Prelates Preaching on Prudential, Pragmatic Policy

This week the American bishops criticized proposed federal budget cuts as unfairly targeting the poor. Good point! One wonders, however, where they would cut: Social Security, Medicare, or defense. Over the years the bishops, the Vatican and even our popes have spoken clearly on any number of prudential, pragmatic policy issues: the Iraq invasion, the death penalty, immigration policy, the value of the United Nations, abolition of nuclear arms and the list goes on.

The problem is that these policy issues are prudential, pragmatic, and sometimes technical judgments which do not fall within their apostolic authority to preach faith and morals. They do certainly involve moral principles but such principles as applied and intermingled with empirical, practical judgments, estimates, and anticipations which are always tentative, multivalent, uncertain, and positional.

Such teachings, for the loyal Catholic, are advisory but not binding. A good Catholic can in conscience dissent from the Pope’s view on the Iraq invasion or the bishops’ policy on immigration.

The role of the clergy is to proclaim the Gospel and teach morality. The application of these truths to complex, actual policy situations is very involved. Competency in these areas is not conferred by ordination, seminary training or the clerical culture but involves multiple areas (politics, diplomacy, economics, etc.) which are properly the “worldly” concern of the (non-ordained, non-consecrated) laity.

There are a number of problems when the hierarchy and clergy instruct us on social policy:

1. They usually do not clarify that the teaching is prudential and tentative and not morally binding. So, for example, people are aware that John Paul II and the bishops oppose the death penalty but they do not realize that this involves an empirical calculus and is entirely different from Church teaching on essential evils like infanticide or military targeting of civilians. Thank God for Cardinal Avery Dulles who clarified for us the nature of this teaching!

2. Such teaching involves an unrecognized clericalism: a conviction that society needs clerical guidance on policy issues because the laity is not competent without rather specific direction.

3. By teaching on such a range of issues, our prelates dilute and diminish their influence on the really important issues as well as on the moral and spiritual truths of the Deposit of Faith which they truly do protect and articulate infallibly.

4. Such specific, concrete policy positions inevitably align the hierarchy with certain partisan, ideological positions. The American bishops usually line up with the Democrats on issues in which the later do not directly contradict Church teaching. Even the Vatican sometimes seems to be echoing the sentiments of sophisticated European elites. The transcendence of the Church is compromised, then, by overly specific identification with concrete policies and causes.

5. This temptation to identify with particular ideological visions is rooted in a diminished sense of the power of the sacraments and apostolic teaching. The passionately ideological priest, prelate, or bishops’ conference is probably suffering from a loss of faith in the cult of worship, sacramental efficacy, the kerygma, and catechesis.

Does this mean that priest, bishop and Pope need to be completely silent on policy issues? I think such an absolute “wall of separation” is not necessary. Some policy issues involve clear and direct moral evil (e.g. racial discrimination) and many others have important moral consequences even if they are more complex and ambiguous (e.g. budget cuts.) Moreover, as citizens, a clergyman has the same right as anyone else to speak his mind on these matters. They must be careful, however, lest they invest such political opinion with ecclesial authority. In doing so, they would be more helpful to us if they:
- Clarify the advisory, prudential, non-binding nature of such teaching.
- Avoid over-extension into so many policy areas, trusting in the competence of the laity in “worldly” matters.
- Focus with fierce intensity upon the really crucial, really clear issues: protection of innocent, powerless human life; concern for children, women and the poor; and the dignity of sexuality.
- Recognize the indirect but immense influence upon social situations of inspired worship and teaching.
As in so many things, we are blessed to have among us an extraordinary exemplar for such teaching: Pope Benedict XVI.