Recently there has been some criticism of the issues questionnaire that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops sent to the two major party presidential candidates, George Bush and John Kerry. Although the questionnaire is not yet public, certain people outside the USCCB have obtained copies of it, and have been disappointed by the nature of the questions. There has been a Washington Times article on the subject, and Deal Hudson has written about Bishop Rene Henry Gracida from Texas, who criticized the questionnaire. (I am aware that the Washington Times and Deal Hudson would be considered essentially partisan Republican sources, but Bishop Gracida is presumably not, and in any case no one from the bishops' conference disputes the basic facts presented about the questionnaire.)

To summarize, out of forty-one questions, there are more questions on immigration (seven) than on any other one issue. There are also questions on the minimum wage, farm subsidies, and broadcast licensing, among other issues. Meanwhile, there are only three questions on abortion and one on embryonic stem cell research. Apparently the questions are also in alphabetical order, rather than categorized in some way that might indicate that there is a hierarchy of importance among the different issues on the questionnaire. Of course, the bishops can distinguish the importance of various moral questions in their teaching in other contexts, and therefore we must hope that they will do more in the future before the election to clarify the importance of specific issues addressed in the questionnaire. However, that still leaves the question of why they would issue a questionnaire in the first place that blurs rather than clarifies the relevance of Catholic moral teaching to crucial contemporary political issues.

It seems obvious that one reason the questionnaire took the form that it did must have been because of a fear of appearing too partisan on behalf of one political party, specifically the Republican Party. A list of the most serious moral issues from a Catholic perspective that are at stake in the contemporary political debate would have to start with abortion, and also include embryonic stem cell research and legal recognition of homosexual "marriages." These issues are ones on which, by and large, Republican positions tend to be closer to the Catholic teaching than Democratic positions are. This understandably might be considered problematic by some of the bishops for a couple of reasons.

First, the bishops may sincerely (and rightly) wish to avoid giving the impression to any Catholics that the Catholic Church endorses a particular political party. While this is a legitimate desire, I do not believe it is a real-world concern in relation to the United States bishops. I have seen Catholic organizations that seemed to link themselves closely to the Republican Party, sometimes to an unseemly extent in my opinion, given the major flaws in Republican policies judged from a Catholic perspective. However, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops clearly is not in danger of entering the category of such organizations. I do not think even a minimally informed Catholic would ever believe that the USCCB endorses the Republican Party. From looking only at the questions asked in this questionnaire, it seems more likely that people might mistakenly conclude that the USCCB favors the Democratic Party. Although I do not in fact agree with those who accuse the USCCB of being in effect Democratic, I certainly think it should already be clear to everyone that the USCCB is not in any sense Republican.

Besides a concern about being seen by Catholics as partisan, the bishops may also have a long term concern about how their politically related activity will be perceived by the IRS. They may feel that, while in theory religious groups are currently allowed to address and draw attention to issues of moral importance to them, down the road as a practical matter religious organizations that have not appeared to favor one party by the issues they raise will be less likely to undergo scrutiny of their tax-exempt status. If there is such a fear, I suspect that it is in a sense justified. I have little doubt that, if present societal trends continue, religious groups at some point in the near future will be much more severely restricted in what they can say about politically relevant issues if they wish to keep their tax exemptions. However, that is not a reason to be silent now. Not only would it be morally irresponsible for the bishops to avoid their duty to proclaim the truth out of fear for the future status of the Church's tax exemption, it also simply would not make any sense. Surely now is the time to speak up more forcefully than ever, because if there is any chance that the negative trends in our society and our government can be reversed, the opportunity obviously will be much greater now, before things decline any further than they already have, and perhaps before further attempts are made to curb religious speech as a result.

As a side point, another question that unfortunately has to be asked about this questionnaire, as with many things that comes out of the conference of bishops, is who exactly is behind it. As a practical matter, things like this questionnaire are generally composed by the staff of the USCCB, which means people who are not bishops. I am all for lay people being involved in helping with the work of the bishops, but I also firmly believe that lay people, and equally priests, monks, and nuns, should be confined to a more strictly advisory role than is presently the case, in what is after all supposed to be a conference of bishops. As with many other things from the USCCB, I suspect that this questionnaire would have been better, even if still far from perfect, if it came more directly from the bishops themselves rather than their staff. The spirit of this questionnaire does not even appear entirely consistent with the statements of the bishops in recent years on politics and government, which have fairly consistently emphasized the central importance of abortion and other life issues in the political debate. I wonder whether it would have been better to issue no questionnaire at all, rather than issue one that was not more directly a product of the actual conference of bishops. As with many other actions undertaken by the staff of the USCCB, one is forced to ask: If the action is not important enough to merit the direct attention of the entire conference of bishops themselves, is it important enough that the action needs to be taken by the USCCB at all?

At the same time, one must also remember that even among the bishops themselves many of them probably were raised as Democrats, and are not quite as comfortable with the political "right." After all, they are mostly older men, and at one time the Democratic Party dominated the Catholic vote, particularly within certain ethnic backgrounds. That was before the Democrats became the abortion party, of course, but many of the bishops probably have an instinctive residual discomfort with the Republican Party, regardless of how they individually now vote in elections. I can understand such a discomfort, and once again I must emphasize that the bishops are entirely right to wish to avoid the appearance of endorsing the Republican Party. However, not only do I not think such an appearance is a real danger right now, but also I believe that there are better ways of avoiding any chance of such an appearance than issuing a questionnaire that seems to downplay the importance of central moral issues.

For one thing, the bishops in their preaching could make clear, without of course referring to any political party specifically, that the positions of both major political parties on moral issues fall far short of the moral vision of the Church. This should be obvious, because while the Republicans generally come closer than the Democrats to positions that would be consistent with Catholic teaching, even the Republicans have some serious problems on issues ranging from abortion to embryonic stem-cell research to homosexual civil unions. On life issues, for example, a significant minority of Republican politicians are openly pro-abortion, and even most Republican politicians who are called pro-life actively support some form of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, which from a Catholic perspective should not even be allowed. In fact, as a practical matter Republicans who call themselves pro-life almost universally support legal abortion for cases of rape and incest, and to save the life of the mother. Furthermore, even to the extent that Republicans do oppose abortion in theory, they have been far from faithful in carrying out that opposition in practice. That is why, for example, we are still not close to overturning Roe v. Wade despite seven of the nine current Supreme Court justices having been chosen by Republican presidents. Therefore, if Catholic bishops truly proclaim the fullness of Catholic teaching about human life, there should be no possibility of anyone confusing Catholic positions with Republican positions.

Also, there really are important issues on which some Democrats may be closer to the preferred Catholic position than most Republicans. However, we need to be realistic here about how far that point can be pushed: there is no preferred Catholic position on farm subsidies or broadcast licensing. Nor does the Catholic Church specify appropriate levels for the minimum wage, or taxes for that matter. On the other hand, the Catholic Church does have a definite position against preemptive war (despite the protestations of some individual Catholics to the contrary), which is an important moral issue that the United States is almost certain to face again in the future. It is not clear how much difference there is between Bush and Kerry on that issue, but it is an issue on which the bishops could not be considered to favor the Republicans. It still does not rise to the level of importance of abortion, but at least it is a serious moral issue, with far-reaching consequences, and on which the Catholic Church has directly relevant teachings. By contrast, many of the issues that in fact made it on to the bishops' questionnaire do not even belong on the same page as abortion, and in fact make the whole questionnaire look less serious than it really should.

As it happens, even though the Democrats have been the abortion party during my entire lifetime, when I have been given the choice of a pro-life Democrat and a pro-life Republican, I have voted for the pro-life Democrat every time. However, the fact is that such a choice is rarely available, and usually only in relatively low-level political races. It is also a fact that there are over a million abortions every year in the United States, even without counting unknown abortions through abortifacients, or the destruction of embryos for research. Abortion is by far the most crucial issue from the standpoint of Catholic morality in the arena of public policy in the United States today. While it is indeed important to avoid the impression of endorsing a specific political party, particularly one as seriously flawed as the Republican Party, moral truths must still be proclaimed clearly regardless of appearances or any other concerns. This can be done more effectively if Catholic leaders, in all their activities, even things such as political questionnaires, consistently distinguish peripheral and morally debatable issues from the clearest and most important moral problems of our time.