From the editor’s desk

The duty of a Catholic MP

Democracy is not entirely understood by the Catholic Church. During the 2004 presidential election in the United States, certain Catholic bishops intervened to warn Catholic electors not to back Senator John Kerry because, despite his personal opposition to abortion, he refused to impose that view via legislation. They threatened to withhold Holy Communion from him if the opportunity presented itself. That was the template against which recent remarks of Cardinal Keith O'Brien of Edinburgh and St Andrews were measured, when he told Catholic politicians that support for abortion was incompatible with the reception of Holy Communion. But the cardinal stopped short of the position taken by, say, Archbishop Raymond Burke of St Louis, who threatened to withhold Communion and rather grudgingly left receiving it to the conscience of the individual.

Nevertheless the position was clear: such politicians have no discretion in the matter. This has echoes of the Vatican instruction signed by the then Cardinal Ratzinger in 2003 with respect to the legal recognition of homosexual partnerships. It stated: "the Catholic lawmaker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it".

The premise here is not the same as the principle of freedom of conscience. It is that on certain issues Catholic politicians have a duty to be the voice of the Church in the lawmaking process, and to repeat what the Church tells them to. But that is not the politician's duty as contained in the theory of parliamentary democracy (which would also apply to a presidential system). Politicians, in that theory, stand for election making clear what moral principles they embrace. They then take part in the argument and make an honest judgement. That has to include the possibility, both in the case of abortion and of gay partnerships, that the politician might see reasons why the application of Catholic teaching might be ill advised in the circumstances. For instance, the politician might conclude that to press for an extension of the criminal law, in a way that the great majority would object to, risks undermining the consent of the public on which the criminal law ultimately rests. Indeed, the movement from "sin" to "crime" must involve judgements of practicality, expediency and the common good.

Edmund Burke's famous Address to the Electors of Bristol in 1774 declared what has become the core principle in democracies throughout the world. "Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests ... parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a Member of Parliament." In other words, MPs are elected for their personal qualities to make an honest judgement after due deliberation, and they must have the freedom to do so. The Church ought to respect that, but the penny has not quite dropped. An MP, in Burke's terms, is not, and cannot be, simply a delegate of the Pope or Cardinal Archbishop.