Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

Why would two, ostensibly “prolife” Catholics who are also distinguished lawyers and professors of the law, support a staunchly “pro-choice” candidate for President?  Of course I am speaking of Doug Kmeic and now Nicholas P. Cafardi.  Of course, one cannot easily discern motives of the heart and judging from their attempted justifications, this is where I think matter lies.

I have had several discussions with prolife Catholics who are drawn to Obama.  For many of them, the matter seems to be one of an emotional attachment to the Democrat party.  I intuit that this is because of their upbringing and that this party has well positioned itself to be promoted as the “champion” of the poor and underprivileged.  They have also done a fairly good job of demonizing the Republican party as the enemy of the same.  I suspect that there are other factors but by and large, I think that this caricature provides the incentive for the rationalizations one hears.

But since I am not going to judge motivations, I am left to addressing the strained logic presented by these two men.  As one might expect, they are not all that different in their reasoning. Kmeic goes so far as to write a book attempting to justify his position.  Cafardi simply outlined his in a short opinion piece in NCReporter and a longer statement read to a group of “Catholics” who are promoting Obama at Carlow College.

The errors of both of these gentlemen fall into two categories: errors of fact and faulty moral assessment.  Addressing first the errors of fact, many can be cited:

Both claim that regardless of who is elected, this will make no difference for the matter of abortion.  In fact, Cafardi goes so far as to say that the war against abortion is lost and so it is time to move on to other issues. The fact is that this is an issue that can never be dismissed and the fight against it never abandoned because it is an inherent moral evil that attacks the very foundation of human dignity.  To give up this fight is to disengage from political life and wait for the Vandals to finish sacking Rome so that we may begin to rebuild society anew.  It is also a fact that there will a significant increase in dead babies directly as a result of an Obama election.  NCRegister (here and here), among many others, did a good job of outlining these.

Both go so far as to say that there is a difference between being pro-abortion and pro-choice and Obama is only the latter and so justifiably supportable by a Catholic.  Both are false statements of fact.  Morally there is no speakable difference between being pro-choice and proabortion, at least as Obama manifests the pro-choice position.  Obama’s positions make him a formal cooperator with abortion and so morally culpable in the extreme.  He promotes policies that both enable and promote abortion as mentioned above.  There is formally and materially no difference for Obama regardless of whether he is pro-choice or proabortion.  This assertion fails on all accounts.

Cafardi claims that there are other issues of inherent evil to account for.  He claims that McCain advocates torture and the Obama is against it.  This is a factual error.  It is also a very murky issue in terms of what McCain and Obama actually would support and not.  I will not hash over the issues here (see a good summary here) but to say that McCain advocates torture while Obama doesn’t is at the very least, misleading.  One can point out that McCain broke ranks with the administration over the issue of water boarding which he agrees is torture and he also sponsored a bill, named after him, restricting DOD use of aggressive techniques not permitted in the Army interrogation manual.  Nevertheless, even if he approved as something so henious as waterboarding, or even worse, this does not rise to the level of abortion.  It certainly would not lead to the magnitude in deaths and so could not justify cooperating with the inherent evil promised by the Obama ticket as an alternative to McCain’s hypothetic policy.

Cafardi also claims that the issues of “just war” and “ignoring the poor” are intrinsic evils that he can change by voting for president (since he ignores the evils of untold additional abortion that he can avoid by voting for McCain).  These assertions also are factually in error.  Cafardi quotes Cardinal Ratzinger in 2003 suggesting that the Cardinal did not see that the criteria for just war had been met in the case of Iraq.  That particular issue of just war was a decision that was made in 2003 by both Republicans and Democrats together.  Electing Obama can and will do nothing about to change it.  Cafardi can provide no Magisterial statements that say that the war we are now in must be ended now regardless of consequences because it is unjust.  In fact, he will only find the opposite.  They say that the US is obligated to stay until Iraq is stable and capable of self-governance.  Cafardi is also confused about the matter of prudential judgment in this case, just as he is confused about the issue of prudential judgment in voting for Obama.  While neither did I agree that the information I had at the time met the criteria to go to war with Iraq, I recognized that I did not have all of the information that the Bush adminisration had.  I also recognize the difficulties in dealing with intelligence, having done so for at least 15 years in my Air Force career.  The case for and against this war as just, was and remains sufficiently murky with respect to what was known at the time, that one may not say that the war was inherently unjust.  In fact, in his letter to Cardinal McCarrick the same Cardinal Ratzinger made the same point, declaring the the issue of the justness of war did not equate with that of abortion because the former entails prudential judgment while the latter does not.  Here Cafardi handles magisterial statements in a way not unlike that of the average dissenter from Church teachings.  Something which I find troubling.

Ignoring the poor again is something of a canard.  Cafardi did not point out any specific McCain policies.  In order to consider this issue, one must first show that “ignoring the poor” is McCain’s policy, second that the federal government has ability and obligation to act in a different manner, and finally one has to show that this “ignoring the poor” will lead to a similar order of magnitude in deaths of innocent people as does abortion.  As far as I can see, the differences in policy positions between the candidates amounts to differences in levels of funding (i.e. how much the levels should be increased) in programs for the poor.  This does not qualify as ignoring the poor.  Moreover, it is not clear which poor he is talking about.  If he means McCain has promised to ignore the poor in our country, clearly this is false.  If he promises to ignore the poor in other countries by not promising new spending programs in say Africa while Obama does (I have no idea that this is the case), Cafardi must make the case that the US has both the ability and the obligation to do so.  Finally, in no case that I am aware of, in which imminent death is a risk has either party ever refused to act to alleviate famine.  Again, there is no conceivable way that this could ever be a licit argument whereby one is justified in supporting an abortion candidate.

Both Cafardi and Kmeic also make errors in moral judgment.  They both agree that abortion is an inherent moral evil but they fail to analyze Obama’s policy positions as formal cooperation in inherent evil.  In fact, both erroneously try to excuse him of this.  They also fail to recognize that even if they do not formally cooperate (however, given the centrality that protecting the “right’ to abortion is to Obama’s campaign, one may argue that anyone who actively supports him must also desire his success, however reluctantly, in his abortion policies as well making that person a formal cooperator in inherent evil) they still may not arbitrarily materially cooperate with inherent evil.  For one to justly cooperate with evil in a material way certain conditions must apply.  First, there must be no other valid option.  Second, one is then obligated to ascertain which option involves the least amount of inherent evil.  I have already done an assessment of this here and so I will not repeat it.  However, I will say that unless the pro-Obama Catholics can show that McCain promotes policies such as nuking each year a million and a half innocent Iranians, North Koreans, etc., there exist no other issues that rise to the level of abortion.

These pro-Obama Catholics claim that they are following their formed conscience and exercising their liberties as Catholics and Americans.  They have a confused sense of informed conscience and an erroneous understanding of freedom (see here for Dcn Fournier’s assessment of Kmeic’s book in this regard).  However, not only are they falling into grave sin themselves, they also have committed themselves to scandalizing other faithful Catholics into thinking they are justified in voting for Obama.  Jesus has a warning for those among us who would cause His little ones to sin…