Two Governors

I’ve personally attended only two lectures by governors in my life. The second time was this week, when Governor Haslam of Tennessee came to JPII as part of our “Distinguished Lecturer” series. The first time was in 1984, as a senior at Notre Dame, when I attended a lecture by Governor Cuomo of New York. Coincidentally, both talks were about the same topic: How should one’s Christian faith inform one’s political leadership? They gave strikingly different answers to that question.

Cuomo’s speech centered on abortion and was hailed in the press as an example of enlightened tolerance. As a Catholic, he said he fully respected the authority of the bishops that abortion was wrong. He would uphold that view, he said, for his wife and children. But as governor of a state that was predominantly pro-abortion, he did not believe it was proper to impose his religious belief upon his constituency. In a pluralistic society, one cannot govern by one’s faith, lest others’ freedoms be infringed upon in the name of his religious belief. This “personally opposed but cannot impose” position became the foundational position of a generation of politicians since that time.

Haslam, a Presbyterian, reasoned differently, drawing on the ideas of Pope John Paul II. Freedom, as the pope understood it, must be linked to the truth, or else it ends up being a pretense for tyranny, as the stronger person asserts his “freedom” over the rights of the weaker party. The pope was an unapologetic defender of the truth, known for directly challenging the assumptions of socialism and the excesses of capitalism with great vigor.

Did that make him boorish and judgmental, as we often regard people who claim to know “truth”? No, said Haslam. In fact, he was recognized as a model of Christian civility, admired by even those who disagreed with him. That was possible because John Paul II understood his Christian faith as a “gift, not a club.” Instead of using the truth of one’s faith to club people over the head, as we are often tempted to do, we should speak the truth while manifesting the gifts of our faith, namely, temperance, forgiveness, patience and kindness, to name a few. Haslam said that Christian politicians should never waiver from the convictions of their faith but must live out that faith in a manner that is charitable and befitting of their Christian vocation.

It is ironic that between the two governors, one Catholic, the other Presbyterian, the Presbyterian makes the more “Catholic” argument. Democracy in the Catholic tradition is a means and not the end, as Cuomo assumes. The end is the “common good,” whereby human dignity is protected and thrives. All laws must serve that common good. Exalting the notion of individual freedom to the extent that we cannot “impose” a value system on someone, even when that person uses his freedom to trample on the freedom of others, is self-contradicting. Further, it strips us of the ability to make any laws premised on a moral assumption. If we believe rape is wrong, can we not “impose” laws which punish rapists? Thieves? Murderers? Or should we merely be "personally opposed" to these things?

Thomas More, in Robert Bolt’s famous play “Man for All Seasons, ” confronts the same issue that both governors addressed. Though he is opposed in conscience to the divorce and remarriage of King Henry VIII, should he assent to the divorce out of loyalty to the king and in the interest of the peace and unity of England? More is unequivocal:

“I believe, when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.”

The vetting of candidates during an election cycle serves an important public purpose: Candidates should make known their moral positions, and where they are evasive, we should pin them down. In my view, once elected, we should then expect them to govern according to the convictions of their conscience and their faith. If we don't approve of what that turns out to mean, we vote them out of office in the next election cycle.

"Personally Opposed, but..."

I was a student at Notre Dame in 1984 when then governor of New York Mario Cuomo came to campus and gave a much heralded/much reviled speech that attempted to reconcile his pro-abortion policies with his Catholicism. His "personally opposed but cannot impose my beliefs on others" argument has since become the mantra for over a generation of pro-abortion Catholic politicians. Recently in my junior morality class, we had occasion to re-visit his speech. Here's my brief response to Cuomo's argument, some 25 years later:

Cuomo treats a civil right, the right to live, as if it were a matter of personal taste. All laws, especially those which protect the most vulnerable of parties, are founded not on preference or private sentiment, but upon a fundamental belief about the natural rights of man, rights that precede civil society and those which governments must protect to remain legitimate.

The Catholic Church does not believe abortion is wrong because it says so. Nor is the argument against abortion one from Scripture. The Church opposes abortion because it destroys our most basic right – the right to life –the foundation for all other rights. The Church does not “create” right and wrong; rather, it derives right and wrong from the natural order of things. Cuomo’s argument that “because I am Catholic, I am opposed to abortion, but as governor I cannot impose my religious views on my constituents” assumes the Church is making a sectarian religious argument that only applies to Catholics (a belief about the Eucharist or Mary, for example). But a natural rights argument is not a sectarian one. The same sentiment that inspires us to protect the rights of the criminally accused, that cares for the poor or that protects ethnic minorities--constituencies but for our nobler instincts could easily be taken advantage of – animates our laws. Those instincts are not “Catholic” ones, but human.

The flaw in Cuomo’s logic can be most easily shown by substituting other crimes into the formula: “I am personally opposed to rape, but I cannot impose my views on my constituents.” “I am personally opposed to murder, to slavery, to robbery... but I can't impose my views.” Because these crimes trample upon the civil liberties of others, their prohibition is rightly enshrined in law and punishable by imprisonment.

Governments exist to protect and extend what our founders called “certain unalienable rights” and that “among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Indeed, the very justification of our Declaration of Independence from England was that “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter (or to abolish) it.”

The right to life is the most basic of all civil liberties. Our leaders have a duty to alter laws that don’t protect it adequately, independent of their religious convictions, pro or con.

Abortion is not a “religious” issue.