By UWE SIEMON-NETTO
It is disconcerting that probably the most compelling statement made
in this year’s disagreeable U.S. election campaign has received
virtually no public attention.
Bishop Thomas John Paprocki of Springfield in Illinois warned
Catholic voters of planks in the Democratic Party Platform “that
explicitly endorse intrinsic evils.” He meant abortion and same-sex
marriage.
Bishop Thomas John Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois
Bishop Paprocki went on, “[A] vote for a candidate who promotes
actions or behaviors that are intrinsically evil and gravely sinful
makes you morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your
soul in serious jeopardy.”
This reference to the intrinsic and thus genuine nature of these
evils should be a terrifying warning to every Christian and all people
affirming the universal moral code called natural law. It should give
pause to Republican strategists and conservative pundits who decided
that in this year’s race economic issues trump everything, including the
paramount concern over the sanctity of life.
It should pipe down the brash Anne Coulter who in a Fox talk show
called Rep. Todd Aikin a “swine” because of his refusal to resign his
candidacy for the Senate after breaking a 2012 GOP taboo with a clumsy
statement; the taboo was abortion, a topic not to be mentioned lest even
the last single woman vote for Barack Obama on Nov. 6.
The moral flaw of the stereotypical dictum that the economy
supersedes the destruction of 55 million unborn babies since Roe v. Wade
in 1973 becomes even clearer when I use an analogy which I know will
get me into trouble: the reasoning of these GOP strategists reminds me
of Germans who said after World War II: “Well, it was of course wrong of
Hitler to kill all those Jews, gypsies and handicapped, but he did do
good things, too, didn’t he? He was good for the German economy. He
built autobahns and created jobs.”
To be clear: I am not questioning the importance of the state of the
economy in this campaign, but to deem it more important than the
mindless daily slaughter of the innocent is tantamount to making light
of an ongoing genocide.
Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary defines the adjective, “intrinsic,”
as “belonging to the real nature of a thing, not dependent on external
circumstances.” Something intrinsically evil will not go away when you
attempt to camouflage it with verbal dishonesty. The otherwise laudable
Wall Street Journal, the commentators on Fox News, and assorted GOP
spokesmen with the notable exception of the brave Sen. Rick Santorum and
New Gingrich are consistently trivializing abortion as a “social
issue.”
In my old-fashioned understanding, social issues, are the conundrums
of whether you wear a dinner jacket or tails to a ball, or whether a
worker is given two, three or four weeks of annual vacation. Abortion is
something wholly other. In his book, Ethics, Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran theologian martyred by the Nazis and admired by
many American liberals, wrote this about abortion:
“Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the
right to live which God has bestowed on nascent life. To raise the
question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not
is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly
intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has
been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder.”
I am not a U.S. citizen and must therefore refrain from opining
publicly on political issues of another nation, except when it involves
intrinsic evils because these transcend national borders; they must be
by definition everybody’s concern, as were the intrinsic evils of the
Nazi and Communist regimes. That said, even common sense should tell us
how unwise it is to sideline, for the sake of short-lived electoral
gain, the annual slaughter of 1.2 million unborn or to elevate deviate
sexual behavior to the level of matrimony.
If I read this year’s polls correctly, the Republicans are having
problems with Latino voters, even though this predominantly Catholic or
evangelical segment of the population holds moral values identical to
those of white conservatives. Whether these conservatives have treated
Hispanic immigrants wisely and well should be the topic of another
story. But to tell a family-oriented people that the nation’s paramount
ethical issue is of secondary importance amounts to inviting these
voters to join the other side: What qualitative difference is there
between affirming the culture of death and remaining indifferent to it?
The Republican campaign appears to confront the immorality inherent in
the Democratic Platform with an amoral strategy; I fail to see any
blessing in this.
Then there is the matter of the unwed women against whom the GOP is
alleged to conduct a “war.” If the GOP had any guts it would challenge
the ditsy mindset that seems to be prevalent among these females. I
would ask them: “Do you really wish to define yourselves as women by
your ‘right’ to kill your children? Don’t you recognize the frightening
light the ‘war on women’ rhetoric sheds on all of you? Are you sure you
want to take part in a war on babies?”
Punchy questions like these might not persuade the most stubborn
devotees of the culture of death but perhaps shock enough unmarried
women into enough sense of ethical reality to give Mitt Romney the
percentage points he needs to be elected. However, this would presuppose
of Republican candidates and strategists that they possess a quality
Dietrich Bonhoeffer called civil courage.
Frankly, I don’t see it, and hence I fear that, to paraphrase
Bonhoeffer, a “great masquerade of evil” will go on playing “havoc with
all our ethical concepts.” Let nobody later say he didn’t know. The
Roman Catholic bishop of Springfield has just warned us in the starkest
possible terms when he spoke of intrinsic evils.
Uwe Siemon-Netto, the former religious affairs editor of
United Press International, has been an international journalist for 55
years, covering North America, Vietnam, the Middle East and Europe for
German publications. Dr. Siemon-Netto currently directs the League of
Faithful Masks and Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life in
Capistrano Beach, California.
