Conscience and Politics: Bush vs. Cuomo

Notre Dame philosophy prof John O'Callaghan offers the following response to my earlier post on the role of conscience in the politics of Jeb Bush and Mario Cuomo:

I thought your question Saturday, about whether there is any difference between Gov. Cuomo and Gov. Bush on the responsibilities of Catholic politicians given the deliberations of their consciences, very interesting.  Granted the wisdom of avoiding judging the inner depths of anyone’s conscience, it seems that we can at least take what they say about their consciences as food for speculative discussion about the nature of conscience, and that is how I will act here.  I will treat them as types rather than actual individuals.  And for clarity’s sake let us suppose that Gov. Cuomo’s position was one of privately opposing abortion according to Catholic teaching as an intrinsically evil act, but publicly supporting it.  In other words, suppose his public policy stance was not one of mere toleration of an evil that he was working to eliminate, but actual support in the public forum.  (As time has lapsed and memory fades, I am a little wary of attributing that stark a position to the actual person, as he was very talented at “nuancing the problematic.”  On the other hand, I don’t recall at all that his position was one of simply tolerating a policy he hoped in the future to eliminate.  But here I’m just constructing ideal cases for the sake of the question.)  One of your questions appears to be whether there is any real difference in the exercise of Gov. Cuomo’s conscience and Gov. Bush’s as Catholic politicians in fulfilling their duties as governors.

I think the answer to that question is yes.  Gov. Cuomo struggled in his conscience over policies promoting intrinsically evil acts.  Gov. Bush struggles in his conscience over a policy that does not promote an intrinsically evil act, however much it is an act that the Church teaches ought to be done in very rare circumstances, and however much it may be badly pursued in particular circumstances.  The deliberations of their respective consciences are different, because the material content of those deliberations are different.  We often have a temptation to separate the formal features of our practical reasoning from the material, akin to the way in speculative argument we may talk about the logical structure of an argument, modus ponens for example, as distinct from the content of that argument.  In that sense we might say that the biologist and the chemist made the same argument, though one was talking about cows and the other numbers.  With regard to conscience, abstracting away what the consciences are actually deliberating over, we might then be inclined to say that with respect to their consciences there is really not much difference between the two. 

The charge of hypocrisy, for example, is the expression of our moral disapprobation toward purely formal features of our practical reasoning and action.  You can call anybody a hypocrite because of the way his actions contradict his words.  Doesn’t matter at all what the material contents of his words or actions are.  A hypocritical shopkeeper versus a hypocritical murderer versus a hypocritical politician—they are all hypocrites.  That’s probably why we find it so easy to condemn others for being hypocrites formally, but very difficult to do so for being any number of other things materially.  We tend toward a soft relativism of material moral facts, and a hard moral absolutism about the formal features of practical reasoning—“who am I to judge?” versus “he’s such a hypocrite!”.  Pope Benedict XVI analyzes a similar kind of separation of “free will” from the “truth” here.

In reality, though, we never actually argue practically in a purely formal way, as our arguments always have material content.  Whom would we rather meet, a hypocritical shopkeeper, politician, or murderer?

So here is an analogy.  Is there any significant difference in the struggles of conscience of someone promoting a policy of torture and someone pursuing a policy of removing children from their parent’s home?  I think the answer to that is yes. Surely taking a child away from its parents is an act that can be good, and may be done, but presumably only in very rare cases.  We want the person promoting the latter to struggle with an actual decision in particular circumstances as to whether this is the best thing to do here and now.  Such a struggle would seem to be a sign of a good conscience, even if he is not doing a good job of it here and now; there is reason for hope.    One finds oneself struggling in one’s conscience with decisions about taking children away from their parents as one exercising one’s responsibility for promoting the common good in a certain governmental role.  The person may feel guilt over making a bad decision, though his actually having to make a decision at all here is not reason for feeling guilt ipso facto.  In the case of the former, torture, we don’t want someone to be struggling with such a decision at all; that someone is engaged in such a struggle of conscience is not a good sign, nor does it give reason for hope.    Is one struggling with one’s conscience in promoting torture exercising one’s responsibility for promoting the common good?  No.  They’ve lost sight of it.  It is ipso facto a reason for feelings of guilt.  The actual difference between the two is a difference between the exercise of prudence, even if badly carried out, and the exercise of what I called, following Aristotle, “cleverness” here.

So it strikes me that the difference in the material positions pursued makes a significant difference to what can be concluded from Gov. Bush’s remarks.  Gov. Cuomo’s remarks provided evidence for attributing to him the view that good governance by a Catholic politician may involve promoting in public polices that facilitate acts one believes are intrinsically evil, like torture, slavery, and abortion.  Gov. Bush’s remarks provide no such evidence for attributing that view to him.

At the end of the first book of the Republic, Plato considers a band of thieves, and the fact that they seem to need to act justly toward one another if they are to be successful in the injustice of their thievery directed at the larger community they live within—honor among thieves and all that.  As the Republic winds on, however, we come to understand that such justice among thieves may have the appearance of justice, but it is no justice at all. 

UPDATE: William & Mary law prof Eric Chason echoes these sentiments by drawing my attention to Pope Benedict XVI's earlier writing:

Reading your post about Cuomo and Bush (along with the thoughtful follow ups)brought to mind the confidential "Kerry letter" that was attributed to then Cardinal Ratzinger last summer. In particular,

"3. Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia."