The Consistent Ethic of Life and the GOP

From the National Catholic Reporter:

One of the most prominent Catholics in the Republican Party says that it is time for his party to stop conceding the social justice message to Democrats. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., a Catholic convert who ran for his party’s nomination for president last year, told NCR that his party is still hesitant to passionately embrace some aspects of Catholic social teaching.

“There is a bit of a philosophical difference,” Brownback says of his party. “Catholics really are more given to the whole life view. But I see that changing.”

The GOP has embraced Catholics themselves as part of the faith-based leadership, Brownback says. Despite his own short run as a presidential hopeful -- Brownback pulled out before the first primary -- he says there’s no doubt a Catholic could be a Republican president.

“It could happen now,” Brownback says. “I don’t think there’s any blockage there.”

For most of the 20th century, the faith-based movement within the Republican Party was dominated by Protestants and especially by evangelicals the last half of the century. Catholics were reliable Democrats, especially when the majority was middle-class urbanites and often members of unions.

That has drastically changed. In the 2004 election, George W. Bush won the Catholic vote over John Kerry, a Catholic, by a sizable margin, 1.6 million votes. Many give credit to Bush’s chief strategist, Karl Rove, for courting Catholics by placing issues such as opposition to abortion, gay marriage and euthanasia at the top of the agenda.

Delegates bow their heads for benediction at the Republican National Convention Sept. 4.Brownback says he strongly agrees with his party’s position on all of those issues.

“You have to have life for there to be social justice,” Brownback says. “You can’t begin a social justice mission without defending the life of the unborn first.”

He also strongly supports his party’s position on other issues that go away from the church’s stated position. The war in Iraq is the most notable, where Brownback says there is moral ambiguity.

“It think it does cause legitimate concern,” Brownback says. “That’s a prudential judgment issue.

To me it was the right prudential judgment at that time (to invade Iraq). You can look back and say, ‘Where are the weapons of mass destruction?’ But at the time, we thought they were there. And I don’t think any Catholic would say now we should pull out of Iraq and have it go into anarchy.”

Capital punishment is another ambiguous issue for Brownback, who held hearings in 2006 to examine it. In beginning those hearings he said, “So each generation may -- and good citizens should -- consider anew the law and facts involving this solemn judgment. I believe America must establish a culture of life. If use of the death penalty is contrary to promoting a culture of life, we need to have a national dialogue and hear both sides of the issue.”

But there is a list of issues, once considered the domain of progressives, that Brownback says his church could teach his party to better embrace without equivocation.

“I want to say, (Democrats) are wrong on life and marriage,” Brownback says, “and here is our social justice agenda. We haven’t gone that distance. We’ve said, you get the social justice agenda, we get the life and marriage agenda. And I’m pushing at this cloth of being pro-life and whole life, and that applies to the immigrant, the person in prison, to those is poverty and those in Darfur.”

One example of how this plays out in the Senate is last year’s collaboration with vice presidential nominee Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) to strengthen laws against human trafficking.

Brownback said at the time, “Human trafficking is a daunting and critical global issue that often victimizes the most vulnerable among us.”

He says it’s a good sign that John McCain has been an advocate for several of these issues.

“So here’s a guy that is opposed to torture,” Brownback says. “He is for immigration reform, has a heart for the developing world.

But it’s not always been easy for McCain. Taking on President Bush over the issue of torture and, on the other hand, taking up the president’s cause on immigration reform nearly derailed his candidacy.

If that left some Republicans leery of McCain, it is because the party is just now starting to understand that its agenda can broaden without losing focus on core issues. And Brownback says the Catholic agenda is making inroads.

“I see that growing within the Republican Party,” Brownback says. “And if you want to talk philosophy, I say, these are sacred people. And they started sacred.”

********************************************

My Comments: Senator Sam Brownback is one of the most commendable Catholics in the United States Congress and in the whole of the American political scene. He allows his Catholic faith to inform his political thinking. Unlike many other Catholics in public office, Brownback has a keen awareness of the magnificent body of Catholic Social Teaching and he does not distort it in order to maintain some partisan commitment to a secular school of thought, i.e. pro-choice Catholics hiding behind the veil of a flawed version of the consistent life ethic, wanting to reduce abortions without changing its legal status.

Though, I must say, I am not honestly as optimistic as Sen. Brownback is in this regard. I personally tire of Catholics who quote the Bishops on abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research, and marriage and disregard or diminish their teaching on immigration, on labor unions, on economic justice, on pre-emptive war and militarism, and a whole range of issues. Brownback seems to tire of it too. Maybe not. It benefits his party. But, he at least notices that it is problematic if we’re going to call ourselves pro-life and be morally coherent.

We might as well say we're pro-birth—not pro-life—if we save the unborn child, but leave that same child to grow up in a broken home, in a inner city school with little funding and underpaid teachers, without healthcare, socially at a disadvantage to prosper and rise out of the conditions he finds himself in. Certainly, a child in that situation can still come out on top. I did. But I have one dead brother, the other (younger than I) has two children already, and I am the first person in my family to go to college and in fact, the only Catholic. I can honestly say the majority of people in that situation don’t fall in love with Jesus Christ, to the point of becoming Catholics, particularly African Americans nor do they necessarily find the means to receive the education I have nor the resources to live out their ambition. It breaks my heart. Yes, sometimes life deals us cards and we have to do the best we can, but that is not acceptable when the system is clearly unjust. We’re not here to accept the status quo.

Again, I commend Sen. Brownback for trying to infuse the Catholic tradition of the common good into Republican ideology. But I am profoundly skeptical about the viability of this proposal, at least in the short term. As Brownback notes, Bush won Catholics by placing issues such as “abortion, gay marriage, and euthanasia at the top of the agenda.” I respectfully disagree with Brownback here. I think those issues were placed at the top of their rhetoric, not the top of their agenda. The phrase “Culture of Life” has become a political slogan rather than a Catholic-minded vision for a social order that promotes human life and dignity. Or even just this past April, Bush used the phrase “dictatorship of relativism,” which was coined by Pope Benedict XVI in his writings. I personally found it ironic that Bush would be using that term, discretely applying it to the Left, as if the very utilitarian thought that lingers on the Right—particularly in regard to economic and foreign policy issues—isn't inherently relativism because if morality is judged solely by the consequences of moral acts, since there is no objective standard to measure those consequences, it is fundamentally moral relativism wearing a different mask.

Again, it is a matter of lip service and appearance rather than substance. I have no problem with Catholics who are Republicans. But I cannot stand the assertion that the Republican Party is our friend and ally. I am not convinced that a party with such little diversity in its base has the common good at heart. Perhaps, I’m wrong. But the convention was attended by the richest and whitest delegates in history. And just maybe the perspectives of, say, minorities may not be fully taken into account when they are underrepresented. I’m not saying the Republican Party is racist, that would be absurd.

Nevertheless, the fact that the GOP has a difficult time stealing constituencies from the Democrats—namely African Americans, Hispanics, blue-collar middleclass workers, people in labor unions, etc—is not that their rhetoric needs fine-tuning, not that people buy into Democratic lies, but because people aren’t fond of their capitalist-leaning policies that are arguably unjust. I think Brownback knows this and its why he talks about social justice, which I think may be termed here as "compassionate conservatism." I am curious as to how he’s going to get fiscal conservatives to go along with this because they seem to benefit very well from current policies.

This is hardly a minor ethical consideration. In Catholic terms, it is a support of an unjust distribution of resources. And these abuses should not be glossed over and misrepresented by rhetoric about a consistent ethic of life. It shouldn’t be done on the Left either. And I am confident Sen. Brownback is above such things and I wish him the grace of God in His endeavors. If the Republicans make inroads on the Democrats in regard to social justice matters—and it is more than lip service—I may as well just switch political parties. Perhaps, I won't. Perhaps, the Democrats will become pro-life.