Last Updated:Friday - 09/24/2010

Knitting a seamless garment

In the United States, the separation of Church and state has come to mean, in many people's minds, that the Church should say nothing about how the nation is governed. This was not the original idea behind such a separation, but a militant secularism has used this notion to drive religion out of public schools and to diminish the voices of churches in the political process.

In Canada, the so-called separation of Church and state has not been so sharp, but again it would seem to be the view of at least some Catholic politicians that religion is one's private set of beliefs which should not impinge on public policy making. To be sure, the establishment of an official state religion would not be a good thing, either for the established Church itself or for the general well-being of a pluralistic society.

But the Church has a right and duty to speak on public affairs. Its voice is the voice of morality and that voice is often marginalized as special interest groups, especially financial ones, exert their influence on the political process.

The U.S. bishops' conference has made a habit of releasing a statement every four years -- one year before a presidential election -- on key moral principles it believes should influence voters. In their 1999 statement, the bishops raised a wide array of issues arising out of current problems and crises in the U.S. "Our moral framework does not easily fit the categories of right or left, Democrat or Republican," they stated. "Our responsibility is to measure every party and platform by how its agenda touches human life and dignity."

Over the years the bishops have repeatedly called for "a consistent ethic of life." Issues of abortion, euthanasia, war, the arms race, criminal punishment, poverty and health care should not be divided into issues of left vs. right. They are "a seamless garment" -- the fight to end poverty arises from the same moral principle as the fight to end abortion.

Few politicians see things that way and so one responsibility of Catholic (and other) voters is to challenge them to view public issues in that light. Pointedly, the bishops ask, "Why does it seem that our nation is turning to violence to solve some of its most difficult problems -- to abortion to deal with difficult pregnancies, to the death penalty to combat crime, to euthanasia and assissted suicide to deal with the burdens of age and illness?"

In Canada, bishops raising their voices at election time has not been part of our tradition. Happily, the Ontario bishops broke with tradition in 1998, issuing a similar statement to that of the U.S. bishops a year prior to the last provincial election. Among other things, the Ontario bishops questioned widespread cynicism towards politicians. "It is important that we adopt a positive attitude towards politics and that we respect the nobility of political service."

Canadians who believe strongly in the full range of Catholic social teaching may well find it difficult to stand comfortably in any of our political parties. But the solution ought not to be the despair of withdrawal from the political process. Rather, Catholic lay people ought to school themselves in papal encyclicals and the teachings of the Canadian bishops and become actively engaged in politics.

Indeed, one's choice of party in which to become engaged might even be arbitrary. The point is not which party is the purest from the Catholic point of view, but rather "What am I doing to move one political party closer to the Church's social teachings?"

If we work toward the day that large numbers of Catholics, committed to the Church's full teaching, are working in all major Canadian political parties, our nation may have a brighter future. If all we can do is grumble from the sidelines then we can only expect that politics will be dominated by special interest groups. If we are sincere about wanting a consistent ethic of life then we had best jump into the fray.

Copyright © 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 -- Western Catholic Reporter