Democrats or demagogues

Posted by admin on Oct 29, 2005 in Issues & Ideas | 0 comments

Prime Minister Paul Martin, Democratic Senator John Kerry, and all politicians who support gay marriage, abortion, or euthanasia may soon be denied communion in Catholic churches around the world. In the opening mass of the Catholic Synod, Pope Benedict XVI stated, “the type of tolerance which permits God as a private opinion but refuses to allow him in the public arena, is, in the reality of the world and our life, not tolerance but hypocrisy.” The Pontiff is declaring that there is no difference between the public policies of a politician and their private religious convictions. Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo adopted a more explicit view, stating that, “Politicians and legislators must know, by proposing or defending projects for iniquitous laws, they have a grave responsibility, and must remedy the evil done in order to be able to receive communion.” While this is not official Catholic doctrine as yet, these statements raise unique questions about the expectations placed on political figures.

The most significant of these questions being, who is the final authority of the politician: their own moral convictions, or, in democracies such as ours, the people who elect them? More specifically, are politicians elected to vote according to the majority opinion, or as individuals with personal belief on behalf of the majority? If politicians are elected on behalf of the people, as indicated by the republican structure of democracies such as Canada and the US, then they can vote as their conscience dictates because they were elected based on the beliefs that they articulated in their campaign. While structurally this is the case, I would argue that increasingly politicians are elected to express the will of the people. In the past, politicians were elected on the merits of their moral convictions because once they left for the legislature they ceased contact with their constituents. However, in the age of instant polling, cheap long-distance calling, and e-mail, legislators have unprecedented access to the beliefs of their constituents. With the will of the majority being instantly and abundantly clear, the individual beliefs of the politician should be extraneous to their voting decision. Their obligation rests on accurately representing those who elected them to office.

Therefore, the charge of the Church that politicians are personally responsible for their actions in the legislature, even if they were in accordance with the will of the majority, is incorrect. The role of the politician is now representative not prescriptive. It is simply illogical for the denial of sacraments, and, as a result, salvation, to rest on the collective will of the people. To require Catholic politicians to vote for laws based on Catholic conformity would require Catholics to run independently of any party, as no party fully conforms to such an agenda. The only plausible outcome of such a doctrine would be to decrease Christian participation in politics, further vilify the Catholic Church as a totalitarian institution, and politicize a religious ritual which is meant to unify the Church.