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Archbishop Chaput and American Politics

I’ve just read perhaps the most insightful article on our current crisis in American politics. It’s so good, you should stop what you’re doing and Go Read It Now.

The article is The King’s Good Servant: Some Thoughts at a Crossroad by Archbishop Chaput. Before you rush to judgment because of the author, I highly recommend you read it – it is an excellent article.

The first part really spoke to me in terms of my personal holiness and the need for us all to constantly strive for holiness no matter how busy we may be.

After you’ve read it, take a look at my favorite excerpts:

Here’s an example. Forty-three years ago, Pope John XXIII wrote an encyclical letter on world peace called Pacem in Terris. But he didn’t begin it by talking about the arms race or international relations. He began it by talking about the rights and duties of the individual human person—and justice between individuals and within societies.

He began that way because the “big picture” depends on the “small picture.” World peace begins with a respect for the dignity of the individual human person. That’s why Mother Teresa always said that abortion is the seed of war. John XXIII wrote that “every human being is a person” (9). And he said that “every man has a right to life, to bodily integrity, and to the means which are suitable to the proper development of life; these are primarily food, clothing, shelter, rest, medical care, and finally the necessary social services” (11).

The big picture depends on the small picture. No amount of good policy on immigration, or unemployment, or education, or housing, compensates for bad policy when it comes to deliberately killing the innocent—beginning with the unborn. The right to life comes first. That’s the priority. It’s the foundation of every other right. Without it, every other right is built on sand.

Every election year I hear from Catholic voters looking for a way to evade or “contextualize” the abortion issue. Some complain that the Church is imposing its views on society at large. Others argue that they personally oppose abortion, but that it should be sheltered as a matter of private choice. Others want to minimize the gravity of abortion by weighing it against a dozen other social issues.

None of these arguments finally has merit.

First, democracy depends on good people working vigorously for their convictions in the political arena. Abortion is the worst kind of intimate violence. Being quiet about it in our politics out of a misguided sense of good manners is the worst kind of callousness and citizenship.

Second, if we choose to allow deliberate attacks against the innocent, we can’t wash our hands of the consequences of that violence. No violence is ever private. That includes abortion. If we choose to allow it, we choose to own it.

Third, the “seamless garment” doesn’t mean and never meant that all social issues are equal. Some issues have priority and some don’t. Abortion is separated from other important social issues like just wages and affordable housing by a difference in kind, not a difference in degree. Every abortion deliberately kills an unborn human life—every time. No matter what kind of mental gymnastics we use, elective killing has no excuse. We only implicate ourselves by trying to invent one.

God bless,
Jay