Editorial: Disagreeing with Doug Kmiec One More Time

Doug Kmiec was one of thirty religious leaders to recently meet with Senator Barack Obama. He wrote an exclusive article on the meeting with assertions which must be addressed.

WASHINGTON, DC (Catholic Online) - "I do not endorse either Senator Obama's or Senator McCain's positions on life. As a Catholic, I believe both fall short of the ideal."

So stated Professor Kmiec in his latest article in which he again attempted to articulate why and how a person who recognizes that the child in the womb is our neighbor, and that every induced abortion is a taking of innocent human life, could support Senator Barack Obama's candidacy for the presidency.

That statement was one of only a few assertions in this latest article with which I could agree. There is so much to address in his recent article that I will do so in a series of articles.

Doug wrote an exclusive piece for Catholic Online on his experience when, accompanied by 30 other Religious leaders, he participated in a two hour discussion with the Democratic candidate for President.

Let me begin by commending Doug for accepting the invitation to meet with Senator Obama. I would have done the same.

I believe in taking any opportunity to help this candidate see that his professed concern for the poor and those with no voice must, to be logically consistent, include our youngest neighbors, children in the first home of the whole human race, their mother's womb.

The logic of this assertion might actually reveal to Senator Obama the clear contradiction in his claim of compassion for the poor and solidarity with them and the support of the current abortion policy of the United States of America, namely, that abortion is still legal throughout all nine months of a pregnancy.

Doug begins his article by once again attempting to position himself within the teaching of the American Bishop's in their excellent instruction on "Faithful Citizenship". In this paragraph he describes his interior disposition as he approached the meeting:

"Looming ever large in my mind as the meeting begins is naturally the abortion issue. The American bishops have properly reminded us that "a Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who takes a position in favor of an intrinsic evil, such as abortion or racism, if the voter's intent is to support that position. At the same time, the bishops have instructed us that we should not use a candidate's opposition to abortion "to justify indifference or inattentiveness to other important moral issues involving human life and dignity."

My first reaction upon reading these words was to nod affirmatively.

However, I immediately wondered what would follow after this assertion. After all, given the truth of what he writes about intention, it does not obviate our obligation to follow a hierarchy of values in our efforts to apply the principles of Catholic Social teaching to our exercise of faithful citizenship.

Let me suggest how such an application can be made with a reference to an excellent analysis given in a speech delivered by one of our US Bishops.

In that February 7, 2008 speech Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn, New York discussed the U.S. Bishops' 2007 document, "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibility". He also gave the assembled gathering a very helpful example of how to apply such a hierarchy.

He reminded those assembled that "our faith must inform our political decisions" and that Catholic voters are obliged to distinguish "between moral evil," such as abortion, "and matters of prudential judgment," such as tuition tax credits.

The Bishop was chairman of the Bishops' domestic policy committee and helped to draft the document which Doug Quotes. To Doug, I remind you of that because it means he is much like the "legislator" in a legal analysis wherein we lawyers try to ascertain their intent in drafting. We often consider the legislative history of a Statute. I suggest that it is apropos to also consider the rationale behind the drafting of this important Church instruction.

The Bishop began his speech with the issue of the right to life saying, "In our own country, despite significant victories that extend protection to the unborn, this modern slaughter of the holy innocents continues because of the policies of unscrupulous politicians". He continued, and I emphasize, "Only in circumstances that are extraordinarily hard to contemplate may a Catholic voter support a proponent of so great an intrinsic moral evil".

He then addressed legislative efforts "that would undermine the family by redefining marriage" and strongly criticized any efforts to do so, saying that they would undermine the family and the entire social order. Since it is the role of the Government to protect the common good, the Bishop rightly insisted that it would be against the common good to extend "the benefits of marriage" to same-sex couples.

Next, he moved to the area of education, addressing educational or parental choice, which he supports. He addressed it as an issue of parental choice and the primacy of the family as well as an issue of economic justice saying "the working-poor Catholic families of our state and diocese that are making a contribution to the common good continue to be disenfranchised."

In contrast to a moral evil like abortion, the Bishop pointed out that ones position on educational tax credits is a matter of prudential judgment saying "People of good faith are free to disagree...The church doesn't say that people can't take the wrong position, the church only says you cannot take a position that will promote immorality."

After addressing numerous other public policy issues, the Bishop then turned to the War in Iraq saying that Pope Benedict XVI "has made no secret of his personal opposition" to the conflict, "in which 4,000 servicemen and servicewomen have died, 50,000 have been wounded and the lives of tens of thousands, perhaps even a hundred thousand, Iraqis have been crushed."

He properly noted that many Catholic theologians contend that a pre-emptive war can never be justified in Catholic teaching. However, he indicated that it was his opinion that, under the current conditions, debate over issues such as the timing of withdrawal "is a matter of prudential judgment."

I share the Bishop's analysis with my readers, and with my friend Doug Kmiec, because I think it is an excellent example of what faithful Catholic Citizens should do as we now face these two candidates in this current Presidential campaign.

In the application of issues in accordance with a proper hierarchy of values, I believe that we must hear the cry of the ones whom Blessed Teresa of Calcutta called the "poorest of the poor", the children living in the wombs of their mothers. Then I believe we must become their voice because they cannot be heard.

I have long had to answer numerous efforts to dismiss my absolute refusal to vote for any candidate who will not defend the life of our youngest neighbors as a "single issue stance". I always respond that I use all of the life issues (I am what I like to call "Whole Life/pro-Life") as the first criteria for my personal evaluation of all other positions taken by the candidates because the right to life is not a "single issue" but rather a "hermeneutic", a lens through which we must examine all other claims of a candidate's assertion to have compassion for the poor.

I would remind Doug that without the right to life there are no other rights and the entire infrastructure of rights is thrown into jeopardy. Rights become the exclusive province of the more powerful who can make the so called "choice" to take your life next if unchecked. I know that may seem harsh to some but it is the awful truth.

Even if the positive law of a Nation, in this instance our Nation, calls what is wrong a "right", and even if unelected Justices create a "penumbra" out of whole cloth behind which to hide the evil, purporting to be engaging in some kind Constitutional analysis, abortion is not a "right", it is wrong. The Natural Law and science confirm what we have always known, that the child in that womb is our neighbor. We simply should not kill our neighbor.

The late Servant of God John Paul II in his Encyclical letter "The Gospel of Life" (Evangelium Vitae) warned of what has happened to our Nation and much of the West when he wrote of societies where:

"....the promotion of the self is understood in terms of absolute autonomy, people inevitably reach the point of rejecting one another. Everyone else is considered an enemy from whom one has to defend oneself. Thus society becomes a mass of individuals placed side by side, but without any mutual bonds.

Each one wishes to assert himself independently of the other and in fact intends to make his own interests prevail. Still, in the face of other people's analogous interests, some kind of compromise must be found, if one wants a society in which the maximum possible freedom is guaranteed to each individual. In this way, any reference to common values and to a truth absolutely binding on everyone is lost, and social life ventures on to the shifting sands of complete relativism. At that point, everything is negotiable, everything is open to bargaining: even the first of the fundamental rights, the right to life.

This is what is happening also at the level of politics and government: the original and inalienable right to life is questioned or denied on the basis of a parliamentary vote or the will of one part of the people-even if it is the majority. This is the sinister result of a relativism which reigns unopposed: the "right" ceases to be such, because it is no longer firmly founded on the inviolable dignity of the person, but is made subject to the will of the stronger part. In this way democracy, contradicting its own principles, effectively moves towards a form of totalitarianism.

The State is no longer the "common home" where all can live together on the basis of principles of fundamental equality, but is transformed into a tyrant State, which arrogates to itself the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most defenseless members, from the unborn child to the elderly, in the name of a public interest which is really nothing but the interest of one part.

The appearance of the strictest respect for legality is maintained, at least when the laws permitting abortion and euthanasia are the result of a ballot in accordance with what are generally seen as the rules of democracy.

Really, what we have here is only the tragic caricature of legality; the democratic ideal, which is only truly such when it acknowledges and safeguards the dignity of every human person, is betrayed in its very foundations: "How is it still possible to speak of the dignity of every human person when the killing of the weakest and most innocent is permitted?In the name of what justice is the most unjust of discriminations practiced: some individuals are held to be deserving of defense and others are denied that dignity?"

When this happens, the process leading to the breakdown of a genuinely human co-existence and the disintegration of the State itself has already begun.

To claim the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others. This is the death of true freedom: "Truly, truly, I say to you, every one who commits sin is a slave to sin" (Jn 8:34)."

Sadly, our Nation, the United States of America, is on the path to becoming just such a "tyrant State".

The late Pope was right in referring to abortion as the "first of the fundamental rights, the right to life", because it is.

It is also the first freedom. Without the freedom to be born, there simply are no other freedoms. Freedom is a good of the person. Children in the womb, like all of us, are human persons. Personhood cannot be limited to only those perceived to not be "dependent" on any other persons or we will soon eliminate many other categories of human persons including the elderly and the disabled.

Finally, it is our dependency upon each other which actually makes us human persons. Claims of compassion (the etymology of the actual word means to "suffer with") are exposed as a fraud when we as a Nation do nothing to stop the killing of innocents in the womb, once the safest place on earth, with chemical weapons and surgical strikes.

This must not continue. If there is a hierarchy of values, and there most certainly is, then the way that I read Catholic Social teaching, saving innocent human life from being killed in the womb is at the very top of the ladder.

However, my friend Doug Kmiec then asserts another position from which to basically argue the same thing.Relying on the clear Moral teaching of our Church that some acts (plural) are intrinsically evil, he asserts that one simply cannot therefore rank any of these evil acts when assessing which candidate one will then support.

Let me allow the Professor to again speak for himself:

"Abortion and Racism: Some have concluded from these words that abortion must predominate over all other issues. There is much logic to this since of course life is fundamental to all else. Yet, with respect to the bishops' own statements as quoted above from the Call to faithful Citizenship, it would be mistaken, one would think, to rank racism below abortion or vice versa, since they are both held out as intrinsic evils."

My response is to assert another hierarchy for Doug to consider, one which is of logical derivation, a hierarchy that reflects our obligation to restrain the effects of the evil upon the persons injured. The severity of the consequences of our failure to defend the victims is obviously different. To borrow from an old adage of negligence law attributed to Justice Cardozo, of which my colleague is familiar, the "risk to be perceived defines the duty to be obeyed".

Yes Doug, you are accurate, both abortion and racism are intrinsic evils and both must be categorically exposed and opposed as such. Perhaps they are not capable of the same kind of ranking in a hierarchy of values as Bishop Marzio demonstrated in his explanation of the distinction of issues and the exercise of our prudential judgment. However, that does not mean that one cannot apply any "ranking" in considering between their immediate effects and our positive moral and civil obligations.

The victims of racism suffer grave harm and we should do all that we can to prevent that harm by helping them. However, in most instances, in the United States at least, they still have their lives, a right to redress the grievance and an opportunity to be compensated for the injury.

The victims of abortion can never defend themselves against the offense committed against them without our help in the first instance and can do nothing afterwards because they are dead. The abortion is an evil act committed against them. Their voice is not heard because it is muffled by the wall of the womb of their mother, once the safest place for any human person.

Doug continues " ... as I listened to Senator Obama speak with powerful empathy for those less advantaged of all races and ethnicities in our land, I thought of the many people who say in hushed voices that America is not prepared to vote for a black man. This is inconceivable to me and many, and yet, how are we to respond when political analysts proffer the Senator's race as the explanation for his lopsided primary defeats in places like West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania?"

I would commend to Doug and my readers the wonderful work of stalwart Pro-life and Human rights champions such as my friend, the Reverend Dr. Johnny M. Hunter. Johnny is the President of Global Life & Family Mission, a ministry dedicated to promoting family values, racial harmony, and the survival of children around the world. The main goal of this mission's labor of love is the restoration of the family with the recognition of the value of the child.

Johnny is also the National Director of Life Education And Resource Network (LEARN, Inc.), a consortium of Christian pro-life, pro-family advocates. LEARN, Inc. is the largest African-American evangelical pro-life organization in the United States. Their specialty is African-American Community Outreach.

Johnny and the talented people who serve with him would be a wonderful group for Doug Kmiec to introduce to Senator Obama. I know they would help him to see another aspect of the plague of abortion, its racist roots and racist application. Legal Abortion is not an equal opportunity killer. In fact, it is still infected by the racist and eugenics ideology of Margaret Sanger, the foundress of Planned Parenthood. Abortion kills more African American children and children of color than white children.

So, in short, Doug Kmiecs' mention of the intrinsic evil of racism does little to bolster his efforts to somehow commend the Senator to me as a candidate deserving of my vote. I absolutely detest racism and have long been an advocate of the fact that the Church must continue to be on the front lines of exposing and opposing it, wherever it is found. However, racism knows no bounds and the scourge of abortion is another manifestation of its evil.

In my next installment I will address Doug's efforts to address the broad application of the meaning behind the phrase, "Culture of Life" and his rightful reminder that Catholic Citizens have an obligation to address "every offense against human dignity".

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