Ponnuru Strikes Back
Ramesh Ponnuru responds via email to these questions:
I wrote about this at length in NR and on NRO last year. I did not intend to repeat the whole argument in one little post.
Suffice it to say that I do not believe that the appropriate criterion here is “opposing the Church on major issues,” but rather obstinate persistence in grave sin. The Church simply does not teach that supporting the death penalty or the Iraq war is a grave injustice.
And of course Rudy Giuliani would have to be denied communion. Nobody has suggested a Republican-vs-Democrat test for communion.
As to the last point, that’s true, although the only time the issue has ever gotten any real attention was when it concerned John Kerry.
As to the points on the death penalty and Iraq, Google gives me this article:
Liberals, including Catholic liberals who themselves favor legal protection for the unborn, wonder why the church is not denying communion to politicians who have voted for the death penalty, or the Iraq war. The left-wing National Catholic Reporter suggests that a pro-choice Kerry who spent money on social programs could reduce abortion more than a nominally pro-life Bush.
The communion-denying bishops have an answer on each point. The church cannot force legislators to vote one way or another, but can say what the spiritual consequences of their votes are. While the church generally opposes the death penalty, it does not believe its imposition to be gravely unjust, as abortion is. It proposes norms to govern the decisions of statesmen regarding war and poverty, but it leaves to them the prudential judgments about what those norms should dictate. The Pope has never said that faithful Catholics may not fight in Iraq, or implement the death penalty. He has said that Catholic doctors may not participate in abortion. And even if some mix of welfare policies brought the abortion rate to zero - a doubtful proposition - the church would still hold the legality of abortion to be an injustice.
I’ve done a little research on the relative “grave injustice” of the death penalty, the war, and abortion, and it looks like Ponnuru is write. It also look like there are a bunch of leftist Catholic sites that want to argue, but I am going to call it a night for now.
Kudos to Ponnuru for responding.