A Catholic Case for the Reelection of President Obama

Donald P. Kommers
Joseph and Elizabeth Robbie Professor of Political Science Emeritus, Notre Dame Law School
Posted: 10/04/2012 1:13 pm

Unlike the election of 2008, economic and fiscal rather than cultural issues are dominating the federal election campaign of 2012, and there is no evidence to suggest that Catholics will divide differently on these matters than other segments of the American electorate. But Catholics who take the social teachings of their church seriously will almost surely reject the presidential candidate who would denigrate programs that assist the poor, adulterate social security, lessen the coverage of medicare or medicaid, oppose a redistributive tax code, and disdain the creative role of government in the face of unrelenting poverty and massive unemployment.

Catholic social teaching revolves around the four bedrock principles of human dignity, common good, solidarity and subsidiarity. The last of these principles, doubtless the one Republicans love best, downplays the role of the state by elevating the importance of voluntary associations such a families, churches, charities, neighborhood associations and other self-governing groups. The principle holds that the independence of these natural orderings is essential to freedom and autonomy. It also affirms that no higher or larger organization should undertake a task that a lower or smaller one can do as well. From the Catholic perspective, this is a clear principle of right political order.

But if private groups or non-state actors are unwilling or unable to meet needs essential for human dignity and the common good, governments are morally required to meet these needs. Similarly, if lower levels of government do not have the will or the resources to meet basic human needs such as medical care or a living wage, higher levels must do so. This too is rock-bottom Catholic social teaching. Informed by the imperatives of human dignity and solidarity, the spirit of this teaching is avidly communitarian and runs against the grain of the unchecked individualism championed by Paul Ryan and other leaders of today's Republican Party. In the hands of serious Catholic thinkers, common good reasoning even rejects the generally accepted utilitarian theory of "the greatest good for the greatest number." John Paul II defined the common good as "the good of all and each individual." In a well-ordered society, therefore, shaped by the moral imparatives of cooperation and interdependence, every human being is entitled, as a matter of right, to all the goods and services needed to live in decency and self-respect. The principle of solidarity requires no less.

The elevation of solidarity has been a nonstop theme in Catholic social teaching. Typical was Pope John XXIII's declaration that "all people have a right to life, food, clothing, shelter, rest, medical care, education, and employment." Not some but all people. With poverty and unemployment at record highs, it is clear that an unregulated market economy will fail to meet these basic human needs. For this reason, state intervention in the economy is as essential today as yesterday when, for example, federal laws were necessary to abolish child labor, to eliminate industrial sweatshops, to prohibit unsafe places of work, to outlaw union busting, to force employers to pay a living wage, to ensure the safety of food and drug products, to clean our air and water, and to regulate and so discipline the financial sector. To cut back on any of these features of the regulatory state or to oppose the great social achievements of recent decades, as Republicans are advocating today, flies in the face of Catholic social thinking.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/donald-p-kommers/catholic-case-for-the-reelection-of-president-obama_b_1939899.html