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Politics as Usual by Jim Baron I have always looked at the issue of separation of church and state differently than most other folks.
A lot of the people who invoke Thomas Jefferson’s metaphorical “wall of separation,” are usually doing so along the lines of “keep those blue-nosed, church-going meddlers out of government business.”
That is wrong.
Religious people — Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hare Krishnas, and those of any other faith — have just as much right as anyone to engage in political debate and participate in government. It was the moral suasion of religious people, many of them priests and bishops in the Catholic Church, that helped put civil rights legislation over the top in the 1950s and 60s and, later in the 1960s, helped legitimize and mainstream opposition to the Vietnam War. That doesn’t even mention the good done all over the world, often in the most war-torn, poverty-stricken, God-forsaken (but not really) regions by missionaries of many faiths.
Religious people (OK, not all, but the overwhelming majority and ALL of the truly sincere ones) tend to be good people and their opinions should carry weight in discussions of politics and government policy. They have things of value to say and they have not only the right but, in many cases, the moral obligation to say them.
I have always engaged the separation of church and state from the other side, the side I believe the Founding Fathers intended: not keeping religion out of government, but keeping government out of religion.
That’s when you hear me howling about separation of church and state — when some politician tries to force the Ten Commandments into a public building or (and this one is coming to a newspaper near you within a week or two, sure as shootin’) Nativity scenes in City Hall and other places.
That is wrong for two reasons. One is because the politician is inevitably doing it not for the greater glory of God, but for the greater glory of him-or-herself. The second reason is that those in government have their hands on the levers of power. They have all means of control over other people to make them go along, or at the very least keep their mouths shut. They can manipulate the law and those other levers of power to compel people to go along with their forced piety. And that is what the founders — many of whom were trying to break free of not only King George, but the control of the Church of England as well — most feared, that exercise of undue influence.
It made it an unfair fight. If you don’t do what the politicians say, they are going to sic God on you.
That, I believe, is at the bottom of the fight between Bishop Thomas Tobin and Rep. Patrick Kennedy. Yes, Kennedy fired the first shot — he started it, as second-graders in the recess yard would argue. But I think it was Bishop Tobin who made it an unfair fight.
Yes, as I argued several paragraphs up, Bishop Tobin has every right, and as his faith and his position in the church demands, the obligation to speak out against abortion, and other things Catholics feel strongly about. Tax exemptions prohibit churches from endorsing and opposing individual candidates (a restriction that should arguably be loosened or eliminated) but other than that, they should be accepted and even welcomed in the public discourse.
If Bishop Tobin wants to buttonhole Kennedy, or any other political figure in the state, Catholic or otherwise, and urge his and the church’s position on abortion rights, or capital punishment, or stem cells, or any other issue, he is exercising his right as a constituent and being a good citizen by participating in the political process.
Where he steps over the line is when he exerts undue influence: when he attempts to sic God on Kennedy or any other political figure for his vote or his speech in debate in Congress by threatening to withhold or, to put it more politely, suggesting that he or she refrain from accepting the Eucharist. To a public official who has been a lifelong Catholic, that is a threat to separate that person from God, and from there it is just a short slide down the slippery slope to H-E-double-hockeysticks.
Patrick Kennedy may be Bishop Tobin’s parishioner, but he is also the representative of about a half-million people who live in the 1st Congressional District. I live in the 1st Congressional District and I am a Baptist. There are Jews who live in the district, and atheists and most likely members of any other religion you could name. Patrick Kennedy is my congressman, too. If I don’t like what Patrick Kennedy does in Congress, the most I can do is vote against him. If Bishop Tobin doesn’t like what Kennedy does in Congress, he can separate him from God. That is undue influence.
Preaching and teaching, persuading and cajoling are one thing; using the Eucharist as a weapon to dictate the behavior of a parishioner in elected office is quite another.
Bishop Tobin has said on many occasions in the past several weeks that (and I’m paraphrasing here) if a Catholic in any line of work, including being a legislator, finds his or her work coming into conflict with the teachings of the church, he or she should “you have to quit your job and save your soul.”
Such an injunction from a bishop to a parishioner does not cross the line in my view, the way a threat or suggestion of withholding the Eucharist does, but what does it say to non-Catholic voters when they are considering whether to vote for a candidate who is Catholic? To me, it says if I am not happy with the idea of an elected official toeing the church line on every political issue, then I should vote for someone else.
Is Patrick Kennedy beholden to the majority of the people of his district who favor abortion rights and expect their representative in Congress to do their bidding? Or is he as a Catholic lawmaker there to do as the church instructs and all his constituents can go to…I mean, should have to just accept it?
The issue of withholding Communion from Catholic lawmakers who take pro-choice stands is not going to go away anytime soon. The Vatican endorsement of the practice was written several years ago by a Cardinal named Joseph Ratzinger. He himself was elected to a higher office four years ago. You know him now as Pope Benedict XVI.
But the Catholic Church is far from naïve in matters of politics; it has been neck-deep in the politics of nations all over the world for centuries. And the church benefits from members of the flock serving in high political office.
It risks losing some of that influence, at least in America, if it continues to demand Catholics in political office act as agents of the church in their governmental roles. Americans have never been comfortable with the idea of theocracy; it could lead to a backlash.
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