From the editor’s desk

Conscience and the whip

The Government Chief Whip, Geoff Hoon, has been asked by Catholic Labour MPs to extend the categories under which they are allowed a "conscience" vote to include various issues raised in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. They will automatically be excused the duty to obey a whip - a government instruction to vote a certain way - when the House of Commons debates amendments to the bill relating directly to abortion. They want the same freedom to be extended to clauses that would allow lesbian couples to conceive a child by in vitro fertilisation, including one that would remove the requirement to identify a father for such a child. They have told Mr Hoon that these are also issues of conscience for Catholics. They are right.

The role of conscience in politics was discussed at a recent meeting some Catholic MPs attended at Archbishop's House, Westminster, when Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor spoke of the need for better liaison between Catholic parliamentarians and church leaders in future. Significantly, he told them that he did not want to interfere with their freedom to exercise their own judgement, even on issues where the Church's leadership had taken a definite line. Bodies hostile to church involvement in politics, such as the National Secular Society, have interpreted this meeting as sinister.

This assumes, however, that the Catholic Church claims to operate a whip of its own, a party line on certain ethical issues which Catholic MPs are obliged to obey. The cardinal was at pains to reject that impression, but the fear is not groundless. In the last United States presidential election certain bishops tried to put pressure on candidates by threatening to withhold Holy Communion from them unless they vowed to oppose the legalisation of abortion brought about by the Roe v. Wade decision of the Supreme Court in 1973. And the Vatican's own statements on the duties of Catholic politicians have left little room for individual judgement. Although the United States bishops have sought to clarify these issues in their latest pre-election statement, they have not eliminated the impression that abortion is the only thing that really matters to them. 

Maybe the Mother of Parliaments - and the Catholic Church in England and Wales - can set an example of a more mature approach. MPs are answerable to their constituents but also to their own consciences, and it is right that voters should know the implications of that at the time of an election. Voters will not favour MPs who are seen to be puppets of unelected churchmen, and the Vatican's failure to understand this fact of democratic life is counter-productive. Not every Catholic MP stands behind every moral teaching of the Church, and that is to be expected. Furthermore, Catholic politicians and the Church both need to be aware of the dangers of over-identification with issues concerning reproductive health and sexuality. As the late Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago used to say, there is a seamless robe connecting all life-and-death issues, which covers not just abortion but child poverty and health care here and overseas, not just same-sex relations but matters of war and peace, not just euthanasia but capital punishment. These are also issues of conscience, issues where Catholic legislators are equally entitled to support from their bishops.