Politician

Photo of Marty Barrack

Some liberal “Catholic” politicians say that they cannot impose their moral beliefs on the American people. They are “personally opposed” to abortion but cannot impose their moral values on the citizenry. The same liberal politicians every year vote for income redistribution measures that openly and deliberately impose their moral values. They transfer money from people who work to those who do not, force landlords to rent apartments to unmarried couples, and force employers to hire and retain persons living sinful lives.

Catholics have exactly the same right to impose their moral beliefs by law as does anyone else. If the objection is that our values are religious, so were Rev. Martin Luther King’s. Either we allow religious values including Catholic values or we declare unconstitutional all of the “civil rights” legislation. After all, the “civil rights” legislation restricted the traditional American right to free association, which recognized that each man had the right to decide with whom he wanted to transact business. Whether or not the “civil rights” legislation was morally good, it was certainly Georgia Baptist in its origins.

We need Catholic politicians. A Catholic politician does all he can to enact Catholic social teaching into law. For example, Catholic social teaching holds that parents are the primary teachers of their children. It follows that schools should be the agents of parents, not of the state, and that parents should be able to choose the schools their children attend. Catholic social teaching holds as well the principle of subsidiarity, which means that all decisions are referred to the lowest possible level, the level closest to the family. What the family can do for itself, no government should do. What a local government can do, no state government should do, etc. The purpose of subsidiarity is to be sure that governments reflect the morality of their people, that they serve rather than rule.

Sometimes, when liberals hear this, they have lurid visions of the Pope running the American government, making phone calls to direct that this or that legislation be signed or vetoed. It is not that at all. Catholic social teaching is a body of general principles emphasizing reliance on God rather than government as the organizing principle of our lives, and on treating one another with the dignity due God’s image and likeness.