Priests and Sisters Should Avoid Political Office

It is interesting, perhaps instructive, to imagine a world in which priests and members of religious orders aspiring to political office would experience only the problems of other Catholic politicians. In this world—fantastic to some, desirable to others—the Code of Canon Law would place no obstacles in the path of those priests, brothers and sisters who feel the urge to attain elective or appointive office in local, state or federal government. No bishop would be asked to give his permission to any priest or sister seeking political office. Few bishops would attempt to remove a religious office-holder and none would succeed. In this imaginary world, priests, sisters and the Catholic faithful would suspend their traditional belief that the clerical and the lay apostolates differ substantially in their relation to political life. Priests and sisters would seek and hold political office in numbers proportionate to lay people, without giving evidence that they represent the authoritative part of the Catholic Church or that they are in some special way subject to ecclesiastical authority. In short, for political purposes and in political settings, lay persons and priests and sisters would be indistinguishable from one another.

But this is not the world Catholics live in. Such a world has never existed. It does not exist now in the United States. It is readily arguable that it never will exist as long as the U.S. Constitution and the Roman Catholic Church continue to function—a very long time indeed. The real Catholic world—the one containing popes, bishops, canon law and ecclesiastical authority—is a world in which priests and sisters will experience many special difficulties if they try to attain political office and even more difficulties if they succeed: The difficulties are based in a traditional Catholic understanding of the role of the clergy and of religious orders in the Church—still a powerful tradition—and in the relation of religious institutions to the polity of the United States.

It is my contention that prominent strands in American history, Catholic theology and current events converge to demonstrate that priests and sisters ought to avoid serving in elective or appointive political office. To reach such a conclusion gives no satisfaction, for no American ever advises any fellow American not to aspire to political office without some feeling of presumptiousness. But I am as much a Catholic as an American; I know what my Church expects from its clergy and religious as well as I know what my country needs from its citizens. I also know how unlikely it is that the Church will change those aspects of its theology and authority that cause trouble for political priests and sisters.

My argument, in brief, derives from a reading of history and theology—a debatable and controversial reading, to be sure. My argument is capped by an appeal to prudence; even if my history and theology are flawed, I say, it won’t work, therefore don’t do it. If I were a bishop, I would probably not interfere with the election or appointment of a priest or brother or sister to political office. But I have no such authority or office, nor will I ever have. So I reach a position compatible with the realities of Catholic institutional life.

Concern over the clergy in political office has been coextensive with the history of the nation. John Carroll, the first bishop of American Catholicism, issued a clear warning:

I have observed that when the ministers of religion leave the duties of their profession to take a busy part in political matters they generally fall into contempt and sometimes even bring discredit to the cause in whose service they are engaged. (Quoted in John Cogley, Catholic America.)

Did Archbishop Carroll assume that a priest in political office would while serving in that capacity be a visible representative of the Church? No doubt contemporary priests—and, even more so, sisters—who are politically active would deny that they are representatives of the Church while serving in political office. But it is one thing to deny and another to escape identification with the Church in which one functions as a member of the clergy or a religious order.

When Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States in the 1830s, he was at first surprised to discover that Catholic priests did not hold political office. He investigated the reasons:

When I finally came to inquire into the attitudes of the clergy themselves, I found that most of them seemed voluntarily to steer clear of power and to take a sort of professional pride in claiming that it was no concern of theirs. (Democracy in America.)

Tocqueville himself came to approve heartily of the “self-restraint” that induced the American Catholic clergy to remain “aloof from public business.” He made a firm judgment that the clergy’s potential participation in politics posed serious dangers to religion itself:

I am so deeply convinced of the almost inevitable dangers which face beliefs when their interpreters take part in public affairs, and so firmly persuaded that at all costs Christianity must be maintained among the new democracies that I would rather shut priests up within their sanctuaries than allow them to leave them.

What are these dangers? Have they persisted into the 20th century and even into the 1980s?

Tocqueville argued first that religion in the United States influenced and partially controlled the habits and the thinking of the citizenry. This influence, he believed, was socially desirable because American political life was free. Liberty could readily be abused but, Tocqueville believed, “while the law allows the American people to do everything, there are things which religion prevents them from imagining and forbids them to dare.” Because of this indirect action of religion on the social life of the polity, Tocqueville felt confident in deciding that religion “should therefore be considered as the first of [the Americans’] political institutions.”

Secondly, Tocqueville argued that a source of the influence of religion in America was to be found in the constitutional separation of church and state. Religion exerted its influence because of, not in spite of, the fact that no religion could be established or favored in America. Of the Catholic priests he conversed with during his travels,

all thought that the main reason for the quiet sway of religion over their country was the complete separation of church and state. I have no hesitation in stating that throughout my stay in America I met nobody, lay or cleric, who did not agree about that.

Finally, according to Tocqueville’s analysis, it is the indirect but powerful moral influence of religion that the clergy place at risk when they enter active politics. This is Tocqueville’s concern, but it must also be a concern for our time, for the need for moral influences’ to control the tempting abuses of liberty remains. Possibly today the clergy are not unanimous about their “quiet sway”: nevertheless they should not, in my opinion, minimize their indirect influence.

Tocqueville concluded that the rough-and-tumble of political life itself would diminish the moral influence of those members of the clergy holding political office:

As long as a religion relies only upon the sentiments which are the consolation of every affliction, it can draw the heart of mankind to itself. When it is mingled with the bitter passions of this world, it is sometimes constrained to defend allies who are such from interest rather than from love; and it has to repulse as adversaries men who still love religion, although they are fighting, against religion’s allies. Hence religion cannot share the material strength of the rulers without being burdened with some of the animosity roused against them. (Emphasis mine.)

This observation may be more true today than it was a century and a half ago. Politics has leveled its practitioners; no one in a legislature, senate, city council, or school board today gets respect from citizens because of his or her status, including religious status. Politicians have come to accept the popular animosity that Tocqueville called attention to. They trade respect for power. But the clergy still depend for much of their influence on the respect they are accorded.

Some of the clergy, it is true, no longer share the insight Tocqueville credited to the clergy he met, that they “saw they would have to give up religious influence if they wanted to acquire political power.” And why has this insight begun to fade away? The answer to this question can be found on the same page of Democracy in America: “When governments seem so strong and laws so stable, men do not see the danger that religion may run by allying itself with power.” Better, perhaps, to anticipate the dangers of clergy in politics than to wait for the results.

A position based solely on Tocqueville’s argument would run the risk of basing contemporary political judgments on the conditions of religious and political life of the 1830s. Several modifications in Tocqueville’s analysis might, however, bring it up to date. For example, Tocqueville’s assumption that clergy in politics would be gaining power and sharing “the material strength of the rulers” applies to some clerical politicians but not to others. Many clerical politicians today enter politics to challenge the powerful rather than to join them, even “to speak truth to power.” A second modification might weaken Tocqueville’s central assumption that religion—the clergy in particular—in fact has great political influence without political practice. There is evidence that the American Catholic hierarchy today believe their influence has decreased and see politics as the path to regaining the moral sway that Tocqueville observed. In 1981, the president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, John R. Roach, said, “As a church, we are political practitioners because we have to be” (Origins, 3 Sept. 1981). Roach’s text suggests that by the “church” and by “we” he meant the bishops. Later in 1981, Roach said “the social vision of faith increasingly calls the church to a public theology and public witness on political questions” (Origins, 3 Dec. 1981). Such modifications, in my opinion, do not seriously compromise Tocqueville’s conclusion that political office-holding by priests is inadvisable in the United States. Tocqueville’s cautions are as pertinent today as a century and a half ago.

Neither Carroll’s nor Tocqueville’s warnings would seem to apply to religious orders of sisters, since both authors wrote in times when women were excluded from political office and most political activity. Moreover, religious sisters (and brothers) fall into neither the clerical nor the lay classification. Nonetheless, Tocqueville’s concerns about indirect vs. direct religious influences on the citizenry do apply to the work of religious sisters. Whether sisters are among the “interpreters” of religion—Tocqueville’s word—in the same sense as priests needs clarification, to be sure. Church law and church authorities have brought sisters under the canonical proscription against clerical participation in political office; many sisters think this is inappropriate, since sisters do not have clerical status or functions. Some of the laity see sisters and priests as together constituting official religious leadership, though this perception may be changing. Given the perception of sisters by most bishops and many lay people, sisters as well as priests may need to diminish their official standing—with the bishops or with the laity—in order to become accepted as politicians. This reduction in status was what Tocqueville warned against. But if priests and sisters cannot shed their religious status in political office, then they may run afoul of the situation Archbishop Carroll warned against—bringing “discredit to the cause in whose service they are engaged.”

A superficial reading of Tocqueville’s remarks on the influence of the clergy may mislead us into thinking that he would oppose the holding of political office by any religious believer, clerical or lay. When Tocqueville warns that “religion cannot share the material strength of the rules without being burdened with some of the animosity roused against them,” one could infer that Catholic lay persons are also being warned. After all, do not laity and clergy carry the same moral and religious beliefs into political life? My answer to this question is “Yes, but”: Yes, but clergy and laity differ essentially in their relationship to the institutional church. As Quentin L. Quade wrote in 1983, “the believer-as-citizen, Catholic or other, is not the agent of any church, but simply a value-informed citizen, politically identical to any other citizen informed by whatever values are dear to him” (Catholicism in Crisis, May 1983, p. 42). Clearly Tocqueville thought that clergy in politics continued in some sense to be agents of the Church.

If it remains true today that priests are agents—that is, representatives—of the Church and continue to be such while in political office, then Tocqueville’s argument applies to them. It never applied to the laity, and it can be made to apply to members of religious orders who are not priests only with difficulty. What is clearer, however, is that priests, brothers and sisters are subject to the authority of the Catholic hierarchy in a way not applicable to lay people. It seems likely that as the American Catholic bishops make political judgments of more and more particularity—as they have been doing for about 15 years—they will enforce their judgments with as much firmness as they find feasible.

Those over whom their authority will naturally—virtually automatically—extend will be priests, brothers and sisters. The laity in their political lives are not expected to subject themselves to the authority of bishops. Moreover, the laity can resist and have resisted efforts by the hierarchy to impose political judgments—this is the fact that allows Catholic lay people to function as free American citizens. Priests and sisters do not enjoy the same freedom.

Whether the use of episcopal authority in the political lives of priests and sisters is proper or an abuse remains problematic. Yet as long as bishops effectively exercise this authority, priests and sisters in political office will continue to be perceived as official or quasi-official representatives of the church, with both the advantages and the disadvantages that such a status brings.

For the bishops of Vatican Council II, reasons to advise priests away from active politics ran even deeper than the analysis of Tocqueville. Whether the conciliar theology shoring up this advice applies to religious sisters and brothers—directly or indirectly—as well as to priests remains unclear.

Vatican II spoke emphatically of the great differences between the functions of priests and lay people in the church. The role of the laity in “the temporal order” is addressed in the Decree on the Apostolate of Lay People, “Apostolicam Actuositatem”:

Laymen ought to take on themselves as their distinctive task [the] renewal of the temporal order. Guided by the light of the Gospel and the mind of the Church, prompted by Christian love, they should act in this domain in a direct way and in their own specific manner. (“Apostolicam Actuositatem,” #7. Austin Flannery, ed., Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents.)

This passage not only offers a religious basis for a lay person’s political action but also suggests that whoever is not a lay person has a different task in the Church, since the renewal of the temporal order is a “distinctive task,” that is, a task characteristic of lay persons, one serving to identify them as lay persons.

Vatican II theology on the role of priests in the temporal order is defined in the decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, “Presbyterorum Ordinis”:

The priests of the New Testament are, it is true, by their vocation to ordination, set apart in some way in the midst of the People of God, but this is not in order that they should be separated from that people or from any man, but that they should be consecrated to the task for which God chooses them. (“Presbyterorum Ordinis,” #3. Ibid.)

If the meaning of “set apart” in this passage does not seem to refer specifically to politics, a statement several pages later clarifies the ambiguity somewhat: “In building up a community of Christians, priests can never be the servants of any human ideology or party” (ibid, #6).

Vatican II theology, it would seem, assigns the laity and the clergy sharply different tasks. How this distinction is to be applied to the manifold callings of a real society depends on one’s understanding and interpretation of the conciliar documents. Whether the passages quoted here accurately reflect the overall spirit of Vatican II is hardly obvious. The situation is complicated by the question of whether religious sisters and brothers are to be discussed in the same terms as the clergy, that is, whether with respect to the temporal order, they are subject to similar restrictions as the clergy. Certain passages in the decree on the Up-to-date Renewal of Religious Life, “Perfectae Caritatis,” imply that the Council fathers intended religious sisters and brothers—called “members of institutes”—to be “set apart” in much the same manner as priests:

The members of each institute should recall, first of all, that when they made professions of the evangelical counsels they were responding to a divine call, to the end that, not merely being dead to sin but renouncing the world also, they might live for God alone. (“Perfectae Caritatis,” #5. Ibid.)

The phrase “renouncing the world” shares some ambiguity with the term “set apart” applied to priests, but the meanings of the two can hardly differ in any important way. “Perfectae Caritatis” adds, “The members of each institute, therefore, ought to seek God before all else, and solely” (ibid.).

No Vatican II passage by itself demonstrates that priests and sisters ought to eschew the active political life. But taken together, the quotations I have presented here point to a conclusion—more than plausible, less than convincing—that priests and sisters ought to recognize that their special place in the Church separates them in an important way from the temporal order and that those not ordained or enrolled in the religious life are expected to enter that temporal order and to take on its renewal as their specific, distinctive task.

If it were not for the attractions of political life, such a simple understanding of Vatican II theology might carry the day, and we would once again find that priests and sisters, in Tocqueville’s words, “voluntarily steer clear of power.” But this understanding is not shared by all theologians, and certainly not by many politically-minded priests and religious—hence the contemporary theological disputes about the political activity undertaken by members of the clergy and religious orders. My own opinion is that any priest or sister who enters political office as a full-time profession could only with great difficulty claim to be a devoted follower of the prescriptions of Vatican II quoted above. Yet he or she may be acting in the spirit of Vatican II without special focus on the passages I have singled out. Interpretations of Vatican II theology vary greatly, as always, and my opinion is only one among many.

The strength of theological interpretations—whether for good or ill—depends in part on the status and authority of the interpreter. Whether certain priests or sisters find political office to be agreeable with the mandates of Vatican II may matter less than whether a bishop or religious superior shares their judgment. Priests and sisters answer to clearly defined figures of authority; their roles in the church, unlike those of lay persons, become concretized in hierarchical relationships. These hierarchical relationships, moreover, are made into legal statutes by canon law. Priests and sisters cannot escape the translation of theological judgments into authority and law; in this sense they lack the freedom of action that lay persons enjoy in the church—and freedom of action means a great deal in American political life.

The new Code of Canon Law, promulgated in 1983, is built on the theology of Vatican II, or perhaps on a particular understanding of that theology. On the question of priests in politics, the new Code is unambiguous: “Clerics are forbidden to assume public office whenever it means sharing in the exercise of civil power” (Can. 285, #3. The Code of Canon Law). If it were not for the authority of bishops to make exceptions to such regulations, this proscription would have driven every political priest from public office around the world—and in practical terms the debate would be over.

Religious brothers and sisters, according to the new canon law, are said to be in a state “neither clerical nor lay” (Can. 588, #1. Ibid). However, with respect to authority, this third state is more like the clerical state:

Institutes of consecrated life, since they are dedicated in a special way to the service of God and of the whole Church, are in a particular manner subject to its supreme authority. (Can. 590, #1. Ibid.)

And in Canon 672, members of religious orders are forbidden to hold public office: “Religious are bound by the provisions of cann. 277, 285, 286 and 289” (Ibid.). (Canon 285 is quoted above.)

Canon law, in short, directly forbids priests and religious from occupying political office but in its recognition of episcopal discretion and authority makes exceptions possible for both.

The line of reasoning that begins with Vatican II and extends to canon law and ends with the authority of bishops over the political offices held by priests and sisters is coherent, logical, defensible—though hardly definitive. Whether the canonical restrictions are necessary or desirable or opportune constitute separate questions which would appear to have little practical significance, for alterations in the new code are highly unlikely for many years.

Simply forbidding priests and sisters from elective and appointive political offices may have been a better inference from the theology of Vatican II than allowing exceptions to the rule. It is the exceptions and the authority of bishops to make them that have caused much more difficulty for priests and sisters than the regulations themselves.

Religious authority and political activity do not mix well in American society. If a priest or sister holds political office, he or she holds it according to constitutional or statutory provisions, by election or appointment. For the political office-holder to be subject to the electorate’s or the appointing officer’s decision is the way of American politics. But for that office-holder to be subject also to the discretionary authority of a bishop removes the very freedom of action that allowed the office-holder to seek and hold office in the first place. In other words, if a priest or sister is to be free to seek public office at all, he or she deserves not to have that freedom compromised. By retaining authority over priests and sisters who have received permission to seek and hold political office, bishops take on a political authority—and political authority is something the American polity aims to deny to churches. In such a situation—played out in the cases of Father Robert Drinan, Sister Agnes Mary Mansour, and Father Robert Ogle, among others—religion and politics are mixed, to the detriment of the political freedom of certain priests and sisters. In short, the authority to make exceptions to canonical prohibitions on clerical political activity results in a de facto grant of political authority to Catholic bishops. This is the inevitable result of the reasoning that led from Vatican II to the 1983 Code of Canon Law. A further conclusion has not yet been drawn, but I would recommend it: Priests and sisters should avoid political activity even if they believe such activity to be in the spirit of Vatican II theology; if they insist on seeking political office, they will subject their political office to religious superiors and thus injure the very political activity they believe in. They may also risk reducing or damaging their status as clergy or members of religious orders.

In the abstract, I admit, all of the above theological and legal argumentation is debatable and controversial. My conclusion—that Vatican II, canon law, etc. imply that priests and sisters ought to avoid political office—may not persuade many people. But my argument is not abstract—it has had real consequences with real people. If someone remains unconvinced by the history and the theology of priests and sisters in politics, events of recent years may be more persuasive.

Hubert Humphrey used to say he learned more about economics from one South Dakota dust storm than he did from all his years in college (See Winthrop Griffith, Humphrey: A Candid Biography). American Catholics had an opportunity for a similarly intense learning experience in 1980, when Father Robert F. Drinan, S.J., a fifth-term U.S. congressman, was ordered by the Vatican not to stand for re-election. The direct order—originating from Pope John Paul II and transmitted by the Jesuit superior general in Rome to Father Drinan’s provincial superior in New England—and Drinan’s immediate capitulation might have more to teach about priests in politics than all the history, theology, and canon law we might study on the subject.

If we didn’t learn our lesson from the Drinan case, and if we thought religious sisters wouldn’t suffer similar fates, three years later we had a second chance to learn, when Archbishop Edmund Szoka of Detroit revoked his permission for Sister Agnes Mary Mansour, R.S.M., to continue as the director of the Michigan Department of Social Service. Sister Mansour demurred, but within a few months was pressured into relinquishing her vows as a Sister of Mercy of the Union.

And in 1984, in Canada, Father Robert Ogle received a letter from the apostolic pro-nuncio, Archbishop Angelo Palmas, reminding him that canon law prohibits priests from holding political office. Ogle had been a member of the Canadian parliament for five years with the permission of his bishop, James P. Mahoney of Saskatoon. After receiving the letter Ogle announced he would not run for re-election.

Are three South Dakota dust storms sufficient?

The cases of Robert Drinan and Robert Ogle demonstrate the power of the Vatican over priests. They show that a Vatican decision can be made and will be made independent of the judgment of a priest’s local superiors. The Jesuit provincial in New England, Father Edward M. O’Flaherty, was not consulted before he received the telephone, call about Drinan from the Rome headquarters of the Jesuit order on April 27, 1980. That the filing deadline for candidates for Congress from Massachusetts was May 6 was seen as no obstacle by the Vatican; Flaherty was informed that the decision was final. That Drinan had been elected five times by his district’s voters also was no obstacle. Father Ogle received his letter four months after Bishop Mahoney had consulted Cardinal Silvio Oddi, head of the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy; Cardinal Oddi had informed the bishop he could give Ogle permission to run for re-election.

The Drinan case taught American Catholics not to be misled by the fact that certain priests have entered public office and have remained there for a time. In 1977, in Drinan’s fourth term, religious reporter Jim Castelli wrote confidently but prematurely, “Drinan… seems about to become a fixture in the House” (Commonweal, 24 June 1977). Castelli generalized: “the involvement of religious in politics is now fairly widely accepted” (ibid.) The repeated permissions to run for Congress that Drinan had received from his American superiors counted for naught in Rome. Nor did the Vatican find any reason to explain why its decision was made.

Fr. Flaherty has reported that the Vatican had not singled out Drinan for personal discipline:

It has been stressed to me that Vatican and Jesuit authorities in Rome wish to underline the point that the principal reason for the order was the pope’s convictions about the proper role of the priests. Indeed, one highly placed Vatican official privately expressed the hope that it might be possible to persuade people that the pope was acting exclusively out of principle. There was no intention of singling out Father Drinan for criticism. (Origins, 22 May 1980.)

But what if the pope had decided to issue the order because of something about Drinan’s politics, his position on abortion legislation, for example? The order could have been given in exactly the same way and would have been defended on a different principle. Doubtless Drinan would also have obeyed in this hypothetical case. The authority of the Vatican over priests in politics is firm enough so that the Vatican’s reasons for acting are of little or no consequence to those who must obey. The Vatican’s power reveals the local bishop’s permission for priests to be in politics as undependable.

When the Vatican intervenes in the American political process, fears of religious interference in American political life are revived. American politics suffers as well as the politician affected, since direct control over any politician by a religious organization contradicts the American principle of separation of church and state. But since the Vatican seems not to be moved by this notion, shouldn’t priests eschew political office for the good of the nation and the integrity of its politics?

The case of Anges Mary Mansour taught the same lesson as the Drinan and Ogle cases—and much more. Sister Mansour accepted an appointment as director of Social Services from Michigan Governor James Blanchard on December 29, 1982. Detroit Archbishop Edmund Szoka approved her appointment “as long as she makes clear her opposition to abortion” (Origins, 1 Sept. 1983)). By placing this condition on his permission, Archbishop Szoka taught us a special lesson: bishops when allowing priests or sisters to enter political office have the prerogative to impose conditions. A political office-holder who accepts conditions from a religious superior gives up some political liberty to a religious leader, the very political liberty that enables a politician to make decisions in the public interest.

As Sister Mansour bitterly discovered later, the Archbishop’s conditions were more precise than they appeared at the outset. On Feb. 23, 1983, Szoka called for Mansour’s resignation from her new office, reporting that he had “clearly told her that if she did not publicly oppose Medicaid payments for abortion, I would have to declare my objection and opposition to her appointment” (Origins, 26 May 1983). Szoka thus demonstrated that conditions placed on a bishop’s permission may change, and that his permission may be withdrawn at any time. The degree of control over a clerical or religious political office-holder thus claimed by a bishop is extraordinary in American political terms.

That Agnes Mary Mansour was a sister not a priest counted for naught in her case. That a bishop has authority over a sister entering politics was a settled fact in the case—settled in the bishop’s mind and in the Vatican’s. Early in the dispute, which lasted only three months, Sister Mansour expressed a view of episcopal authority that appears too mild in retrospect. In a statement at her confirmation hearing on March 8, she said of Archbishop Szoka:

His demand of me and of my religious superiors that I resign… raised once again the suspicion that the church can intrude in state affairs and Catholics, much less a Catholic sister, are not free from church control. (Origins, 31 March 1983).

In a short time, the “suspicion” became a reality. Mansour was given the choice of resigning her political office or being dispensed from her religious vows. The Vatican sent its own representative—Auxiliary Bishop Anthony Bevilacqua of Brooklyn—to deliver this mandatory choice. Bishop Bevilacqua reminded Mansour of “her vow of obedience to the Holy Father” (Origins, 26 May 1983). Her protestations had brought Mansour up against the hard rock of Church authority.

Sister Mansour lost after a brief period of protest. Father Drinan gave up without a fight. Father Ogle abandoned his bid for re-election within two weeks after hearing froth the Vatican nuncio. Father Robert Cornell, a Norbertine priest and former congressman, capitulated to his bishop in the wake of the Drinan case and dropped out of his 1980 re-election campaign. In 1984, Elizabeth Morancy and Arlene Violet, Sisters of Mercy in Rhode Island, left their religious order because Bishop Louis E. Gelineau of Providence insisted they choose between their religious vows and political office. Morancy is a State Representative; Violet was a candidate for Rhode Island attorney general.

Need there be more cases to convince American priests and sisters that they cannot prevail against bishops and the Vatican? That their political ambitions likely be controlled and then dashed by their religious superiors? That political office for them will always be subject to religious authority?

When the Vatican drove Robert Drinan from the U.S. Congress, the editors of Commonweal tried to react with moderation. “We believe,” the editors wrote, “the ordained ministers should avoid political office but can see good grounds for exceptions” (Commonweal, 23 May 1980). A similar judgment was expressed by Monsignor George G. Higgins, former director of the U.S. bishops’ Social Action Department: “While, as a general rule, I can see no urgent need for priests to run for political office under partisan auspices, I would allow for exceptions” (“May Church Ministers Be Politicians?” Concilium #157, 1982). Higgins added that he “would generally advise against” the involvement of the clergy in elected political office (ibid.). Neither Higgins nor the Commonweal editors, however, seemed to find any problems with the exceptions themselves.

A simple rule, whether canonical or not, that would exclude priests and sisters from political office without exceptions could with some difficulty be defended on theological and historical grounds. Probably such a blanket rule would be attacked as unreasonable by many American Catholics, lay and clerical, despite historical precedents and statements in documents of Vatican II. Such a rule does not exist, however, and arguments for and against it are only theoretical. The rule that does exist bars priests, brothers and sisters from political office unless they receive permission from their bishop. In other words, for priests and sisters to practice active politics in the United States, they must give over their right to decide on beginning and continuing in political office into the hands of their bishop, who may in turn be overruled by the Vatican. The bishops or the Vatican may impose conditions, change their minds, make decisions on grounds acceptable only to themselves, engage in dialogue or not, divulge their reasoning or not.

The history, theology and current events presented in this chapter lead to two practical conclusions. The first is that the seeking and holding of elective or appointive public office by Catholic priests and members of religious orders risks compromising the separation of church and state, risks a mixing of religion and politics that the U.S. Constitution in its First Amendment intends to avoid. The second is that sisters, brothers and priests who take the risk will probably have difficulties retaining their office—difficulties imposed by their bishop or the Vatican itself. Given this situation, does it make good sense for priests and sisters to aspire to political office? It might for some here and there, but in general it seems clear enough that priests and sisters ought to avoid political office.

Author

  • Robert Spaeth

    Robert L. Spaeth came to Saint John’s University, Minnesota, as a visiting professor in Liberal Studies and director of Freshman Colloquium in 1977. He was appointed dean in 1979 and held that post for nine years. He resigned in 1988 to return to teaching. He died in 1994.

tagged as:

Join the Conversation

in our Telegram Chat

Or find us on
Item added to cart.
0 items - $0.00

Orthodox. Faithful. Free.

Signup to receive new Crisis articles daily

Email subscribe stack
Share to...