There is Nothing Magical About Democracy or Voting
I’ve been puzzled about something for some time now. In Catholic social and political teaching, the secular leader is supposed to uphold the common good, and Catholics are supposed to support leaders who uphold the common good. In a fallen world, we do not expect every leader to seek Christ’s guidance in making a decision. We can exhort leaders to uphold the common good, but we may recognize that a leader, however flawed, is in the best we can do in a particular moment in time and circumstance.
This pretty much describes the history of the Church’s relationship with political power since the beginning, or at least in the post-Constantinian era (true, there were occasions when the Church became too close to secular power, and became tainted by it, but that’s another story). What this meant was that the Church supported, anointed, and blessed secular leaders who were (to put in mildly) imperfect. A list of such examples could fill a book. I will provide only one, dating from lat antiquity, partly because it represents the Church figuring these things out at a very early stage, and partly because I really like this period of history.
Theoderic ruled Italy in the late fifth and early sixth century. Between periods of chaos and deprivation, he provided stability and the rule of law. (It’s common to describe him as a “barbarian”. In fact, he was a Roman citizen who hailed from the same region as the emperor Justinian and spent his youth in Constantinople). He was a good ruler. And, by and large, the Church supported him, despite him being an Arian. He won the support of Christian luminaries like Cassiodorus and Boethius. And yet… he was most imperfect, a man of the sword. He came to power after a war against the previous ruler of Italy, Odoacer. They finally agreed to share power, and held a banquet to celebrate this agreement. At the banquet, Theoderic ran his sword through Odocaer, proving himself a both a liar and a murderer. Somewhat paranoid, he eventually had Boethius killed too.
Was the Church right to support him? Undoubtedly. He was the best that Italy could hope for in terms of civil government at the time. What about his near-contemporary, the famous emperor Justinian, a man who fought for the Chalcedonian faith and yet a man who had 30,000 protesters people killed in the Hippodrome, a man who started ruinous war after ruinous war and who bankrupted the treasury? The Church supported him too.
Somehow democracy is supposed to change everything. If a Christian living in Constantinople at the time had the right to vote for candidate Justinian against some other general, suddenly the voter shares the blame for every evil act perpetrated by Justinian (or Theoderic, or anybody else). Given the gravity of the offenses against life and human dignity in particular, it would not have been possible to vote at all– at that time, or at most times in human history. After all, these acts are intrinsically evil, so appealing to the different standards of the time simply won’t work. But is there such a discreet difference in the first place between voting for someone in a democracy and supporting someone in a non-democracy? I do not think so, for otherwise the solution would be to abolish democracy altogether, on the grounds that it constitutes one gigantic occasion of sin.
One final thought: nothing I have said here disputes the duty of every Christian to fight for what is right in the public sphere. We seek the common good, to the extent possible given the particular circumstances of the day. But let’s be realistic, and not assign magical qualities to the act of voting. That would fall into the liberal trap of assuming the onset of democracy represented a discreet break with the past, a brave new world where everybody was more virtuous than before. We don’t really believe that, do we?
Comments are closed.
MM, I agree that the Church does and should strive to find agreement with secular leaders where she can and work with them on those points while simultaneously seeking to charitably persuade the same leaders where they disagree (a good rule for Catholic comboxes, for that matter!).
At the same time, I don’t think “support” is the best term to use in this context. Certainly the Church will try to work with whatever secular leader holds power at a particular time, but to me, “support” connotes endorsement, something the Church didn’t do in the historical examples you cited, as far as I know. With this in mind, I’m not sure how far the analogy with voting can go.
[Unless you have an intelligent contribution, stay away. Petty soundbytes don't cut it]
MM,
Sometimes is it hard to see the bigger picture (historical, topical, etc…), which is why some get locked into a “Either, This or That” mentality when the Church sees (as has recently been demonstrated by B16 numerously) things frequently as “Both, This and That”. I know my own work in history (all those mind numbing classes each semester in Seminary) is not sophisticated enough to always understand the bigger picture, and I am sure I am not alone with most US citizens in that regard. Which I think is why many folks in the US see writings from the Vatican and can only see them in their own perspective instead of the wider perspective the Church brings.
peace to all
MM
I know you know my perspective on this. It’s quite clear, Democracy has its moral questions which other forms of government do not (and vice versa). I think the real problem lies in the “utopian, liberation theodicy” of many who support Democracy which, with its political-religio tendency, creates new “heresies” which have political, not theological, implications.
Chris
The Church has given official political support to various figures who were known to have done great sins before getting the Church’s support, and continued to do them after. One can say the Church saw other options were worse; but one can easily imagine people saying, “Sure, that might be the case, but the Church’s support means it is guilty for what happens under its political watch.” Look, for example, to Charlemagne as an example here. He did a lot of good, but one can ask: at what cost!
Charlemagne is a fair example, Henry… I’ll have to ponder this a bit more.
Are you inferring that the Church supports your choice of candidate?
MM:
Yeah, the Church doesn’t endorse candidates anymore, suggesting that your Was the Church right to support him? Undoubtedly. is anything but “undoubtedly”
Bottom line, you don’t endorse a candidate unless he’s not pushing intrinsic evils Yet you knew Obama would increase abortion and continue an abominal foreign policy, and you did nothing about it because he shares your vision on health care. Maybe you could vote for him and not be responsible, but you shouldn’t endorse. You did and so you’re responsible for everything Obama does.
Many Catholics voted for Obama under the judgement that the actual incidence of abortion under his presidency would be less that under McCain’s.
Additionally, it was thought that a war with Iran would be a much more circuitous route, after exhausting all diplomacy, with Obama than with McCain, who virtually telegraphed that he would invade that country, during primary election season.
Many Catholics voted for Obama under the judgement that the actual incidence of abortion under his presidency would be less that under McCain’s.
That does NOT make sense. Obama openly stated support for abortions, abortion organizations, and funding abortions.
He was the only major candidate available on the ballot that openly supported abortion rights, funding for abortion, and pro-abortion policies. How anyone thought that he would somehow magically reduce abortion doesn’t speak well for their judgement of character.
TT,
Maybe you should tax your imagination a bit more.
Oh that’s right. Universal health care will erase the problems associated with tax payer funded abortion.
Silly me!
Yes, Charlemagne is another good example. An excellent example, in fact.
Michael Denton: “you don’t endorse a candidate unless he’s not pushing intrinsic evils.” First off, thats not what the Church teaches today, and I have a funny feeling you know that already. Second, you haven’t addressed the historical issues I am grappling with.
MM
this post has been a magnet for irony and sarcasm, but IMO it is a very good articulation of a difficult political problem. I was quite impressed by it. So far as it applies to toleration of pro-choice candidates, I come to a different conclusion than you because of what I think is a peculiar character of the citizen of the United States.
In the particular case of the United States, I believe that the concerns of the citizens is primarily for human rights. The whole justification that Americans gave for their existence as an independent country to appeal to the right to life and liberty, and so any violation of these rights is a direct attack on the very existence of the nation in a way that is simply not the case for any other nation. Germans will still be Germans regardless of how the winds blow on the notion of human rights, and Russians will still be Russians. The same could be said for the Europeans under Charlemagne. But for Americans, violations of human rights are a crisis that threatens our very identity. We can’t avoid them even if we wanted to. 19th Century Americans tried everything they could to compromise and work around the problem of slavery, but they could not; and I believe that any attempt to see abortion as non-primary will fail. Americans just can’t treat it as non-primary. Other nations could, but it’s just not who we are.
So anyway, my claim is that some inherent evils can certainly be tolerated, but inherent evils, whose toleration is contrary to the character of a people, cannot be tolerated. This does not require that we be violent in non-toleration, but the non-toleration must, IMO, extend as far as possible in our actions of governance, like voting.
Sorry, I needed to edit the first two sentences of PP #2
“In the particular case of the United States, I believe that the primary concern of the citizens is for human rights. The whole justification that Americans gave for their existence as an independent country was an appeal to the immutable rights to life and liberty, and so any violation of these rights is a direct attack on the very existence of the nation in a way that is simply not the case for any other nation.”
Minion:
No, the Church says you can vote for candidates with intrinsic evils. It doesn’t say you can enthusiastically endorse them. That’s a big difference.
I didn’t address the historical concerns because I think the Church itself has already done that by telling its members not to endorse candidates in order to prevent the Church being impugned. That suggests that the Church doubts whether it was right to support those candidates although you’re not.
This is really quite a fascinating post, MM.
I’m tempted to go write a whole post in reply, but time is lacking so a few short thoughts for what they’re worth:
- It seems to me that the you’re perhaps taking too modern an idea of “support” when considering the Church’s relationship with rulers like Justinian, Theodoric, Clovis and Charlemagne. Keep in mind that there were pretty clear paths to power at the time (be a great general, inspire men, be descended from the right people, etc.) and that the Church had fairly little ability to influence who gained power. Sure, prominant prelates could have rhetorically pounded Theodoric for betrayal and supported the cause of some relative of Odoacer, but that would have meant opening up a new war instead of accepting the possibility of peace under Theodoric. It seems to me that the approach of Church leaders from late Antiquity through the early modern era was almost always (except when sometimes when a ruler was in a power struggle with the Church) to accept that all authority comes from God and bless whoever gained power in the hopes that God would help him to be a good leader.
- Also keep in mind that through much of Church history there was an understanding that excessive focus on the needs of this world would almost invariably result in neglecting the pursuit of virtue and one’s relationship with God. As Dante discusses in the Purgatorio with his Valley of the Rulers, being a ruler of any sort was not seen as being condusive to salvation.
- I would agree with you that voting for a candidate as the best one available does not make one responsible for all of the wicked things that he does, just as giving allegiance to a ruler in the past did not make one responsible for all his sins.
- It strikes me, however, that voting does change to a great extent how people relate to rulers, because in effect everything we do or say in relation to a ruler can be seen as positioning for the next election. So when you see lots of conservative Catholics blasting Obama left and right from day one, that’s in part because we’re already working on the next election. Just as our more politically liberal bretheren did not shut down and remain silently supportive of Bush throughout the first three years of each of his terms. So while I think someone would over reach to say that you’re morally responsible, as an Obama supporter, for everything wicked he does; it should hardly surprise you as a resident in a democracy if those other Catholics who think that Obama’s election is a terrible blow to the common good take every opportunity to make Obama supporters uncomfortable with their decision — since in doing so they’re attempting to lay the groundwork now for Obama to be voted out of office in four years.
Maybe you could vote for him and not be responsible, but you shouldn’t endorse. You did and so you’re responsible for everything Obama does.
Michael Denton,
This is an interesting theory. If you endorse a candidate because you believe he or she is the lesser of two evils, are you nevertheless responsible for everything that candidate does? Even Pope John Paul II in Evangelium vitae gives scenarios where it is good to support the lesser evil.
The idea of being responsible for everything your candidate does strikes me as going way beyond what the standard arguments were about voting. Even the most extreme arguments still acknowledged that voting for a pro-choice candidate was “remote material cooperation with evil.” Remote material cooperation cooperation by endorsing or voting for Obama comes nowhere near being responsible for everything he does.
James:
Interesting response. I remain unconvinced, though. I think the notion that it is inherent in the nature of the United States to oppose grievous abuses of human rights veers too much in the direction of American exceptionalism. The United States was certainly founded on liberal enlightenment values, but it makes the mistake of seeing itself as unique (for example, I’ve read many analyses praising the “peaceful transfer of power” as if it were something unique, while it happens in most countries– with less fuss to boot!). To some extent, it holds fast to those values moreso than (say) European countries, who appeal to a more diverse set of political philosophies. For example, Europeans are puzzled and horrified by the “right to bear arms” and are far more suspicious of the laissez-faire approach to markets than are Americans. But I do not think this translates into a greater respect for human rights.
I believe the US, moreso than European countries, tends to think in dualistic terms (“with us or against us”) and I think this can be traced to a strong Calvinist tradition.
Darwin:
I’m not sure that I disagree all that much with what you wrote. Bear in mind too that this post is rather “preliminary” and I need to think a lot more about these issues. As for early political philosophy, it did view authority as granted by God, but also that if the ruler betrayed that trust, he could be legitimately deposed (I’ve always thought it strikingly simmilar to the “mandate of heaven” in Chinese thought).
But the broader point I want to make is that the Church certainly endorsed highly imperfect rulers, and did so in the name of the common good. The Church no longer does this, for good reason, but there is no moral reason why a Catholic cannot do the same.
On your last point, I think the “positioning for the next election” and the whole never-ending political cycle phenomenon is very much a feature of the US, and is far less pronounced in parliamentary democracies, where the election season lasts a mere 2-3 weeks.
American exceptionalism
MM,
How do you expect me to give up the idea of American exceptionalism when I was taught to read using the Faith and Freedom series? Catholicism was inextricably intertwined with Americanism in all of my grade school education. There is so much from those years that I doubt intellectually, and yet I can’t shake the feeling that it is true.
I agree with you on the point about deposing rulers, but it strikes me as instructive to look at when that was actually invoked. Generally speaking, it was very, very rare, and almost always associated with direct attacks on the Church and its institutions rather than, “King Whats His Face has failed to fund public hospitals, allowed plague rats to breed in open sewers, failed to address the state of the roads, and further has waged a totally unnecessary and unjust war again the Duchy of Motoslybnia.”
I would speculate the reason that deposing a ruler for bad rule was so rare was that doing so was essentially a matter of starting a civil war with the Church as a committed member of one side. Just war considerations would thus apply, and there was little guarantee that a better man would end up in charge, and that the benefits thereof would be greater than the suffering resulting from civil war. And, of course, if the Church’s side lost, this could endanger access to the sacraments for the entire population.
By contrast, if churchmen denounce a modern democratic ruler, they’re generally just advocating voting against him at the next election.
I’d agree with you that a pariamentary system vastly reduced the amount of out-of-season campaigning — though another element of that may be that the stakes are so high in controlling the US in the 21st century, that game theory will always push each party to trying to campaign longer than the other in order to get ahead, and thus invariably lead to this sort of acrid climate.
Anyway. Interesting post. I look forward to reading your follow ups.
I think “the Church endorsed rulers with wicked policies in the past” carries about as much moral weight as “the Church endorsed torture in the past”.
If democracy is overrated what is the best form of government? Theocracy? Socilaist Oligarchy?
If democracy is overrated what is the best form of government? Theocracy? Socilaist Oligarchy?
I’m not sure that saying democracy is “overrated” necessarily means saying that some other form of government is better.
I think “the Church endorsed rulers with wicked policies in the past” carries about as much moral weight as “the Church endorsed torture in the past”.
Come on. Zippy, that sounds ridiculous. Your implication is that the Church should have opposed 99 percent of secular rulers over the past 2000 years…and many saints were in grave error. As always, you conflate formal and remote material cooperation in evil.
“Sounds ridiculous?”
What sounds ridiculous is Catholics personally endorsing presidential candidates who actively support programs of mass-scale murdering of the innocent. What sounds ridiculous is doing so while invoking a specious historical argument exactly mirroring the specious historical arguments of torture apologists, while at the same time condemning those torture apologists.
You are just completely tone deaf to your own partisanship.
Oh, and everything you said after “that sounds ridiculous” is flat wrong. I’ve not at all conflated formal and remote material cooperation, nor, for that matter, have I even suggested that you should have opposed Obama. Endorsing and opposing are different things; the Church in history is a different thing from an individual voter in a modern democracy; etc etc. Throwing a bunch of incommensurables onto a melting pot doesn’t constitute an argument, it just highlights your ludicrously narrow point of view.
But again, you are too tone-deaf to your own partisanship to even see it.
This post was not about Obama. It was about a broader, more philosophical point. Zippy, your response is no different from the “you’re going to hell” rants that I deleted on this thread.
If you think I’m tone deaf, that’s fine. You, however, have a shocking insular view that remains firmly rooted in early 21st century American culture and politics and with a suprisingly “liberal” approach to the nobility of the ballot box.
Riiiight. Just like Fr. Harrison’s torture treatise wasn’t about Bush and his torture policies.
Zippy,
Please do not take this the wrong way, but you are either the purist of hearts or the greatest of curmudgeons that I have ever encountered.
I just can never quite decide which… ;)
Mark,
Does it have to be either/or :-/
I don’t know quite what you are trying to say…I think you are right if you mean that when one votes, one often has to vote for someone who is wrong on a number of serious issues. For instance, say there are two pro-abortion candidates on the ballot in a close election, who otherwise have similar views, and one is for restrictions by not overturning Roe and the other is for no restrictions. I’d vote for the less hardened one any day of the week, and I would think all Catholics would have a duty to do the same. Politics is about the best possible, not the ideal, and as you say the Church has generally approached it this way.
Now this is a far, far, cry from justifying a vote for Barak Obama, of course, which would require a separate argument.
On a secondary note, your reply to James is a tad puzzling. You seem to take exception to exceptionalism as a matter of principle. Aren’t we different? Europe followed our lead after a while re liberal democracy in a variety of ways, and you would be hard pressed to find another nation founded on the sort of principles we were founded on. Great Britain was the most like a liberal democracy at the time of the founding, and we eclipsed them with the founding. We aren’t simply race based, for starters, and have always depended on immigrants, etc. since the beginning. That is a major difference, and the change in Europe in this regard was at least somewhat caused by us.
As to peaceful transfers of power, this is because of the prevalence of liberal democracy, no? And, again, we were somewhat ahead of the game on that, right?
As for the “with us or against us” mentality, I don’t really think any nation lacks such a thing…but again, liberal democracy promotes a more moderated version of the mentality…and we have been the admittedly imperfect model of this for some time now.
Anyhow, I think the problem here is people are reading into your post a support for voting for Barak Obama, whilst you are making a larger point that really shouldn’t be very controversial in my opinion if one understands how a two party, democratic system works.
Politics is about the best possible, not the ideal, and as you say the Church has generally approached it this way.
Peeping Thomist,
Is the presidential election of 2008 the first in which there was such a clear-cut choice for Catholics? Or perhaps 2004 and 2008? I just don’t seem to recall other presidential elections in which arguments were made that Catholics absolutely had to vote one way. Of course pro-life people insist that abortion is a special issue, but in elections where abortion might play no part, have the candidates always been roughly equal in terms of big issues?
It just seems to me it is a new development that Catholics are making the argument that one issue must determine a vote. I would be interested if you or anybody can tell me if the Church had a policy on the morality of voting in a democracy before the issue of abortion came along. And if by some miracle the issue goes away, will we go back to the practice of voting based on all the issues, and will voting become a matter of “prudential judgment”?
Voting is always open to prudential judgment. The real question would be if cooperating with a moral evil is ever prudential?
Voting is always open to prudential judgment. The real question would be if cooperating with a moral evil is ever prudential?
Jeremy,
Has there ever been an election in which neither candidate, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, was not in some way representing a moral evil? For Catholics, abortion is not the only moral evil. There is divorce, contraception, cohabitation, drinking to excess, lying, racism — the list would be quite long if I could think of everything. Has there ever been a presidential candidate who spoke nothing but the pure, undistorted truth in trying to get elected? (And let’s not forget that lying is an intrinsic evil.
Although the concept of remote material cooperation with evil is an old principle, it seems to me that its application to voting in a secular, pluralistic democracy has happened only within the last few years as a means to persuade people to vote against pro-choice candidates. It seems to me that a democratic system such as the one we have in the United States is so new that moral theories on how to vote are in their infancy and are still very debatable. And of course even accepting the current arguments, it is a wild exaggeration to say that anyone who endorsed and voted for Obama is responsible for everything Obama does. Who would vote for anybody if that were the case?
David,
Some evils can never be done as a means to a good end. If a candidate promotes policies that actively promote activities that can never be done to a good end, how would a person with a correct conscience consider voting for that person to be prudent? The answer is only if the alternative would be an even graver moral evil.
moral theories on how to vote are in their infancy and are still very debatable.
But moral choices and morality are not in their infancy, they have been with us since time eternal. If we apply these time settled principles, we will quickly find clarity of thought and purpose. If the answer seems muddied, perhaps it is the question that is unclear.
I think David is right insofar as abortion has clouded the issue. The problem is that in the politics of our day, if one takes the church seriously, and I would argue reason could tell you much the same, that abortion kills a child, and if one looks at how many abortions there are each year…it is very hard not to see this as one of the, if not THE most obvious, pressing concern in American politics today.
The people who, in their extreme iterations, deny the role of prudence, are reacting to years of fallacious arguments by Catholics trying to downplay abortion. In so doing, they sometimes go to extremes. Obviously, if abortion involved the killing of a child, the vast majority of the time when the life of the mother is not even remotely threatened (in the rare cases in which this is so you have two lives at stake, and so things might change)…well, even if you think the Iraq war is the same sort of violence and awful and part of a big nasty Republican conspiracy, how many have died on both sides total? Does it reach 20,000? How many days is that of abortions?
There are of course many other prudential determinations to be made, like whether the Republican party will help as far as abortion is concerned, but in all seriousness, absent partisanship and bitterness it is pretty clear that the Repubs have done a bit for the right side re abortion.
Look, I understand why people are saying you can’t vote for Obama. That is something everyone is free to argue about, and I would argue with them. They are sick and tired of pretenses among their fellow Catholics about the significance of the church position on abortion. They are sick of the arguments about “prudence” being as a fig leaf to ignore or downplay the abortion issue. I think “prudential judgment” was first misused by Catholics who simply didn’t care about abortion, and then the other side went to an extreme in response.
But to say that you can never vote for a pro-abortion candidate is simply untrue, I think, for the reasons set forth in the post above and in the comments. Like Jeremy says above “if the alternative would be an even graver moral evil.” It reminds me of the argument than can be made for the founding re slavery–most of the major founders were, at least in theory, against it–and they did try to mention it in the Declaration, etc. But it became clear that there could not be one nation without keeping it, and so they made one nation and did their best to write it out. They didn’t do a good enough job, I suppose, as the Civil War ensued.
If there is any Catholic history on voting that relates, I am unsure. That is a damn good question.
Note that the war and Lincoln and ultimately the founders ended slavery, or at least there is a strong argument this is the case. If anything reminds me of the pro-lifers arguments re abortion, David, it is the Abolitionists, who helped but did not end slavery. Lincoln’s actions, which were far more prudent, did. And he wasn’t even sure if African-Americans were equal in all respects (although he thought they should be treated as equals as far as their basic rights were concerned), as I bet most abolitionists were.
The fervor is good, and necessary…but prudence is the only hope to get the job done. And a lack of prudence is what has got the abortion issue where it is today–a bloody mess–in my opinion.
Anyhow, voting in a two party system is always a choice of the lesser of two evils. The two party system is good because it moderates politics and actually mitigates factionalism. (I know, I know, but in the broad sense I think this is true). In a two party system parties need to have very wide, broad, sweeping coalitions. And this makes it hard for faction to win, moderates everyone, and makes for “lesser of two evil” choices.
The two party system is good because it moderates politics and actually mitigates factionalism.
Hmmm, I have never considered this before.
Has there ever been an election in which neither candidate, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, was not in some way representing a moral evil?
That is too general a question. Evangelium Vitae sets abortion and euthanasia apart as evils the legality of which all Catholics have a grave obligation to oppose.