Dossier, Volume 13 #4

Gospel of Life: Three Perspectives

The Pope's Truncated View of Democracy

At the outset of any reflection on democracy after Pope John Paul II's spiritually magnificent encyclical Evangelium Vitae, one must squarely face the fact that the pope displays only a negligible understanding of present-day pluralistic democracy.[FN 1]

Perhaps we should not be surprised that someone who, until becoming pope, had lived in a democracy for only a small part of his adult life should be lacking in a rounded appreciation of it. To the pope's eyes, democracy has no intrinsic value (n. 70): "Fundamentally, democracy is a 'system' and as such is a means and not an end. Its 'moral' value is not automatic, but depends on conformity to the moral law."

Broad sectors of public opinion "claim not only exemption from punishment [for crimes against life] but even authorization by the State" (n. 4, emphasis added). A democracy which tolerates abortion "effectively moves toward a form of totalitarianism...[and] is transformed into a tyrant State, which arrogates to itself the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most defenceless members" (n. 20). This leaves only "the tragic caricature of legality" (n. 20). In such a situation "democracy easily becomes an empty word" (n. 20). Truth is lost in "the shifting sands of complete relativism" (n. 20; cf. n. 70).

Perhaps we should not be surprised that someone who, until becoming pope, had lived in a democracy for only a small part of his adult life should be lacking in a rounded appreciation of it.

For the pope, abortion is a crime that no human law can claim to legitimize (n. 73): "There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection." He sees no circumstances under which it is licit to promote or vote for such laws (n. 73), presumably either as a citizen or as a legislator.[FN 2]

To those who have lived the democratic experience from the inside, the most striking fact about contemporary democracy must be its utterly practical nature. As Jacques Maritain put it, "The common agreement expressed in democratic faith is not of a doctrinal, but merely practical nature."[FN 3] It proclaims no truths other than that of democracy itself, which is more a process or a mechanism than a matter of substance.

The democratic charter, including the inviolable rights of the human person, rests on a social consensus as to its expression, not as to its justification. It certainly does not endorse ethical relativism, or any other moral doctrine. It does not "authorize" abortion, even when it is carried out with "the free assistance of health care systems" (n. 4), since that is merely a pragmatic response to the felt needs of citizens; sometimes (as in Canada) it is even a different level of government that makes this response. The pope himself sees "some element of truth" in the role of a democratic state "as a mere mechanism for regulating different and opposing interests on a purely empirical basis" (n. 70), but believes that such a state would not be stable without the reinforcement of Christian values.

But in fact a purely empirical basis is almost all we have in democracy, and there is thus a ceaseless search for consensus, for a great enough measure of common agreement to perform at least the minimum of tasks necessary for the common life. We see states riven with controversy over issues of the day and, even more fundamentally, over lifestyles and life-and-death choices, to the point that in the United States--admittedly, the most extreme of the democracies in this respect--part of the population views the government as the principal enemy of the people. The current slenderness of the social consensus necessary for government, even in democracies with lesser problems than the United States, no doubt has many causes. Unfortunately, some of those causes spring from the church itself.

It is now generally accepted in democracies that the common good does not include coercive legislation for a person's own wellbeing. In other words, the criminal law can deal only with antisocial behaviour.

After all, we in the West were once part of that perceived unity known as Christendom until it was destroyed by Christians. Causes of the limiting of social consensus include the church's overweening historical worldliness (the Renaissance popes), its unseemly reliance on state power to achieve spiritual purposes (the Inquisition), its precipitous rejection of scientific knowledge (Galileo), its stubborn refusal to adjust to the rise of democracy (the Syllabus of Errors), its simplistic attachment to the Papal States as the sole means of papal independence from the political domination of nation-states, and its scandalous misunderstanding of Scripture, which helped along centuries of anti-Semitism.

More recently, the church has failed to come to terms with the continuing refusal of its Christian people to accept deficient moral teaching (Humanae Vitae).[FN 4] And even in Evangelium Vitae, it blindly rejects sexual equality as one of the fundamental aspects of the value and dignity of every human being. It lists only "race, nationality, religion, political opinion or social class" (n. 18),[FN 5] to say nothing of the sexist language ("man") in which fundamental truths about the human race are expressed. These failings would hardly be worth noting, except for historical purposes, were it not for continuing temptations in ecclesiastical circles to resurrect them (apart from worldly splendor, which, happily, is no longer in vogue).

Of course, let it be said with His Holiness that all of us who are Catholic have our own responsibility to proclaim divine truth: that "the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral" (n. 57). We are Catholics as well as members of democratic societies. But as Catholics, we are committed to the achievement of moral goals by specifically Christian means: prayer and the Sacraments, fasting and almsgiving, and personal example. We are not committed to the use of coercive state criminal law for spiritual purposes. Far from it. We are, indeed, enjoined by Christianity as well as by the state to respect the consciences of others, even ignorant consciences.

It is in this regard, in failing adequately to allow for conscience taken subjectively, that John Paul II manifests his greatest lack of awareness of contemporary democracy.[FN 6] In summary form, he recognizes that "the moral sense...is becoming more and more incapable of distinguishing between good and evil, even when the fundamental right to life is at stake" (n. 58; cf. n. 4). For me as for the pope, this is the mark of an erroneous conscience, but it is conscience nevertheless. What could be the state's warrant to trample on it?

For the pope the answer is easy: "The legal toleration of abortion or euthanasia can in no way claim to be based on respect for the conscience of others, precisely because society has the right and duty to protect itself against the abuses which can occur in the name of conscience and under the pretext of freedom" (n. 71). Perhaps the pope arrives at this conclusion so easily because he accepts a kind of natural law: "In the depths of his conscience, man is always reminded of the inviolability of life" (n. 40). But it is demonstrably not true on an experiential basis that all people know that abortion is intrinsically evil. In addition, coercive criminal legislation could be justified only on the basis of the exigencies of the common good.

Laws permitting abortion interfere only indirectly with Christian conscience in that they force it to tolerate the erroneous conscience of others on something close to the heart of the Christian message.

The common good, it is true, requires that the civil law must not directly violate the moral law by commanding what the moral law forbids, or forbidding what it commands. Hence John Paul II is entirely right that "those who have recourse to conscientious objection must be protected not only from legal penalties, but also from any negative effects on the legal, disciplinary, financial and professional plane" (n. 74). But laws permitting abortion in the sense that they do not criminalize it are not "pro-abortion" laws, as the pope would have it (n. 73). They are pro-choice laws that permit abortion but do not prescribe it. They interfere only indirectly with Christian conscience in that they force it to tolerate what it does not tolerate easily: the erroneous conscience of others on something close to the heart of the Christian message, the Gospel of life.

However, this is required by the foremost principle of the democratic charter, respect for conscience--whether properly formed or erroneous, since the state cannot sit in judgement on the consciences of its citizens. Furthermore, in the phrasing of Fr. Richard McCormick, "a strong case can be made that the attempt to solve the evaluative problem [with respect to the kind of life the fetus has] by legislation by-passes the duty to persuade by changing minds and hearts."[FN 7] It is this duty that is the proper role of the church.

Fifty years ago many Catholic trial judges were torn apart by the dilemma as to whether, in the light of the church's teaching on the indissolubility of marriage, they could pronounce divorce decrees required by the civil law in appropriate circumstances. Many actively sought reasons to deny divorce in the cases before them when, on objective legal grounds, divorce was legally merited. They were not taught differently by the church until the Canadian Catholic bishops' statement in 1966 that such laws had to meet only the same test of the common good as other laws.

Following the Wolfenden Report in Britain in 1957, it is now generally accepted in democracies that the common good does not include coercive legislation for a person's own wellbeing (e.g., with respect to suicide) but only to protect others. In other words, the criminal law can deal only with antisocial behaviour. Abortion is a unique case since the new life is encapsulated within the body of the mother. The conscience primarily engaged is therefore the mother's. A democratic state cannot legislate to constrain her expression of conscience, even though secondarily her choice of abortion deprives another human being of the right to live, for any other solution would transgress her conscience.

There is no room here for the civil disobedience that John Paul II recommends, though without specifying exactly what he has in mind: "There is a grave and clear obligation to oppose [laws permitting abortion] by conscientious objection" (n. 73). There can be no room for civil disobedience because it would violate the first principle of the civil order, the freedom of conscience.