An excerpt:
It does seem there is one relevant difference between ’08 and ’04 on this question. In ’04, the question seemed to be: What should the church do about a politician who doesn’t follow Catholic teaching? This time around, it seems the question is more: Does following Catholic teaching automatically mean overturning Roe v. Wade, or is there another way of trying to combat abortion? Will that be part of your discussion?
Someone told me once that they think the legislative question is lost, both in terms of same-sex marriage and in terms of abortion, and that what the church should be focusing its energies on is changing the thinking in order to lead people not to choose abortion. I certainly think there’s some importance to that. We may find ourselves hamstrung in terms of our capacity to change legislation, or the thinking of legislators. Yet we can still work to make our teaching more influential in changing people’s thinking, helping them to see that there are alternatives, there are opportunities to find support, whether it’s financial or whatever – whatever the pressing concern is that leads to a decision as a difficult as it is, to abort a child. I think we need to do both, in some ways. I don’t think we can give up on the legislative challenge, but I think we have to work more intensively to try to change the thinking of people, to help them understand why the church teaches what it does.
To build a grassroots culture of life?
Right.
Some argue that you can be genuinely opposed to abortion, yet as a matter of prudential judgment believe that it would be counter-productive to try to make abortion illegal. Do you think it’s possible to reconcile that with the teaching of the church?
It depends on how the person is thinking through that as a legislator. It’s complicated. I think that our encouragement to legislators who are Catholic, and who are voting for pro-choice legislation, is to emphasize the importance of the fact that the church sees these acts as intrinsically evil. It’s not something that we can wink at, or take lightly. I think it’s a both/and. We have to keep working at creating a society in which the law doesn’t support an act that is intrinsically evil, but even perhaps more important, and in the end, more effective, is changing the thinking of people in how they approach this terribly difficult decision.
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