EDITORIAL:
Bishops
and the politicians: a bad mix
The recent claims by powerful
Catholic Republicans that their party best represents the churchs views
should come as no surprise. Such claims are a sad, if predictable, end to the kind of political manipulation some of
the nations bishops have accommodated, if not encouraged, during the past
20 years.
If, as a group, the bishops now find themselves squirming
uncomfortably, they have only themselves to blame.
Were talking, of course, as we do every presidential season,
of how, during the last two decades, many U.S. bishops have aligned themselves
with a narrow band on the political spectrum -- those forces seeking a complete
overthrow of Roe v. Wade. These choices have left them
compromised in the political arena.
But the point is worth repeating for the millions of voting
Catholics who take seriously church teaching and cant help but wonder
about the Republican claims. It isnt even a subtle strategy. Politicians
who espouse an antiabortion stance, regardless of other positions they might
take, get special treatment from the bishops. One needs only to look through
diocesan newspapers to see which politicians are getting the best photo
opportunities.
Were not suggesting the bishops back off from opposing
abortion or teaching forcefully on the issue. Nor do we suggest that their
teaching should not have public consequences.
But their handling of the antiabortion issue in the political
arena has been so inept that they have accidentally or deliberately given the
impression of supporting the Republican Party.
Some in the church who have been most active at the highest levels
in the antiabortion campaign will admit privately that the hierarchy has been
terribly used. They wont say it openly, but they should. It would help
restore some credibility.
Some prelates have put themselves in the company of figures and
movements on the extreme religious right, accepting their literature and
voter guides for distribution in their parishes.
During the last 20 years, the bishops squandered enormous amounts
of political capital on the bet that Republican antiabortion candidates would
overturn Roe v. Wade and they got precious little for it. At the
same time, the bishops all but abandoned forceful advocacy on other issues. In
the tumble of real world politics, you cant have it both ways.
Sen. Arlen Specter, a pro-choice Republican, put it bluntly in a
recent pre-convention interview. Addressing the notion that another strong
antiabortion plank in the Republican platform could signal a rollback of
pro-choice fortunes, Specter simply pointed out that although Republicans have
been in control of both houses of Congress since 1994, little has happened to
change abortion laws. The Republican National Convention itself makes the
point: All the hard-line conservatives, those who were the staunchest
antiabortion proponents, were kept offstage this year. The Republicans want to
win an election.
The tragedy of the bishops misjudgment is compounded by the
fact that they have failed not only in the political arena. They have failed to
persuade their own people. Surveys consistently show that on abortion,
Catholics, proportionally, think and act no differently than other groups.
One of the gravest errors of the bishops strategy has been
their failure to consult widely and publicly with women, particularly, and men
in the church.
Twenty years ago, the bishops showed a different measure of
pastoral wisdom on other issues on which they took strong public positions. On
the matter of war and peace in the nuclear age, for instance, the American
hierarchy spent years consulting experts on all sides, factored in a
considerable body of church teaching condemning the manufacture and use of
nuclear weapons, considered just war teaching and finally fashioned a bold,
prophetic statement. It did not satisfy everyone, but it gave Catholics and the
wider culture a language and a point of view that, it could be argued, has
influenced the thinking of average Catholics and the debate on the states
use of force.
Had the bishops, in advancing their position on war, favored
Democratic candidates or cozied up to far-left groups to the exclusion of other
interests, they would have suffered the same loss of credibility and influence
that has occurred in their antiabortion campaign. No single party owns the
churchs positions.
Persisting in this failed strategy on abortion will diminish the
bishops in their pastoral roles and will lead only to a continuation of the
kind of head-butting standoff that leaves everyone angry, frustrated and weary
of the issue.
National Catholic Reporter, August 11,
2000
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