidate who approves of it? Would
I be a "one issue voter?" Suppose I say that I think that the
sanctions we are using against Iraq are unjust, that they have doubled
the infant mortality there, and I refuse to vote for any political candidate
who will continue to use them to promote our "national interest?"
Perhaps then I am a two issue voter? Suppose I say that I think our law
must protect human life from conception to natural death, and that I will
not vote for any candidate who does not support that position. Would I
then be a one issue candidate, or a three issue candidate? Suppose I say
that we live in a culture of excess that materially oppresses the least
powerful in our own nation, but also and especially the poor of other
nations. If I am convinced that both the Republican and New Democratic
economic policies promote that excess, and I refrain from voting for either,
am I an irresponsible citizen?
But what has all this to do with faith and politics, the topic of my essay?
Well suppose I don't have at my disposal any arguments for my positions
couched in terms commonly acceptable to the broad pluralistic culture
within which I find myself? Suppose all I can say of the death penalty
is that when Cain murdered his brother Abel, he knew he justly deserved
death for such a horrid crime, and yet God spared him, teaching us that
there is no justice without mercy. Suppose on the sanctions against Iraq
all I can say is that Christ tells me to love my neighbor as myself, and
that my neighborhood does not end at the water's edge but includes the
home of my enemy. At least since Augustine my Church has taught that acts
of war, in order to be just, must not target non-combatant populations.
Suppose I say with the psalmist "for you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb. My frame was not hidden from
you when I was made in the secret place," and I look to the ancient
Christian text, the Didache, that says "you shall not slay the child
by abortions," or I offer Mother Theresa's accusation that we are
the poorest nation on earth since our great wealth does not promote life
but death, particularly the death of unborn children. Suppose I have learned
from my religious tradition that salvation comes in the form of a child
in the womb, the life preserver God throws to us that says "I have
faith in you." Of the poor, suppose I listen to the reading from
James that says, "Behold, the wages you withheld from the workers
who harvested your fields are crying aloud; and the cries of the harvesters
have reached the ears of the Lord. You have lived on earth in luxury and
pleasure; you have fattened your hearts for the day of slaughter."
And I listen to St. Bernard say "the poor cry 'it is ours that you
spend; what you stupidly spend is cruelly taken from us,'" or St.
Thomas say the "goods which some have in abundance are owed by natural
right to the sustenance of the poor" and "the Lord commands
not only that a tenth part, but all that is superfluous be given to the
poor." Unfortunately, the verbal expression that the Church's renewed
commitment to the poor has taken in recent years fails to capture our
tradition, for which our duty to the poor is neither a preference, nor
an option. To prefer or opt otherwise is nothing less than theft from
the poor, and from God.
But in our culture such motives are uncivil and perhaps unamerican, unless
they are held in private. If we are normal English speakers living in
the United States, we can all fill in the blanks of our civic credo, "I
am personally opposed to _________, but I cannot impose my __________
on others." So, suppose I am like many, even perhaps most people
in this country, philosophically inarticulate about the reasons I find
our electoral politics so corrupt, but with a clarity of faith that motivates
me to try to make things better, what am I to do?
At the heart of the church's teaching on politics is the principle of
the common good. We are by nature social creatures, incapable of providing
for ourselves and others as mere individuals pursuing individual goods.
We pursue our good in common, and the pursuit of such good is politics.
No doubt there are philosophical controversies about how thick a view
of the common good is appropriate in a society that promotes liberty,
and whether liberty is the preeminent good of social and political life,
or only partially constitutive of it, or even merely instrumental for
it. And certainly for the last several hundred years a key difficulty
for the Catholic Church's teaching on politics has been how to adjudicate
between the good of liberty and the common good. But that is all at the
level of theory, and we citizens for the most part are not theorists,
thank God.
If we look realistically at our condition, we cannot avoid the fact that
we have a common good. But lacking any substantive view of the common
good, and lacking any socially acceptable form of arguing about the common
good, what becomes our de facto common good? "It's the economy stupid."
And it is significant that the common coin of our public discourse is
values, an economic term. Whether we are a corporation, a political party,
a university, or even a diocese, we all have some form of mission statement
in which we enunciate our values, how we intend to teach those values
to our members, and how we intend to find a niche market for those values.
But the problem is that a value is fundamentally a medium of exchange,
and it is very different from a good. We find it more or less easy to
ask and answer "is art valuable." But consider our public apoplexy
in the face of the question "is art good." We say a piece of
art is priceless, and then sell it at auction. It makes perfect sense
to argue about whether all values are subjective. It is harder to ask
whether all goods are subjective. Fundamentally the difference is that
we recognize goods, but we make values. Questions of values are questions
about what I am willing to give you in order to get what I want. Politically
we just have to find out what the value is and then negotiate the proper
exchange of this value for that. Is there a value to be found in self-interest
or in altruism? What value is there in serving the poor? It is only in
a culture of values that the "natural right of the poor" becomes
a preferential option.
What is, after all, the value of a human life? How are American values
to be exhibited in the former Yugoslavia, Kuwait, Rwanda, or East Timor?
What is the value of a million Rwandan lives slaughtered in six months?
Our answer was none; though, to be fair to ourselves, I did notice that
on our behalf president Clinton went to Rwanda ex post facto and apologized
for blocking UN action at the time. It seems that American values blew
that one, since we were too preoccupied with the values of Sadaam's oil,
and Slobodan's threat to the heart of Europe. Still, to the Rwandans and
the world, we apologize, reassert American values, and once again say
"never again."
Values are what goods become in a world in which God is dead. Philosophers
and theologians worry about the silence of God. I worry about our silence.
De facto, because of our self imposed silence, the common good for us
just is the commonly agreed upon medium of the exchange of values, the
value of values. Charity is good business. But the values approach to
our common good encourages and very easily lends itself to a corrupt form
of values politics, utilitarian calculus applied to the common good. Not
only do I speak as a Catholic, but as a certain kind of Catholic of Irish,
American, East Coast, urban and working class descent. For me and mine
the phrase that best captures our religious and political experience is
"baptized Catholic, born Democrat." But in the politics of values,
my party says to me and mine that we need to calculate what we take to
be the disvalue of its pro-death stance, and its recent ersatz Republican
economic policies against the traditional values it claims to still champion,
concern for the poor and the working class. In practice, what the party
really hopes is that since we all take such judgments of value to be personal
and individual, argument over which causes rancor within the flock, we'll
just avoid the conflict, come back to the faith of our fathers, and vote
blindly and unquestioningly the way we always have. We won't think with
Gov. Casey, may he rest in peace, that the national Democratic Party has
become the front office of the National Abortion Rights Action League.
We won't recall that the Crime Bill pushed through congress by President
Clinton increased the number of federal crimes punishable by death by
60. As we criticize Gov. Bush, we won't recall that president Clinton
returned to Arkansas in 1992 in the midst of the New Hampshire primary
to oversee the execution of Rickey Ray Rector. As a result of his viscious
crime, Mr. Rector suffered from brain damage; as a result of his brain
damage he saved the pecan pie from his last meal so that he could eat
it when he returned from his execution, and told his lawyer that he intended
to vote for Governor Clinton in the fall of that year. Thus our future
president came to preach the good news of the values of the New Democrat-we
Democrats now see the value to be found in being tough on crime. And granting
permanent most favored nation trading status to China has already had
its 15 minutes of fame. I have been harder on the Democrats because I
am one, and there are plenty of Democrats to be just as hard on the Republicans.
It is the failure to distinguish between matters of principle and matters
of prudence that gives rise to the paper tiger fear of the "one issue
voter." If our political thought is primarily a utilitarian weighing
of values one against another, and summing them all to see what we get,
of course it makes no rational sense to take account of only one value.
There is of course the difficulty faced by utilitarian thought generally,
namely, that it usually works best as an after the fact rationalization.
As a forward looking decision making process, it poses great difficulties,
for one has to limit oneself in what one takes into account. No one, practically
speaking, can engage in the sort of wide ranging evaluation of values
that one would have to do if one were to closely examine the platforms
of the different parties. So each of us draws up a small manageable set
of values that we take to be determinative of our choice. The real question
that none of us wants to face is what are the hidden values lurking in
the shadows that determine for us the values that we allow to see the
light of day, and over which we are willing to calculate?
The problem of course is that in this politics of values, we are all just
"few issue" voters, and we end up competing against other interest
groups to bring our "few issues" to the fore. And all of this
works rhetorically to the advantage of the parties. No one wants to be
a "one issue" voter because no on wants to be seen as unsophisticated,
and incapable of grasping the complexities of several important issues
that need to be carefully, judiciously, and reasonably weighed against
each other. Putting us in that mindset, a party then simply has to find
for each focus group the issue that in practice outweighs the other few
that we have in mind, precisely because it is so difficult to assign some
value to each issue, other than "I prefer this to that; don't ask
me why, or how much, I just do." Prescription drug benefits for the
elderly as opposed to tax credits for those in the working class who can
afford to save for the college education of their children. So in practice,
the parties want us to be "one issue voters" even as we allow
them to deceive us into thinking we are involved in the complex and difficult
process of weighing the competing values of the competing parties. Does
anyone else feel as if they are being bought?
In a world of principle and prudence, by contrast, one might pray that
one never faces a conflict over one issue, but one should recognize that
it could happen, precisely because principles are necessary conditions
for good community, not ideals to be sought. If the past is any indication,
we know for certain that such conflicts arise, as for instance the case
of slavery. The 20th century taught us that there is no guarantee of progress
here. We have to be ever vigilant. When it comes to politics, perhaps
the fundamental question we each have to ask ourselves in our consciences
is whether there is any "one issue," not to mention several,
that is non-negotiable. Suppose we found a candidate with whom we agreed
about everything except one thing. The sole difficulty with that candidate
is that he or she thinks that in time of war, citizens whose ancestors
come from the country of our enemy may be imprisoned in concentration
camps. Would we weigh that "one issue" against all the others
and vote for him or her? Our history tells us that we did this in World
War II. What would voters have done if they had had a chance to vote on
such a policy before the war? After the war the response is, well that
was unfortunate, but we survived, and once again we say "never again."
This is precisely the kind of ex post facto rationalization that utilitarian
calculus lends itself to. I shudder at the thought that my community is
peopled by individuals who can find no such principles in their conscience.
My hope, even for those who disagree with me on what those principles
are, is that we all have something that is non-negotiable. Rather than
criticize, we should pray for citizens who, if need be in times of crisis,
will run the risk of being "one issue," or "two issue,"
or "three issue" voters.
The problem today for people of faith, particularly the Abrahamic faiths
of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, is that when God saw what He had
done, He did not say "it is valuable." He said "it is good."
To be a person of faith and to be silent about the common good is to be
unfaithful to God. The principle of the common good does not allow for
the sort of utilitarian calculus both major parties hope we will engage
in, if we do anything more than vote with blind faith for them. It requires
us to make a distinction between commitments of principle, and judgments
of political prudence. Commitments of principle have to do with the necessary
conditions for even having a community that can pursue the common good.
The sorts of concerns I began this talk with are about principles of the
common good. Judgments of prudence have to do with the ways in which such
a community forms itself as it pursues that common good, and those judgments
will differ from community to community. So for example, access to adequate
health care is a matter of principle. If as a community we do not care
for the sick among us, we simply cannot pursue our common good-"Lord,
when did we know you were sick, and not attend to you?" But exactly
how to structure access to health care is a matter of political prudence,
depending upon circumstance and resources. But notice our parties erect
matters of prudence into matters of pseudo-principle, precisely to shield
their otherwise manifest betrayal of real principle. So our election turned
into one about gas prices, tuition tax credits, and a prescription drug
benefit for the elderly, all worthy questions of prudence, but definitely
not the infant mortality rate in Iraq, and our responsibility for it.
I have made the judgment that failure to commit to, and act when necessary
to protect the principles of the common good disqualifies a candidate
for public office, however much I might agree with what appear to be his
or her judgments of political prudence. That is because there can be no
real political prudence without real political principle. Failure to safeguard
the principles of the common good is fundamentally corrupt, and leads
to the corruption of political prudence into the mere utilitarian calculus
I mentioned above. The church is not a political community. But speaking
as a Roman Catholic, there is no question that our tradition informs us
in our understanding of the principles of the common good for political
community, even as it provides only general guidance, and not determinate
answers in questions of political prudence.
Let me be clear. Though we can never do evil, we may tolerate it for sufficiently
good reasons, as we work to eliminate it. It is the politics of values
that for so many of us make it next to impossible to understand the ability
to tolerate evil while working to eliminate it. Presumably the only sufficiently
good reasons for such toleration would be the principles necessary to
protect the common good, that is, that failure to tolerate this evil here
and now would undermine in a much more grievous way the common good. And
we must exercise prudence in determining the lesser of evils to tolerate.
But in these judgments we must always remember our prior commitment to
the principles of the common good. Precisely because it is evil we are
tolerating, we must never cease to ask ourselves whether and how our toleration
may have become complicity. Toleration itself is evil if it can never
say no. Surely among the lessons to be drawn from the blood of innocents
that saturates the 20th century, that is one of them.
Finally, I think it is important when we think about faith and politics
to avoid certain traps. We have to distinguish between religious content
and religious motivation. Adherence to specifically religious content
requires the free consent of the will, that is, the guarantee of religious
liberty. And one of the principles of the common good is religious liberty;
the common good will promote the conditions within which one can freely
consent to religion. But that is very different from religious motivation.
Prohibitions against the use of the death penalty, abortion, euthanasia,
torture, slavery, and so on, do not have specifically religious content,
even as one's primary, perhaps only motivation in supporting them may
well be the religious tradition one freely adheres to. To demand such
prohibitions, as one motivated by religion, is not the same as the "establishment
of religion" prohibited by the constitution. The great hypocrisy
of the self proclaimed neutrality of modern democratic society is the
singling out of religious motivation alone for political evisceration.
We also have to avoid identifying the political community with the institutions
of government. We are the political community, and the institutions of
government serve us; they are instrumental goods. And, we have to avoid
the trap of identifying the nation state as the fundamental political
reality in which the common good is incorporated. Too often we look to
the national or now global as an excuse to avoid the local-in the words
of Chesterton, we learn to love humanity, so that we can hate our next
door neighbor. On the contrary, the common good is conceived in the womb,
born in the family, and dwells among us. Finally, we have to avoid identifying
political action with the electoral politics by which we shape the institutions
of government. Voting is important, but it is the least important of the
civic responsibilities that the Church teaches are our responsibilities.
Our silence about the common good makes it all too easy to think of ourselves
as responsible citizens if we just vote in the periodic elections that
come up. But we cannot develop the necessary habits of political wisdom,
if we only think about them in the voting booth. On the contrary, we act
politically whenever we act for or against the common good.
St. Thomas wrote "communication about the useful and the hurtful,
the just and the unjust, good and evil makes a home and a city. Therefore,
man is by nature a domestic and political animal." When we care for
our children and our parents we act politically. When we commit our time
and resources to our neighborhoods, our schools, the soup kitchens, and
homeless shelters around us, as well as our work, we are engaged in politics.
Whatever one's party, buying a building and kicking an abortionist out,
as happened in my hometown of Omaha, is a much more deeply political act
for the common good than voting will ever be for a candidate one hopes
will appoint certain kinds of judges to the Supreme Court; so also is
providing homes, clothing, and resources to women who face difficult pregnancies
as they bear God's gifts to us. So is praying the rosary for justice and
mercy when we execute a criminal.
The great Jesuit St. Robert Bellarmine, whom most of us know from the
Galileo affair, speaking particularly of the poor, addressed the more
general problem that I am pointing to here. He wrote "if one should
wish to argue that what is superfluous need not be given to the poor in
strict justice, he still cannot deny that it should be done out of charity.
However, it matters little whether one goes to hell for lack of justice
or from lack of charity." My fear is that unless religious people
through the virtue of charity act politically informed by their faith,
we won't have to wait for the next life. We will get just what we deserve,
what the Holy Father calls "a culture of death," hell on earth.
Do we run the risk of offending the political sensibilities required to
live in America today? Well as another Jesuit, John Kavanaugh, wrote,
"this is a time to offend and be offended."
* The thoughts pursued in this essay were occasioned by the invitation
to speak on faith and politics to the Creighton University and larger
Omaha communities just prior to the elections of 2000. Though timely in
that sense, it is my hope that the themes I pursue have a wider range.
Now several months later, they are dedicated to Elizabeth Anscombe, our
Beatrice for those of us who are Catholic philosophers now. May she rest
in peace.
