10/20/00 2:20 p.m.
Sheepish Shepherds
Cardinal O'Connor, where are you when we need you?

Jack Fowler, the associate publisher of National Review, was the former Washington bureau chief of the National Committee of Catholic Laymen.

t's customary to address a Catholic bishop as "Your Excellency." One field in which the U.S. Roman Catholic bishops have truly proven their excellence is their skill in confusing their flock when it comes to politics. Just this week — in an election guide released by the government liaison office of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops/United States Catholic Conference — they proved yet again how inadequate they are in fulfilling their responsibility to inform Catholic voters.

The guide, officially titled the "Presidential Candidate Questionnaire", is a vast mishmash of far-flung issues, sinfully lacking analysis; it cries out for an authoritative contrast between what are merely political positions and what are core Catholic teachings: This document no doubt made abortion-rights champion Al Gore's day. Its contents, and the amazing restraints under which the bishops released it, will confound Catholic laymen who are looking to their religious leaders for some moral guidance on the upcoming elections.

As it has done every four years, the USCC half of the bishops' Washington-based official bureaucracy sends out the candidate questionnaire and then releases the responses, verbatim, as supplied by various campaigns.

Now, it's an understatement to say that most bishops, as well as most chancery and conference flunkies, are politically liberal and cradle Democrats. The "Catholic Conference," as it is more commonly and collectively known, is one of Washington's greatest bastions of bleeding-heart liberals. There, government programs and spending receive adoration. But there, also, resides an inherent political conflict that confounds liberals: Hanging like a pall over their ideological inclinations and Democratic-leaning political allegiances is that "Republican" issue of abortion.

Oh, abortion. There are no official "Catholic" positions or doctrines on the inherent morality (or immorality) of housing programs. Or missiles. Or farming subsidies. Or on any number of other public-policy issues. But there is a defined Catholic position on abortion and related "life" issues. You can take a conservative position on welfare reform, and you are no less or more in sync with Catholic morality than if you took the liberal position.

That's not so with abortion, where there is a clear position on both the morality of the issue and its public-policy consequences. If you favor, say, public funding of abortion, you are, in the eyes of the Church, engaging in an immoral action. There's no wiggle room here. It's black and white. No matter what any pointy-headed moral theologian splutters, a vote against a pro-life position is not the same as a vote against increased welfare spending.

Which means? That pro-life Jesse Helms trumps pro-abortion Ted Kennedy. From the perspective of a typical Church bureaucrat, that's an intolerable situation. What to do?

Well, nearly two decades ago USCC staffers concocted a means of escaping the conservative trap: the "Seamless Garment." A scheme associated with the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, the Seamless Garment ideology claims that while abortion is a critical moral issue to Catholics, so are nuclear deterrence, housing, welfare, and a host of other positions found in any Democratic-party platform. They're all part of one big unified moral theory.

The political implications of the garment theory are obvious: Evil Jesse now finds his batting average dropping to .100, while Good Old Teddy's jumps to .900. How…convenient.

The garment doctrine's influence is glaringly evident in the bishops' presidential survey, which requests candidate positions on clearly "Catholic" issues, such as abortion and embryo research, but which also poses questions — on an equal moral footing — on issues such as "arms and landmines," "communications," and "food and agricultural policy."

An example: The question asked by the bishops on the last topic speaks volumes about their inclinations, and the guide's potential to confuse Catholics: "What is your position on amending current farm policy to make it more favorable to family owned and operated farms, including the provision of a safety net in times of low prices or natural disasters?"

So the "family farm" issue is somehow "Catholic," and as important as abortion? How can one not deduce that from the survey?

This sort of moral equivalence compromises the supposed point of the undertaking — giving the faithful an understanding of the issues, where candidates stand on them, and how those positions mesh with Catholic teaching. And it is further, and absolutely, compromised by the bishops' refusal to put the responses of Mr. Gore, George W. Bush, and Pat Buchanan into a Catholic context.

In simpler terms, the bishops refuse to say whether the candidates' positions supported or opposed Catholic teaching. They have placed a gag rule on themselves.

Why?

In a depressing cautionary preamble to the questionnaire, the bishops' general counsel warns that the Church's 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status would be put at risk if the questionnaire were explained or put into some context by Church officials. The warnings on this score cover a host of situations. For example: "No editorial comments may be made with respect to any candidate or his responses, e.g., including a link or citation to the candidate questionnaire in an op/ed piece in a diocesan paper."

Let me get this straight. In the United States, where presidential candidate Jesse Jackson would regularly and boldly pass campaign contribution baskets around black churches without fear of punishment, the Roman Catholic bishops forbid Catholic publications to interpret political positions by major candidates. The bishops' key responsibility is to explain Catholic teaching as it applies to society, and elections surely come under that heading; but they are afraid to tell Catholics whether or how the publicly stated positions of presidential candidates are in conflict or accord with Catholic teaching . . . because of some tortured legal theory that the Church may lose its tax-exempt status.

Which, of course, is utterly bogus. No one believes that the tax status of the largest religious group in America would ever be taken away, no matter how many lawsuits church-state separatist groups file. But this is the excuse they are using for their self-imposed gag rule. This forces the obvious question: Why do the survey at all? Why engage in something that is purported to clarify matters for the faithful, but which will only — can only — further confuse them, and which can be (and is) exploited by candidates hostile to Catholic teaching?

The one candidate who should have benefited from the survey is George Bush, who, on the truly Catholic issues of abortion, school choice, and tax policy to benefit families, is in sync with Church teaching and the views of practicing Catholics. But given the survey's inherent confusion, it is Al Gore who truly benefits. By refusing to regard his responses from a Catholic perspective, and by forbidding other Catholic institutions, such as diocesan newspapers, from doing so, the bishops have allowed Mr. Gore to further distort his defiant and obsessive pro-abortion position.

This is the same Al Gore who led the U.S delegation to the United Nations Cairo conference, which fought the Vatican and Islamic nations in a brazen (and, thankfully, unsuccessful) bid to blackmail other countries to accept abortion as an international right; the same Al Gore who is endorsed by the National Abortion Rights Action League, vows to protect the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, and stood by Bill Clinton as he vetoed bans on partial-birth abortion.

Yes, that same Al Gore was allowed, by the self-gagged bishops, to portray himself through their questionnaire as someone opposed to partial-birth abortion (read the survey and weep).

One last infuriating fact relating to this survey: Diocesan newspapers — barred from interpreting Mr. Gore's questionnaire responses (lest they doom the Church's tax status!) — are running a recent Catholic News Service interview in which Gore boasts about how he is striving to find some "common ground" on the abortion issue. (For a critique of Mr. Gore's CNS interview, check out National Right to Life's analysis).

Cardinal O'Connor, where are you when we need you?