Bishops cop out on political issues

A few weeks ago, Deal Hudson (pictured left) said in his periodic e-letter that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) was working on its presidential questionnaire. He noted that the Left-leaning USCCB might try to bury the pro-life questions in with a bunch of irrelevant issues... thereby hiding Senator John Kerry's extreme pro-abortion voting record. They did something similar with the 2000 presidential questionnaire (wherein, they actually let Al Gore get away with claiming to be "pro-life"!).

In his most recent e-letter, Hudson writes: "Unfortunately, it seems that the same thing is happening again this election. The questionnaires are with the candidates right now, but CRISIS [magazine] has been able to get an early look at the document." Here's what he reports:

First, the questionnaire makes no distinction between life issues -- clearly of primary importance to Catholics -- and particular policies
that the conference supports on issues as wide-ranging (and non-binding) as rural development, housing, and immigration.

The document has 41 questions, broken down into sections by topic. The largest single section of the questionnaire is on... immigration. Yes, immigration. That category gets a full six questions.

The next-largest section is education (five questions). Abortion gets a total of three questions (tied with aid to low income families).

In fact, in the entire questionnaire, only eight questions deal with life issues -- including abortion, capital punishment, physician-assisted suicide, cloning, and embryo research. Amazingly enough, the section on broadcast communication had more questions than any of the life sections except abortion and capital punishment.

But there's more.

The structure of the questions is such that they only ask for a "support/oppose" response, which says nothing about the particular details of a candidate's position. Nowhere is there room for the candidate to explain, say, why he voted for partial-birth abortion (as Kerry did) or voted against the Defense of Marriage Act (another
Kerry vote). In fact, neither are mentioned at all!

Of course, the conference did include this vital question:

"Will you support or oppose legislation to strengthen the reputation of broadcasters to ensure that they meet their public service broadcast license obligations?"

Look, it's not that I object to the questions per se. The problem is that they ignore the hierarchy in Catholic values and issues. Furthermore, this sweeping approach keeps the candidates -- particularly Kerry, who is almost always on the wrong side of the life issues -- from having to defend themselves or explain any of
their choices.

Once again, the bishops conference has mixed up prudential issues (like the particular points of broadcast law) with hard moral absolutes (like the ban on abortion). In doing so, they've given ardently pro-abortion candidates political cover.

Hopefully, when they eventually release the results of the questionnaire, the conference will include some kind of commentary that assigns real weight to the life issues. Without that, this document is simply deceptive.

(Gratia tibi, Deal Hudson.)