Name any social policy
and there is sure to be a religious leader who has an opinion. The religious leader
states his or her position in absolutes. For the religionist, the issue is a
matter of high morality; no alternative position is acceptable. These religious
leaders and the general public routinely fault the daily give-and-take in
partisan politics for putting opportunism, gridlock, grandstanding, obstinacy
and hypocrisy above moral principle.
The
legislative process is a moral endeavor, says President John Kennedy
(1917-1963) in Profiles in Courage (Harper Collins, 1956). An impatient public does
not appreciate “the art of politics, the nature and necessity for compromise and
balance,” he writes. The public is “too hasty in condemning all compromise as
bad morals [when in fact] politics and legislation are not matters for
inflexible principles or unattainable ideals.” Democracy is maintained by
flawed people who are “engaged in the fine art of conciliating, balancing and
interpreting the forces and factions of public opinion.”
Are
principles then irrelevant to public life? Hardly. Though abiding principles do
not come with specifics on each detailed proposal nor do they yield strategy or
timing, principles give essential guidance. For an effective legislator,
politics is a vocation about “compromises of issues, not of principles,” says
Kennedy. A politician who “begins to compromise his [or her] principles on one
issue after another,” he concludes, “has lost the very freedom of conscience
which justifies his [or her] continuance in office.”
Profiles
in Courage goes on to detail eight U.S. Senators who at a crucial moment put
principles ahead of party loyalty and popularity. Yet even in those moments,
Kennedy says, an assertion of high principle comes with calculation. Several
examples in the book are about race relations, before and after the Civil War. An
antebellum Southern senator decides that the principle of a United
States is of higher value than the expectations of his constituents and his
loyalty to his party. Introducing a pro-abolition bill, however, will be
ineffective. Instead, he supports a mechanism that will delay war. He
calculates that a decade’s worth of uneasy peace is worth the loss of his
reputation. His principled stand, as it turns out, did not prevent the war but
it bought time during which the North became stronger and the institution of
slavery weaker. In other words a principled stand does not guarantee perfect
outcomes; compromise is always in the mix.
There
are many issues deserving attention from faith-inspired citizens: abortion,
ecology, immigration, national defense, labor relations and more. With rare
exception, religious leaders are advised not to take the shortcut of moralizing
on these and other issues. Instead, here are alternative strategies:
1.) Support conscientious legislators. Host a
support group or forum in one’s parish where politicians can explore the
meaning of their work. Send along compliments when matters are resolved in an
acceptable way.
2.) Be a strong, persistent voice in the
public square. Over and over explain one’s religious position, using as much
natural law or common good language as possible. Never stop asserting the whys and
hows of pro-life or pro-planet or pro-civil rights. No matter how basic the
explanation may be, there are many, many citizens and politicians who simply do
not know why a religious person might oppose abortion or support unions or
oppose pollution.
3.) Organize votes. Moralizing (like
throwing around the threat of excommunication) likely hardens the position of
politicians. Putting voting-blocks together gets attention. Bishops and other
Church employees should not endorse candidates nor wade too deeply into the
specifics of a piece of legislation. But lay members of any denomination can do
retail organizing. Supporting an alternative Democrat in a blue district is
better than hollow preaching. Supporting an alternative Republican in a red
district will shake things up.
There
are grifters in politics for sure. Here in Illinois some go to jail. But there
are thousands of moral politicians in municipal, state and federal bodies that
approach their work as a vocation. Do they ever hear their job framed in spiritual
terms in their congregation, their synagogue, their mosque? There are hundreds
of politicians who are capable of putting a moral principle ahead of a special
interest, ahead of a party leader’s expectation, ahead of expediency. Not at
every hour, on every issue. Not in big moralizing, grandstanding circumstances.
But within the deliberative process of democracy, many politicians know how to
frame a principle in reasonable terms and at times come away with a moral
victory.
Droel edits a newsletter on faith and
work, INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629)
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