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[Editor's Note: The following Viewer Letters were in response to this email and frontpage editorial.]
Dear Catholic Exchange:
I just received an e-mail promoting the book The Five Issues That Matter Most: Catholics and the Upcoming Election,” and I am confident in saying, without reading it, that it contains gross mistruths about Catholic teaching. It is unjust and unjustifiable to discount Iraq, health care reform, education, foreign policy, the budget, and terrorism as issues which should concern not just Catholics, but every kind of voter. By promoting this book, you promote issue voting among Catholics; you chastise those who separate morals from politics, yet in denying the importance of the issues mentioned, you separate politics from morals.
As the huge (and growing) body of Catholic social teaching shows, every issue in politics is a moral issue, and indeed an issue of religious concern. The dignity of human life applies not only to the unborn and the elderly, but also to every single stage of life between. Are not soldiers' lives put at risk every day in an unjust war? Is not the availability of affordable health care to every person in the nation as important as the health of an unborn child? What child's life should be devoid of the opportunities that go with a quality education? How are the lives of American children more important than the lives lost every day to AIDS and genocide in Africa? Where is the dignity in the lives of low-income families who work their whole lives and never escape the vicious cycle of poverty?
As a staunch pro-lifer, I was offended and discouraged by the fact that so many Catholics may be influenced by its false (and extremely partisan) assertions. Faithful Catholics in this country and all over the world devote their lives to advancing human rights, and their efforts can only be hindered by such attitudes as those displayed in this book.
The right to life means nothing without the right to a life of dignity, the right to work, the right to food and clean drinking water, the right to shelter, the right to health, and the right to feel safe from the threat of death by any means. The Lord cares about the marginalized as well as the unborn. Even Christ claimed that “Whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me” (cf. Mt 25:31-46).
Please, raise more awareness of the Catholic side of every political issue. People in this country who enjoy so much wealth are hungry, scraping by for their own survival, unable to afford health insurance, dying for the wrong causes, and they cannot be ignored.
In Christ,
Emily Busch
Dear Emily:
If “The right to life means nothing” without the other rights you mention, then the obvious conclusion (and one
which is enacted 1.5 million times each year in this country alone) is “kill the marginalized,” not “help the marginalized.” After all, their lives mean “nothing” and its easier and more cost effective.
You take a great deal of prose to say a) you have no idea what our book says and b) you could not even be bothered to pay attention to the title. The title of the book is not The Only Issues that Matter. It is The Five Issues That Matter Most. The other issues you mention are, after these issues, important ones. But they are not as important as these.
A functional sewage system and water supply are very important to my house. My need for food, education and a job that does not belittle my dignity as a human being is undeniable. But if I'm trapped in my bedroom and the house is filled with flames, I'm not going to be focusing on those matters just now.
Our cultural house is burning down. Human life and the human family are being attacked at the most fundamental levels. And if the guarantee of the protection of innocent human life and the integrity of the family is not merely neglected but actively assaulted by the state, by our culture, by the machinery of industry and the ingenuity of science, then how we will deal with education and the minimum wage for all those dead future students and workers fades in significance.
It is tempting to do a point-by-point rebuttal of your letter, but I will restrain myself to one example of illogic. How, for instance, does saying “The most basic human right is the right to life” constitute an act of neglect for African children with AIDS? Given that the “solution” proposed by our culture for children faced with unhappiness is to kill them, while our solution is “bring them into the world and love them,” I don't see how we are advocating the neglect of everybody between birth and old age.
There is a great myth in and among American Catholics that Catholic social teaching is more or less whatever the Democratic Party Platform is advocating this year, with the small caveat that, well, yeah, the unborn and elderly matter too. In fact, Catholic social teaching has, at its center, the dignity of the human person and the good of the family, particularly of children. It is sheer midsummer madness to talk about the branches on the tree of Catholic social teaching which deal with migrant farm workers, healthcare, the death penalty, etc. while all the while laboring to saw down the trunk by saying that, at the end of the day, it is perfectly fine to take innocent human life and to redefine the family out of existence. When those fundamental aspects of Catholic social teaching are destroyed, all the rest will die too. That's why the book is called The Five Issues that Matter Most and not The Only Issues that Matter. The point of the book is not to deny the rest of Catholic teaching. It is to say that human life and the integrity of the family are at the center of the wheel and all the issues you mention are spokes on the wheel. To deny this is not to have a “broader Catholic erspective.” It is simply to break the wheel and make the whole of Catholic teaching inert.
Mark Shea
Senior Content Editor
Catholic Exchange
***
Dear Catholic Exchange:
In promoting The Five Issues That Matter Most, you've crossed the line. I will say I admire the conviction with which you've stated your positions on these very important issues and I agree with you. But there is no way you are going to convince me that the wall of lies surrounding the war in Iraq is not one of the most important issues of this election. I find it suspect that the very issue that is the biggest liability to this administration is not one the issues that “should matter” to Catholics. You say, “We have a momentous task before us — a grave responsibility. If we elect leaders who do not defend the most fundamental moral issues of our time, our society will pay a steep price for decades to come. And when we stand before God, He will remember.”
I know He will remember. Given what we know now about how we were deceived into believing we were in imminent danger from Iraq? Are you saying that lack of honesty and truth is not a “fundamental moral issue”? Some would say it is one of the most fundamental. Couldn't a person's actions, justified by false pretenses, leading to the death of thousands of people, be considered apathy for human life? Isn't this apathy for human life a “fundamental” part of the problems you have outlined? How can someone be so quick to [favor] war and capital punishment but against abortion? To me, this reeks of lukewarmness and we know what He says about lukewarmness, don't we? How are we to know this lack of honesty and lukewarmness towards human life will not seep like sewage into other issues that we currently take for granted?
I know He will remember. Are we willing to accept these evils just because with this administration the scales of the very important issues you outline are tipped in the favor of our beloved Catholic teaching? My feelings on this are summed up in scripture reference: “A fool immediately sheweth his anger: but he that dissembleth injuries is wise. He that speaketh that which he knoweth, sheweth forth justice: but he that lieth, is a deceitful witness. There is that promiseth, and is pricked as it were with a sword of conscience: but the tongue of the wise is health. The lip of truth shall be steadfast for ever: but he that is a hasty witness, frameth a lying tongue. Deceit is in the heart of them that think evil things: but joy followeth them that take counsels of peace” (Prv 12:16-20).
I am not a Democrat and I am not a Republican. I will never be confused with a debate champion. I am a child of God and am truly, truly struggling with how to cast my vote. I am also relatively sure my email will be disregarded simply because I don't agree with you.
YIC,
Brian Andersen
Des Moines, IA
PS. “How will we stand before our Lord and say that the minimum wage was more important than the murder of innocent unborn children?” Who is doing this? Sorry, this was just a stupid statement to make.
Dear Brian:
I oppose the war in Iraq (you can read my reasons why here: http://www.mark-shea.com/jwd.html).
I also oppose capital punishment, basically for the reasons given by the Holy Father in Evangelium Vitae. I think the
Republican Party will have much to answer for and that Bush's hands are not clean (particularly in his egregious compromise of innocent human life in allowing embryonic stem-cell research, which is one of our Five Issues the Matter Most.)
America is that big happy land where there are only two sides to each issue. So people naturally assume that if you say “You cannot vote for a candidate who promotes X, then you must vote for his opponent.” That ain't so. The Five Issues That Matter Most is not a book which gives a list of candidates and commands the reader to march off to the polls and check their names. It is a book which states the five most gravely serious things facing the electorate this year.
Note that it's the Five Issues That Matter Most, not the Only Issues That Matter. The war matters, of course. I personally think we should not have launched the war and that trying to square it with Just War teaching is… steady work.
But at the end of the day, faithful Catholics can and do disagree about this and the Church does not declare that they are in dissent concerning a matter of grave sin about something which is intrinsically evil. There is room in the Catholic tradition for Just War and for capital punishment.
There is absolutely no room for the deliberate destruction of innocent human life. That's why it is more important than the war (though the war is very important too). So the book is not trying to tell you who you can vote for. It's trying to say that there are certain things that a Catholic can never support and certain things (namely, innocent human life and the good of the family) that a Catholic must always support. How you work that out in the voting booth is up to you. We don't give you a sample ballot.
Mark Shea
Senior Content Editor
Catholic Exchange
Visit Catholic Outreach to get your copy of Five Issues That Matter Most.
