Today, Kansas City's Bishop told Obama voters that they would essentially be going to hell for supporting the Democratic nominee. It’s an assertion I take strong exception to, and I’m not one of the only ones -- the conservative Catholic legal scholar Doug Kmiec endorsed him early and has faced harsh measures because of his decision.
Whenever these issues come up, I'm reminded of the great Jesuit scholar John Courtney Murray, who almost single-handedly developed the Catholic distinction between Church and state (ironically, modeled on the American constitution’s view of the issue) that was approved at the Second Vatican Counsel. A key piece of his puzzle was the argument that Catholics should not oppose anti-contraception legislation because it is considered a matter of private morality. He never assumed a position on abortion in his writings, and Catholics have continuously argued over how his complex intellectual legacy affects the hot-button religious-political issue of our day. Unsurprisingly, pro-life Catholics argue that the framework he used to justify his positions would not apply to abortion, while others argue that, in fact, it does. Here’s food for thought from a memo Murray wrote about contraception legislation:
… from the standpoint of morality Catholics maintain contraception to be morally wrong; and … out of their understanding of the distinction between morality and law and between public and private morality, and out their understanding of religious freedom, Catholics repudiate in principle a resort to the coercive instrument of law to enforce upon a whole community moral standards that the community itself does not commonly accept.The conclusion might be an exhortation to Catholics to lift the standards of public morality in all its dimensions, not by appealing to law and police action, but by the integrity of their Christian lives. This, to set the birth-control issue in its proper perspective.
Murrray, of course, did not and does not create Catholic doctrine (and neither do I, certainly). But there are many on the religious right and left who are seeking to create a broader understanding of what it is to be “pro-life,” and finding it not incompatible with the decision to be “pro-choice,” or to support of Barack Obama. For further consideration about the role of religion in politics, I'd recommend this speech by the senator.
--Tim Fernholz
