Should the Church Get Involved in Morality?

It seems to me that the flip side of the Church staying out of politics is the Church concentrating on its evangelical mission of preaching the gospel, converting sinners and building up God's flock. Integral to this mission is maintaining a clear witness to right and wrong, distinguishing between good and evil and calling the faithful (and all people of good will) to do the right and avoid evil.

Jim Wallis wants us to "vote out poverty." If only it were that easy. What he actually proposes is that the Church get involved in what could be termed "outcome-based politics." He holds up the Enlightenment ideals of democracy and equality as the outcomes we seek and then suggests that we work for those outcomes through all partisan political means possible. Morality must take a back seat to the more important goal of eradicating poverty. So we are told to support the Democratic Party even though it advocates clear moral evil in the form of legalized private killing. We must become morally complicit in moral evil for the sake of a greater good. This is utilitarianism and it contradicts Christian morality at the most fundamental level. As Pope John Paul II wrote in Evangelium Vitae: "the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral." (#57) As Brend Wannenwetsch, points out, it is the teaching of another of the pope's encyclicals, Veritas Splendour, that provides the background for this teaching. (See B. Wannenwetsch, "'Intrinsically Evil Acts'; or, Why Abortion and Ethanasia Cannot Be Justified" in Ecumenical Ventures in Ethics: Protestants Engage Pope John Paul II's Moral Encyclicals, ed. R. Hutter and T. Dieter, Eerdmans, 1998). In Veritas Splendour, Pope John Paul II made it clear that there is such a thing as an "intrinsically evil act."

In The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan tries to get Alyosha to answer the question of whether he would agree that it is acceptable to torture one little five-year old girl and inure yourself to her tears if that were the only way to "build the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last." Would you agree, demands Ivan? "No, I would not agree," Alyosha said softly. (Book II, Chapter 4 "Rebellion") Alyosha says that he would rather leave millions of people in misery than torture one innocent little girl. He is right, but not by any kind of utilitarian calculation. From a utilitarian point of view he is selfish and moralistic. But from a Christian perspective he is correct to fear God, refuse to commit an evil act that will imperil his soul and leave the results to God.

Now I know that Jim Wallis proclaims that Obama would reduce abortions and probably he really believes this in his heart of hearts. But Obama steadfastly declares that mothers have the "right" to kill their children and that he will defend this right legislatively. (I hear that a pro-life, pro-Obama website is about to be launched. As one wit said: Can the McCain for Pacifism website be far behind?) How can we take seriously those who say they want to reduce abortions when they vote for politicans whose policies ensure that abortion on demand will remain legal?

We who argue that Evangelicals and Catholics cannot support Obama are accused of being single issue fanatics who don't look at the big picture. But what bigger picture is there than the fundamental right to life? It seems to me that we are being invited to enter into the murky world of partisan politics and engage in compromises and trade-offs in order to achieve our ideological goals. This is exactly what the Church must not do. We don't have an opinion on every issue because not every issue is a moral issue and even when it is a moral issue it is not always clear cut. The Church has a right to say to its members and to society as a whole that to vote for abortion is to imperil one's soul. This is the subject that the Church is the expert on and this is the kind of issue on which the Church must speak. Morality, unlike partisan politics, is the Church's business.