Am I dreaming? Is a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church in America actually using Christian principles against the xenophobia of the Republican right?
It sure looks that way.
To the consternation of those who see all illegal immigrants as either terrorists or leeches sucking the pure red blood of true Americans (sorry, Arianna, you don't qualify, and neither do I as the great-grandson of an Irishman), the Archbishop of Los Angeles -- Cardinal Roger Mahoney -- has told the priests of his archdiocese to risk imprisonment rather than obey a proposed new law that would forbid them to "assist" an undocumented immigrant "to remain in the United States." Though his eminence does not wish to encourage illegal immigration, he will not tolerate a law so broadly written that it would criminalize a crucial part of the mission of his church: to help the needy, to clothe the naked, to feed the poor and -- above all -- to welcome the stranger. In effect, he has declared non-violent war on the Border Protection, Antiterrorism and Illegal Immigration Control bill, which has already passed the Republican-dominated House of Representatives and next week goes to the Republican-dominated Senate.
Whatever the Senate does with this bill, the cardinal's directive deserves a resounding "Amen" from anyone who truly cares about the role that Christianity -- and American Catholicism in particular -- ought to play in the political world. Raised as a Roman Catholic and taught for eight years by Jesuit priests, I still consider myself faithful to what I see as the essence of Catholicism, which is what chiefly concerns me here. But all Christians, I believe, can learn something from the public actions of the American Catholic church.
In recent years, the Catholic church has been anything but combative on behalf of bedrock Christian values -- the kind now upheld by Cardinal Mahoney. On the contrary, the church has become an altar boy for the high priests of the Republican right. In return for its holy war against abortion and homosexuality, leading prelates of the Catholic church have genuflected to the agenda of the Bush administration. Take the declaration made by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, the highest-ranking prelate in Colorado, one month before the presidential election of 2004. Warmly supported by the Bush campaign and speaking for a group of like-minded fellow bishops, he declared that because John Kerry does not wish to re-criminalize abortion, any Catholic who voted for him would be committing a mortal sin -- the kind of sin that may get you everlastingly damned.
Like millions of other Roman Catholics in this country, I risked everlasting damnation by voting for Kerry. I really don't think I'd enjoy life in a heaven run by the archbishop of Colorado. Aside from doing everything he could to defeat the first Roman Catholic presidential candidate of a major party since John F. Kennedy ran in 1960, he woefully confused the fundamental distinction between sin and crime.
In the very first amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the founding fathers of this country gave all of us the right to worship anything or anyone we choose, including the devil himself. Does this mean that the founding fathers supported devil worship? Of course not. They simply believed that decisions about whom or what to worship should be left to the individual conscience, not dictated or regulated by law. Likewise, John Kerry believes that the decision to terminate a pregnancy should be left to the conscience of the woman involved rather than pre-empted by the government. Though he has never advocated abortion, he believes -- as the overwhelming majority of Americans do -- that motherhood should be a labor of love, not a labor of law. In a religiously pluralistic society, we cannot criminalize an action simply because one or more churches have defined it as a sin.
Anytime we propose a change in the laws, no matter how well intentioned, we must consider its practical effect. If we believe in criminalizing abortion, do we also believe that every woman who has an abortion should be prosecuted and jailed for doing so? If not, can we justly prosecute those who perform abortions without also prosecuting those who request them? And can any law that would criminalize abortion under all circumstances past the test of Constitutionality?
Given the virtual impossibility of passing such a law and making it stick, should the Catholic church spend its political capital in an endless struggle to pass it, or should it seek other ways to combat abortion -- such as supporting candidates who believe that all pregnant women should have access to good pre-natal and post-natal care, regardless of their ability to pay? This was precisely the position taken by John Kerry. Since one of every five women who choose abortion does so because she doesn't think she can afford to raise a child, this kind of help could substantially reduce abortions. It might also turn the clenched fist of confrontation into the open hand of constructive action. If the Bush administration really cared about reducing abortions, it would make sure that every young pregnant woman got the care and the information she needed.
Just as bad as the idea of re-criminalizing abortion is the idea of a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. When advocates of such an amendment claim that gay marriage threatens the institution of marriage itself, how do they explain why an institution strong enough to withstand a divorce rate of fifty percent can be destroyed by the mere availability of marriage -- or even civil unions -- for gays? Let us also remember that while Christ uttered not one word against homosexuality, he unequivocally forbade divorce "on any ground but [the wife's] unfaithfulness" (Matthew 19:3-9). Since the church already teaches that divorce is mortally sinful, and since we know that it does real harm to thousands or even millions of people -- especially children -- every year, why are the bishops of America not demanding a Constitutional ban on that? Is it because divorce is somehow less sinful than homosexuality, or because gays are a much smaller and politically more vulnerable target than divorcees? (I am not advocating a ban on divorce here -- merely exposing the fundamental inconsistency of the church's position on gay marriage.) In seeking to curb the political rights of gays, does the Catholic church truly follow the teachings and example of one who befriended prostitutes, who defended the powerless and the persecuted, and who saved the life of an adulteress by deftly exposing the hypocrisy of those who would have stoned her?
Instead of speaking truth to power, instead of standing up for the abused and the persecuted, the Catholic church has largely endorsed the policies of the single most powerful man in the world: the president of the United States. He has bought Catholic support with such worthless currency as the Schiavo bill (remember that?), which would have indefinitely prolonged a life that had long since turned irreversibly vegetative. Though advocates of the Schiavo bill cited the late Pope John's statement that we have a moral obligation to furnish food and water to anyone who needs it, the Holy Father never revoked rule 2278 of the Roman Catholic Catechism, which explicitly legitimates the discontinuance of medical procedures that are "extraordinary or disproportionate to the expected outcome." Surely that fit Ms. Schiavo's case. If anyone had put food or water into her mouth, she would have choked or drowned on it. By any reasonable definition of the terms "ordinary" and "extraordinary," the provision of nutrition by means of a tube surgically inserted into the abdomen is an extraordinary procedure. It was also grossly disproportionate to the outcome expected by every reputable neurologist who examined Ms. Schiavo, and who foresaw no more for her than still more years of vegetative existence.
As a Catholic, Ms. Schiavo believed that death is not the end of life but the gateway to eternal life. As a Catholic, she would not have wished to see that gateway blocked by a vegetative existence. And as a human being, she would certainly never have wished to be used as a tool by would-be champions of life who regularly pursue policies that lead to death. President George Bush, who flew back from Texas to sign the bill that made federal courts reconsider the already over-adjudicated case of Ms. Schiavo, also led us into a war that was totally unjustified by any threat to our national security, that was firmly opposed by John Paul II, and that has now cost -- by the president's own admission -- some 30,000 civilian lives, including about 3000 children. House majority leader Tom Delay, who led the fight to pass the Schiavo law, did so right after cutting fourteen billion dollars from Medicaid, the critical lifeline for families who cannot afford to pay for their own medical care.
The Schiavo case thus gave the Catholic Church a perfect opportunity to explain its teachings about life and death, and to say why Ms. Schiavo should have been allowed to end her life on earth as peacefully and serenely as the Pope ended his. (Though nourished by a feeding tube in his last days, John Paul II was never placed on a life support system, and by his own wish was not even taken to a hospital.) Instead, the Church allowed itself and its teachings to be grossly misused by the Republican right.
At long last, however, Cardinal Mahoney's directive suggests that at least some prelates of the Catholic church are beginning to see the light: to see just how un-Christian the right has become. The evidence is overwhelming, and it starts at the top. Off the battlefield as well as on, the president has repeatedly shown that he cares at least as much about promoting death as about cherishing life. In March of last year, just about the time he flew into Washington to sign the Schiavo bill, a six-month-old boy named Sun Hudson died after a Texas hospital removed his feeding tube because his mother could not pay for it. The Texas Futile Care Law, which gives health care providers the right to overrule indigent family members in deciding when to end a life, was signed by Governor George Bush. During his six years as Governor, George Bush also compiled a record of executions unmatched by that of any other governor in modern American history. Rejecting all but one of the appeals for clemency that came to his desk, he approved the executions of 150 men and two women, including a mentally retarded man and a born-again Christian named Karla Faye Tucker Brown, who had made herself an inspiration to her fellow inmates. He mocked her appeal for clemency and did not even bother to read many of the others.
Did the thought of these executions ever cross his mind at the funeral of John Paul II, when he knelt at the bier of the first pope in history who unequivocally rejected capital punishment? In 1997, thanks to the persevering efforts of Sister Helen Prejean, John Paul II revised the Catholic catechism to make it oppose capital punishment under all conditions, no matter how grave the crime. And in April of last year, the Catholic bishops of America launched a vigorous campaign to end the death penalty once and for all.
I don't know just what has happened to this campaign, but along with the plight of undocumented immigrants in this country, it is just one of many reasons why the Catholic Church in America needs to stand on its own political feet. Ever since 9/11, the Bush administration has tried to fight terrorism with torture. In Guantanamo Bay, to take just one example, more than 550 detainees remain directly under American control and subject to interrogation techniques that the Red Cross has called "tantamount to torture." According to FBI documents, Guantanamo prisoners have been beaten, strangled, burned in the ear with lit cigarettes, and chained by hand and foot to the floor with no food, water, or access to a toilet for 24 hours or more. The FBI documents also indicate that authorization for these practices came from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is warmly supported by the president that American Catholic bishops helped to re-elect. Now that American bishops have said that capital punishment is never justified, when will they say the same about torture?
A host of practices and policies beloved by the Republican right cry out for repudiation by any church that truly cares about the plight of the poor and the powerless and the fate of this God-created earth, which has lately caused even the National Association of Evangelicals to demand that all politicians pay more attention to "creation care." Ted Haggard, president of this 30 million-member organization, has declared that the environment "should be a banner issue for the Christian right," and in an "Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility" issued well over a year ago, he and other Evangelical leaders proclaimed that every Christian has a duty to care for the planet and every government must work to sustain it. When will the Catholic church join the Evangelicals in demanding that our government do everything possible to stop our pollution of the earth and of the very air we breathe?
If the Amierican Catholic church wants to be heard and heeded, it must stop singing in Karl Rove's choir, stop genuflecting to the Republican right, and stop doing everything possible to support a political agenda distinguished chiefly for its hypocrisy. Though the recent election of an ultra-conservative pope promises no change in Catholic policy at the top, Catholics who know the difference between hypocrisy and truly compassionate Christianity can hope that Cardinal Mahoney's courageous directive marks the beginning of a new political independence for the American Catholic church.