1962 case may not apply, scholars say
Sunday, July 18, 2004
By Bruce Nolan
Staff writerFor more than a year, some conservative Catholics have invoked the memory of former New Orleans Archbishop Joseph Francis Rummel in urging their bishops to discipline Catholic politicians who support abortion rights -- much as Rummel excommunicated a group of vocal segregationists in 1962.
But, as some scholars point out, the comparison is not apt.
Rummel did not excommunicate three Catholic public figures merely because they espoused racist views contrary to church teaching, several church officials said.
Instead, he sanctioned only those few who also challenged his authority to desegregate Catholic schools -- and to do so as a matter of Christian witness.
"The only thing comparable would be if some Catholics started a movement to insist that Catholic hospitals do abortions. That would be closer to the Rummel business," said the Rev. Tom Reese, a Jesuit writer and editor of the Catholic magazine America.
But the 1962 confrontation between Catholic politicians and Catholic bishops hovers over the politics of 2004, when Catholic politicians committed to protecting abortion as a settled constitutional right are urged by bishops to reverse course because they believe abortion is profoundly wrong.
Polls indicate that's a new interplay between church and state that unsettles a huge majority of Catholics. It is unclear whether that is because it offends their understanding of the role of the church in politics, or their relationship to the sacrament of Communion, or both.
Poll sides with Kerry
A Time magazine poll last month reported that 73 percent of 500 Catholics polled thought that presumed Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry should not be denied Communion because he supports abortion rights.
Communion and abortion became the focus of debate during the spring, when a handful of bishops -- still fewer than a dozen out of 195 Catholic dioceses -- announced they would unilaterally withhold Communion from Catholic politicians who support abortion rights.
Less authoritarian
Since then, it has become clear that the vast majority of bishops, including New Orleans Archbishop Alfred Hughes and the six other Louisiana bishops, will take a less authoritarian course. They merely urge abortion-rights politicians to refrain voluntarily from Communion.
The politics of Communion has stirred widespread debate and a good deal of criticism.
Forward, a national Jewish weekly newspaper, recently called some bishops' decision to deny Communion "an affront" to democracy.
"It's bullying, and people don't like it," said Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice, an unofficial group that supports abortion rights.
But most pointedly, many critics saw the bishops' decision as political, not theological -- aimed at demonizing Democratic candidates to the benefit of Republican candidates.
"There are lots of Catholics who disagree with those positions, but they don't happen to be politicians. I disagree, and no one has threatened to deny me Communion," Kissling said.
In fact, Reese, a priest and journalist, is among those who wish that bishops would be more even-handed and enlarge their criticism to include abortion-rights Republicans such as former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, New York Gov. George Pataki and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Some of the bishops' critics point out that Deal Hudson, the publisher of Crisis, a conservative Catholic magazine that supports sanctioning Catholic politicians who defend abortion rights, is close to President Bush's re-election effort.
"In a highly politically charged environment, we sometimes lose sight of whether we're starting with politics and moving to religion, or starting with religion and moving to politics," said the Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, the Monroe Baptist pastor who leads the Interfaith Alliance, a liberal coalition of churches formed as a counterweight to the Christian Coalition.
Acting on faith
The Catholic Church responds that it's merely calling on its members to act out their faith. It rejects the idea that politicians can compartmentalize their faith on Sunday, but steer their decisions by individual conscience on the legislative floor on Monday.
Moreover, its hierarchy takes a different view of conscience than that usually employed by the other side -- and in this has the support of many sympathetic Protestant evangelicals, despite a long history of antipathy between the two groups on other questions.
Writing in support of Catholic bishops' decision to withhold Communion, Christianity Today, an evangelical magazine, recently editorialized that Catholics and Protestants alike are traditionally charged to inform their consciences by the light of Christian teaching.
"Luther's 'My conscience is captive to the Word of God' is foundational for us," wrote the Protestant editors.
"Kerry's notions of conscience stress individual liberty of thought, while Catholic and Protestant understandings anchor the Christian conscience to God's word and God's people," the editorial said.
But people of faith split on the meaning of abortion. And some who applaud Rummel's prophetic defense of racial equality see a clear moral difference between segregation and abortion.
"Abortion and segregation both involve a basic respect for life and sacredness of life," Gaddy said. "But I don't equate them, because in the case of abortion I can't make a blanket statement an abortion should never occur. . . . But I cannot think of any situation in which a person should have her dignity and worth stripped because of the color of her skin."
But to Catholics and evangelicals, who hold that human life begins at conception, abortion is intimately linked to the segregation that Rummel fought: They center on the same conviction -- that human life always demands respect, despite outward appearances.
In that sense, Reese said, Catholic bishops dealing with the Communion issue desperately want to avoid giving the rest of the country the impression that opposition to abortion is a faith matter peculiar to Catholics.
"The more they talk about abortion as a matter of Catholic faith, that's a disaster for the pro-life movement," Reese said. "Abortion has to be described as a human rights issue, not as a theological or religious issue."
Differences
But the debate continues precisely because it's not seen that way, even among Christians.
"I've always felt abortion debate is fundamentally a religious question, because it's a question of the significance of human life at various stages of development," said the Rev. Barry Lynn, the leader of Americans United for Separation of Church and State and a minister in the United Church of Christ, a liberal Protestant denomination.
Catholic bishops see such views as a challenge to be met with patient argument both in and outside their own church, and most seem to be moving away from the temptation to discipline Catholics in public life who hold contrary views, said the Rev. William Maestri, spokesman for the Archdiocese of New Orleans.
"We are confronting a culture of death, and that's not going to be overturned by ecclesiastical decree," he said. "It's not going to be overcome by excommunications only. It's going to require a long, long process of planting the seeds of life in the midst of that culture.
"Rummel knew that these fundamental Catholic principles went into the public square and touched many other issues. But he never wavered from Catholic teaching.
"It's that kind of resolve we need today from our leaders."
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Bruce Nolan can be reached at bnolan@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3344.
