Category Archives: Religion

Via Halperin, I see Obama gave the politically safe answer.

Of course, if you are manifestly against the death penalty in all cases, like me, then there’s no issue here. Ditto if you both approve of the death penalty and set a relatively low bar for its application.

I want to explore a more nuanced position — I know, politics is allergic to nuance — a little further, however: the Catholic Church’s teaching on the death penalty. It is not, as some assume, a blanket proscription, at least not in theory. Here’s what the Catechism says:

2267 Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm – without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself – the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically non-existent.”

The way I interpret this is that if a person’s continued life harms others, even while he is incarcerated, then the death penalty is justified. So now the question becomes whether Osama Bin Laden could continue to coordinate terrorist attacks from a jail cell and would continue to inspire said acts if kept alive. To the first question, I find it unlikely that we would allow Bin Laden any sort of contact with the outside world, so his tactical influence would be minuscule at best. The second question is trickier. Yes, I’m sure Bin Laden’s stature among Islamic reactionaries wouldn’t suffer if America captured him, but I imagine he would become the stuff of legends in their circles if he died in the custody of the United States. If you think Bin Laden inspires terror now, wait until he’s a martyr.

Nor should this reservation about applying the death penalty to Bin Laden or even martyrdom-bound terrorists in general be restricted to Catholic logic. An otherwise pro-death penalty realist might raise objections on exactly the same grounds: that to make martyrs out of those seeking to be martyrs is neither good strategy nor preventive punishment. Independent my objections to the death penalty, I happen to think broadcasting to the world that terrorists who target the U.S. will be martyrs one way or the other — whether they succeed or fail — is just plain stupid. Why not warn them that if they’re caught, they’ll not only live out their days — every one of their natural days — in an American jail cell very much not dying for God, but when they do die, they’ll be buried in a manner so offensive to Islam they cannot expect to reach paradise.

All probably too much nuance for an American presidential campaign.

I’m not familiar with Douglas Kmiec’s work or his temperament, but something doesn’t smell right about his account of being denied communion after endorsing Obama. Kmiec is a prominent conservative (and pro-life) legal scholar whose support for Obama came as a shock to the right. I have no reason to doubt that he keeps very conservative, orthodox Catholic company who I’m sure pressured him to voluntarily not take the Eucharist, but… his priest? Really? Just for endorsing Barack Obama? If the story is as simple as that, then his pastor needs to be forcibly pried away from his flock and be stuck in a office somewhere, because that sort of boorish partisanship has no business in the communion line.

The logic here — again, if true — rests on such shaky ground that it wouldn’t be a stretch to conclude that a Catholic who votes for any mainstream political candidate would be subject to excommunication. Eight years of Reagan… Four of Bush I… Eight of Bush II… and not only does Roe v. Wade still stand, but each of those men, not to mention John McCain, were and have been quite clear that they had no interest in overturning it, even though in reality a repeal of Roe would do virtually nothing to reduce abortions in America. So even a mostly symbolic act (admittedly with far-from-symbolic political repercussions) was off the table for these “pro-life” presidents. Why, then, are their supporters not subject to the heavy hand of the bishop?

As I see it, the difference between the two parties on abortion is effectively small and boils down mostly to rhetoric. Some wings of the GOP will condemn it, most Democrats will praise choice, but abortion will remain legal either way. The true chasms are on issues like torture, immigration, and poverty. Here, votes in November really will make a difference in which policies the government adopts or doesn’t adopt in response, and so these issues ought to frame the election in the view of the Church. Instead, some American bishops choose to make these elections solely about abortion, alienating a great deal of Catholics who see more pressing concerns. This sort of approach seems more applicable to a niche denomination than a vast religion that sees itself as the one universal church of Jesus Christ.

Barack Obama is evidently sending out a mailer in Kentucky heavily emphasizing his Christian beliefs. As you can see, it makes Mike Huckabee’s PR folks seem subtle.

In principle, I’m not opposed to religious appeals in political campaigns. Candidates already make all sorts of explicit signals of shared values, the most obvious being party affiliation. Plus, plenty of factors that can be the basis for unsavory voting rationales are just unavoidably obvious, such as Obama’s race and Clinton’s sex. I would rather candidates just put all their cards on the table where they think it appropriate. It wouldn’t offend me at all, for example, if, say, Chuck Schumer came up to me in a room he was working and said “Vote for me because I’m a Democrat,” went to another person and said, “Vote for me because I’m Jewish,” and ended with a plea to someone else to “Vote for me because I’m a Harvard alum”. Now, it probably wouldn’t persuade me since, personally, I find most identity arguments unconvincing. But in general I don’t find anything unseemly about a candidate for high office using identity as a way of communicating shared values. In fact, for minority candidates against whom the deck is stacked — think Bobby Jindal in Louisiana — shared values may be the only lifeline they have. I can’t imagine Jindal, for example, would have won the governorship were he not Catholic.

The valid counterargument is that identity politics is as much about contrast as it is connection, and I concede that most attempts to politicize religion end up in this category. So Mike Huckabee telling Iowa voters he is a “Christian” candidate does not and cannot exist in a vacuum, it necessarily calls attention to the perception that another candidate (Mitt Romney, in this case) is not a Christian. Meanwhile, just about every instance of racial identity politics is built on these sorts of ugly contrasts.

So I guess I see two ways to play the religious card: an embracing and a divisive approach. We see way too much of latter, not enough of the former. And I would place Obama’s mailer — such that it works beyond simply convincing people that he’s not a Muslim, which I’m sure was its primary purpose — in the former category. He’s not demonizing the non-religious or non-Christians, he’s reaching out to voters the Democrats have ignored as of late. I wouldn’t want him or John McCain to get carried away with this approach, or to make religious claims they neither believe nor practice, but in its limited incarnation I think this sort of religious appeal is compatible with a healthy democracy.