Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

TCS

My column on the Spitzer - Grasso mess is up at Tech Central Station.

First Things

Regular readers know I am effusive in my praise for First Things, the Catholic-leaning neoconservative-leaning opinion monthly. No magazine I know of blends theology and politics so well, except parhaps Commentary. So I was excited to see that you can now order First Things from Amazon and, even better, since I am an Amazon Associate, if you do order it by clicking that link, you can simultaneously support this blog. (For that matter, you can subscribe to Commentary via Amazon too.)

Uh oh. Bush may be in real trouble.

The other day, Profs. Levy and Reynolds opined that Bush may be in trouble because he's losing the Libertarian vote; I scoffed. Now, however, comes a real worry for those of us who support the President (however ambivalently at times); namely, that Bush is losing the Clancy vote:

A brand name author with many admirers in the military criticized the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, citing it as proof that "good men make mistakes." That same writer said he almost "came to blows" with a leading war supporter, former Pentagon adviser Richard Perle.

The author is Tom Clancy.

The hawkish master of such million-selling thrillers as "Patriot Games" and "The Hunt for Red October" now finds himself adding to the criticism of the Iraq war, and not only through his own comments. His latest book, "Battle Ready," is a collaboration with another war critic, retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni. "Battle Ready" looks at Zinni's long military career, dating back to the Vietnam War, and includes harsh remarks by Zinni about the current conflict. [Ed.: Zinni's list of 10 mistakes by the administration in fact is quite damning.]

My guess is that Clancy readers represent a much larger percentage of Bush's base than do readers of libertarian law professor blogs. Clancy's Jack Ryan, after all, is resolutely pro-military, devoutly Catholic, and moderately anti-abortion; all of which resonates with a lot of the GOP base. So if Bush can't get folks like Clancy and Zinni back on board soon, he will be in very deep trouble.

Annoy France: Vote for Bill Owens

Kudos to Colorado's Governor Bill Owens, who is in trouble for tweaking the French with a couple of well-taken barbs:

Keynoting Saturday at the Michigan Republican Party Convention, Owens quipped, "You know why they planted those big trees along the boulevard in Paris? So the invading armies could march in the shade."

And, he continued, "You know why the new French navy has glass-bottom boats? So it can see the old French navy."

Chuckle.

Libertarian Delusions

Jacob Levy and Glenn Reynolds both think that the Bush camp is in denial over the risk that a significant number of Bush's base voters will defect to the Libertarians. Maybe, but I doubt it. The Libertarian platform is anti-war, pro-abortion on demand (the Party Platform says government "should be kept out of the question," which is a disingenuous way of avoiding the issue, but clearly amounts to abortion on demand), pro-same sex marriage (indeed, since the Libertarian Party defines marriage as "a private contract between two consenting adults," presumably incestuous marriages are okay too). Setting aside a few big name bloggers, I have a hard time imagining very many members of Bush's base supporting a party whose views on both the foreign and culture wars are so antithetical to what principles for which the GOP stands. For anybody who is center-right on both defense and social issues, the Libertarians simply are not a credible alternative. Instead, among Prof. Levy's various scenarios, I worry most about turn out. But if the fiscal conservatives and hawkish libertarians think Kerry is going to be any better, they need their meds checked out. Prof. Reynolds, at least, has grasped this point: "my support for Bush has more to do with the character of his opposition." I'll take it.

20 Questions

I'm the latest to answer Crescat Sententia's 20 questions.

Catholic Voting

In her post Voting Catholic, Amy Lamboley raises a very important issue:

The New York Times has an article stating that "The Roman Catholic bishop of Colorado Springs has issued a pastoral letter saying that American Catholics should not receive communion if they vote for politicians who defy church teaching by supporting abortion rights, same-sex marriage, euthanasia or stem-cell research." This does not strike me as a good idea.

First off, it is not the case that in all elections voters will be offered a choice between a pro-life and a pro-choice candidate. In more liberal areas of the country, often both candidates are pro-choice, and disagree only to the extent to which abortion should be regulated and/or subsidized by the state. Must Catholic voters abstain entirely from the election?

Second off, these are not the only areas about which the church has politically relevant teaching. Capital punishment, just war theory, and various social justice issues are all areas in which Catholic teaching can reasonably be applied to American politics, and in a way that does not so squarely line up with the Republican party line, but which a Catholic may wish to consider in choosing a candidate to support. So, for instance, in an election in which both candidates are pro-choice, but one is for the war in Iraq and one against, a voter could well feel that it was vitally important to vote for the antiwar politician. ...

I certainly don't believe that Catholics should check their Catholicism at the door of the polling-place. In fact, I don't understand how one could fail to consult fundamental religious beliefs in deciding for whom one votes. It just strikes me that, given the seriousness of the sanction involved, and given the fact that there is no party in U.S. politics that takes the "Catholic line", many decisions on which politician to support will involve weighing a number of different factors, and making unfortunate tradeoffs, it seems terribly misguided to reduce the decision to a few-issue test.

I think Amy is basically right, although I would want to tweak the analysis a bit. First, let's remember that Bishop Sheridan did not say that Catholics who vote for, say, pro-abortion candidates will be denied the Eucharist. Nothing in his pastoral letter suggests that priests will be grilling their parishoners on their voting habits before administering the sacraments. Instead, I read the Bishop's letter as calling upon Catholics who do so to voluntarily refrain from participating in the sacraments (or, better yet, to be reconciled with the Church through renunciation and penance). Second, while I applaud Bishop Sheridan for his strong message that the Church's Gospel of Life has pride of place in any faith-based analysis of public policy, I think he has failed to give adequate attention to the legitimate complexities Amy raises. The most authoritative recent Church treatment of these issues is to be found in the Doctrinal Note on Some Questions Regarding The Participation of Catholics in Political Life, which acknowledges that Catholics should not be single issue voters:

The Christian faith is an integral unity, and thus it is incoherent to isolate some particular element to the detriment of the whole of Catholic doctrine. A political commitment to a single isolated aspect of the Church’s social doctrine does not exhaust one’s responsibility towards the common good.

On the other hand, the Note does support Bishop Sheridan's view that the Church's Gospel of Life takes highest priority:

When political activity comes up against moral principles that do not admit of exception, compromise or derogation, the Catholic commitment becomes more evident and laden with responsibility. In the face of fundamental and inalienable ethical demands, Christians must recognize that what is at stake is the essence of the moral law, which concerns the integral good of the human person. This is the case with laws concerning abortion and euthanasia (not to be confused with the decision to forgo extraordinary treatments, which is morally legitimate). Such laws must defend the basic right to life from conception to natural death. In the same way, it is necessary to recall the duty to respect and protect the rights of the human embryo.

Even so, however, the Church acknowledges that even as to abortion compromises may be necessary in the political arena:

As John Paul II has taught in his Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae regarding the situation in which it is not possible to overturn or completely repeal a law allowing abortion which is already in force or coming up for a vote, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality.

What then should Catholics do? There has been an active debate of this topic over at Mirror of Justice. Michael Scaperlanda's recent post notes:

Oregon Archbishop Vlazny's statement on the reception of communion by pro-choice candidates and those who vote for them. Archbishop Vlazny says that pro-choice candidates and those who vote for them because of their pro-choice views should refrain from receiving the Eucharist. In contrast, the Archbishop says that those who vote for a pro-choice candidate despite the candidate's pro-choice position should not refrain. He says:

"Should Catholics who choose to vote for pro-choice politicians refrain from reception of the Holy Communion? If they vote for them precisely because they are pro-choice, I believe they too should refrain from the reception of Holy Communion because they are not in communion with the Church on a serious matter. But if they are voting for that particular politician because, in their judgment, other candidates fail significantly in some matters of great importance, for example, war and peace, human rights and economic justice, then there is no evident stance of opposition to Church teaching and reception of Holy Communion seems both appropriate and beneficial."

He goes on to say that those who vote for a pro-choice candidate should make their disagreement with the politicians stand on abortion abundantly clear.

I suspect Amy would find Archbishop Vlazny's position far more congenial than that of Bishop Sheridan. Personally, I come out where Archbishop Vlazny does. Out here in LA, I rarely get the chance to vote for a pro-life candidate. Instead, I am usually choosing between two pro-choice candidates. In such situations, Vlazny's analysis that voting for one of them could still be licit strikes me as analogous to John Paul's view of permissible compromises. Since my choice between two such candidates is made on grounds other than their position on abortion, I am comfortable that I am not acting in opposition to or derogation from Church teaching on these vital issues.

Ramesh v. Andrew on the Communion Issue

Ramesh Ponnuru, my favorite Cornerite, responds to Andrew Sullivan's Time piece on the communion controversy:

We're given, in the linked piece, two arguments for why the bishops should offer communion to Catholic politicians who support legal abortion. First: "How many of us Catholics are completely worthy every Sunday of receiving what we believe to be the body and blood of Jesus? The church understands this and has long left it up to the individual to wrestle with his or her conscience as to whether going to Communion is appropriate. To turn the tables and make the giving of Communion contingent on a public, political litmus test would politicize a sacred ritual that is and always should be beyond politics."

Actually, none of us are worthy to receive the Lord, and we even say so beforehand. If legislators voted on abortion by secret ballot and did not disclose their positions to the public, it would indeed be appropriate to handle the issue in the confessional rather than in public. But the sin under discussion--that of unjustly denying the unborn legal protections that everyone else has--is committed in public. A public denial of communion is thus necessary to prevent people from reaching the false conclusion that persisting in this sin is compatible with staying in communion with the church.

Second, the denial of communion would make the church seem to be allied with the Republican party. The article ignores the existence of two to three dozen pro-life House Democrats, which is not an insignificant faction of the entire caucus even if it gets little public attention. But leave that aside. The argument boils down to this: The bishops are supposed to let members of their flock endanger their souls without doing much to help them, because of a political calculation about the effects of this pastoral care. You don't have to be familiar with canon law to see that the bishops just can't follow this advice.

Yep. In the next two posts I explore the tax/constitutional issues raised by this debate and offer my own take on what Catholic voters ought to do. There's also a very active discussion of this issue over at Mirror of Justice.