Moral Complicity With an Evil Act

Ryan T. Anderson has already noted George Weigel’s exchange with Obama’s ostensible pro-life Catholic supporters. Weigel’s most recent rejoinder is, indeed, simply devastating.

But there was one particular attack on Weigel that was not addressed, but is worth highlighting:

Weigel may also wish to engage in a theoretical debate about hypothetical public support for the funding of abortion, and whether that results in improper moral complicity with an evil act. That is a worthy seminar topic, but we recommend he start by asking the same question of himself in terms of coerced taxpayer support for an unjust and unjustifiable war in Iraq costing over $10 billion a month and thousands of Iraqi and American lives, which Weigel aided and abetted with his vocal support, contrary to the express prayers of the Holy Father he called “a witness to hope.”

The authors seem to be suggesting here that if political advocacy for public funding of abortion “results in improper moral complicity with an evil act,” then political support for the war in Iraq should be similarly understood as “improper moral complicity with an evil act.”

The not so implicit suggestion is that if a Catholic politician were to receive ecclesiastical sanction (e.g., excommunication, withholding the sacraments) for advocating (or voting for) government funding of abortion, so should those Catholic politicians who supported the Iraq war (and who voted to fund it). Conversely, the suggestion seems to be that if you are not willing to sanction Catholic politicians who supported the war, you should not be willing to sanction Catholic politicians who support funding for abortion.

That’s one version of the “seamless garment” position, I suppose. The unfortunate implication of this position would be to render even an otherwise impeccable pro-life Catholic politician (e.g., our colleague Rick Santorum who voted in favor of the Iraq War and who continued to support funding the war) as morally suspect and as subject to ecclesiastical sanction as those who support public funding abortion or those who defend partial birth abortion. Do these guys really want to suggest that a Catholic politician’s support for the Iraq war makes him morally complicit in promoting and supporting intrinsically evil acts, just as if he had voted to fund abortion (perhaps by advocating repeal of the Hyde amendment) or had he supported partial-birth abortion?

Still, it might be instructive to think about how their argument (if we may call it that) might be salvaged from complete incoherence. Absent a full-throated defense of absolute pacifism (which would render Obama’s support of the “good war” in Afghanastan equally subject to condemnation) the bishops could declare that selective conscientious objection to the Iraq war is the only morally permissible option for Catholics. On the assumption that the Iraq war is manifestly “unjust and unjustified,” the bishops could simply declare, that no Catholic may permissibly serve in Iraq as a soldier sailor, airman, or Marine. Such service would, they might argue, involve a Catholic not merely in moral complicity in evil acts but with direct involvement with evil (killing in an unjust war). They might then extend a similar judgment to Catholic politicians who support funding of the Iraq war.

Now I doubt the authors would be so foolish as to suggest something like this, even in an academic seminar, not least because pretty good moral arguments can be mustered in defense of the just use of military force in Iraq. They may even be willing to dismiss such a line of argument as risible. In which case, they would be right. But apart from something very much like this, their argument for the moral equivalence between supporting the Iraq war and supporting funding for abortion is equally risible, and a rhetorical cheap shot.