Interrogating Political Responsibility
Are We Responsible for Things We Don't Support?
Back in November, I wrote some thoughts on the decision by the U.S. Catholic bishops not to significantly update their voting guide, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, ahead of the 2024 general elections. My main argument was that the current guide, the basic text of which was written in 2007 (during the Bush administration!), takes participation in a democratic system for granted and doesn’t adequately respond to the fragility of our democratic institutions in the United States. I also noted that the document frames Catholic participation in the electoral process as primarily centered on maintaining the purity of one’s conscience in the midst of pluralism.
I was reminded of this by a post I stumbled upon this morning on the social media site Bluesky (an alternative to X, formerly Twitter, and where you can find me at @matthewshadle.bsky.social):
The context for the post was a discussion of the war in Gaza, and (I think) it was meant to refer to the potential culpability of Israelis for the actions of their government in Gaza and/or the responsibility of U.S. supporters of Joe Biden for the U.S. government’s continued arms sales to Israel. I don’t want to delve into either of those issues in this post, but what intrigued me was the poster’s attempt to stake out a nuanced middle ground between, on the one hand, the view that all the citizens of a nation are just as morally culpable for the unjust actions of their government as those who directly carry out those actions, and on the other, the view that one has no responsibility for the actions of a democratic government one didn’t vote for, or even for policies one doesn’t personally support. The poster does so by distinguishing between responsibility in some general sense and culpability, of which there can be various levels.
Catholics ought to be comfortable with the idea of different levels or types of responsibility or culpability. Indeed, the dilemma faced by someone who supports President Biden electorally while opposing continued U.S. support for Israel in the Gaza conflict is very similar to the question which has been central to Catholic debates over voting for more than three decades, namely, whether a Catholic can vote for a pro-choice politician. In fact, this debate revolves around one way of distinguishing different types of responsibility or culpability used in Forming Consciences itself:
A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who favors a policy promoting an intrinsically evil act . . . if the voter’s intent is to support that position. In such cases, a Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in grave evil. . . .
There may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate’s unacceptable position even on policies promoting an intrinsically evil act may reasonably decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons. . . . (##34-35)
Forming Consciences therefore distinguishes between voting for a candidate precisely because of their support for an unethical position (whether or not one has other, additional reasons for voting for the candidate) and voting for a candidate in spite of their support for an unethical position that one otherwise opposes. The former is morally prohibited, but the latter can be permissible. As the cited passage suggests, this distinction is based on the traditional contrast between material cooperation, that is, a situation in which, while not participating in an unethical action oneself, one’s own action in some way facilitates the unethical action, and formal cooperation, when one consents to or agrees with (lends “moral support” to) another’s unethical action. Formal cooperation is always wrong, while culpability for material cooperation is dependent on the circumstances.
Note, however, that Forming Consciences does not conclude that if a person votes for a candidate in spite of, rather than because of, their support for an unethical position, that person therefore has no responsibility for the possibility of that unethical position becoming (or remaining) policy. Rather, it argues that one can only support this politician for grave reasons, that is, because of other positions held by the politician (or their opponent) or other factors that in some manner “outweigh” the politician’s unethical stance. One might say that the voter has a responsibility to ensure that they should only contribute to such a harmful outcome for weighty reasons. Although not directly mentioned in Forming Consciences, this is an application of the principle of double effect, developed, like the distinction between formal and material cooperation, in the Catholic casuistical tradition. The principle of double effect states (in simple terms) that, if an action has both good and bad effects, we must intend the good effect and not the bad, the good cannot be brought about by the bad, and the good must be equal to or outweigh the bad (incidentally, the principle of double effect is reflected in the concept of proportionality used in just-war reasoning, a concept central to debates over the war in Gaza, as I noted back in October).
The Catholic moral tradition, then, is helpful for making at least some distinctions between types of responsibility when it comes to voting. Because the casuistical tradition emerged out of the practice of priests advising penitents during the sacrament of confession, these distinctions are particularly helpful when one’s goal is preserving the purity of one’s conscience at the ballot box. But are there other types of political responsibility not addressed by these distinctions? For example, even if, for grave reasons, a person votes for a politician who supports an unethical position, does that person still bear some kind of responsibility for the possibility of that position being translated into policy? What about a situation when a political leader implements a policy of great public import that was not a contested issue in the previous election, such as the decision for the U.S. to become militarily involved in the Libyan Civil War taken by President Barack Obama in 2011, or the various COVID-19 policies implemented by state governors in 2020? Does opposition to those policies, for example by participating in a protest, absolve one of responsibility for them? Or, as the poster cited above suggests, as citizens of a democracy, do we all bear some kind of responsibility for the actions of our government, regardless of whether we support them or not?
I think there are good reasons for Catholics to agree with the latter premise. As Catholics, we believe that politics is at the service of the common good. But the common good is not a static state of affairs we can simply achieve with just the right policies. Politics is an ongoing common endeavor in which we all should have the right to participate; it can’t be reduced to the aggregate behaviors of the individuals who make up the community. Of course, in a democracy, this common endeavor involves debate and contestation, but that doesn’t mean those who end up in the minority on a particular issue, or those who lose an election, are therefore excluded from the common work of politics or free from political responsibility. On the contrary, elections and political debates are part of the people’s shared responsibility for the common good, not a temporary hiatus to determine who’s responsible for the common good and who’s absolved of responsibility. I’m responsible for the things the politicians I voted for do even when I don’t agree with them. I’m even responsible for what the politicians I didn’t vote for do.
On the other hand, as the Bluesky poster also notes, we don’t want to say we are responsible in those situations in the same way we are responsible for the things we morally support, let alone in the same way as someone who directly carries out an unethical policy. The problem is that the word “responsibility” is one of those words that is vitally important but that can be used in a multitude of ways. What kind of distinctions can we make to clarify these different types of political responsibility?
In his contribution to the volume Distant Markets, Distant Harms: Economic Complicity and Christian Ethics, edited by Daniel K. Finn, the economist and ethicist Albino Barrera, O.P. distinguishes between three types of responsibility:
Causality: One is “responsible” in the sense that one’s own action contributes to causing a certain effect, whether beneficial or harmful.
Moral Responsibility: One is “responsible” in the sense that one can be praised or blamed for an action. This is similar to “culpability,” although the latter only considers blameworthy actions (mea maxima culpa!).
Liability: One is “responsible” in the sense that one is obligated to mitigate, make reparations for, or in some way act in response to harm done. This is not limited to, but certainly includes, legal liability.
Note that none of these types of responsibility necessarily entails the others. For example, Barrera notes that the rise of millions of people out of poverty into the middle class in China and India has, on the whole, contributed to a rise in food and gasoline prices, with deleterious effects on the poor in other parts of the world, but it would be obtuse to consider the former blameworthy for the plight of the latter. Similarly, in many cities in the United States, if someone slips and falls on a sidewalk with unshoveled snow, the homeowner whose yard the sidewalk runs through can be held liable even if, obviously, they didn’t cause the accident, and even if, practically speaking, they had no way to shovel the snow (for example, on one occasion, I couldn’t shovel the snow because I had injured my back in an unrelated incident; luckily no one fell down). Barrera also argues that these different forms of responsibility admit of degrees: one can more directly or indirectly cause a harm (this is one of the circumstances used to morally assess material cooperation in traditional casuistry); one can be more or less culpable for an action; one person can be held more liable than another for an outcome to which both contributed. A number of factors can influence one’s degree of responsibility, such as one’s power to have acted otherwise and one’s knowledge of the situation.
Barrera deploys these distinctions to assess our responsibility in the context of the global economy (as the example regarding food and gas prices illustrates), but they can also prove helpful in thinking about political responsibility. For example, in the case of a candidate who holds an unethical position found in Forming Consciences, both the voter who votes for the candidate because of that unethical position and the voter who votes for the candidate despite the unethical position are both equally causally responsible for the possibility of that unethical position being implemented as policy. Whether causality translates into moral culpability depends on factors like the intention of the voter and the available alternatives.
Similarly, I think the intuition of the Bluesky poster cited earlier can be explained by Barrera’s distinction between culpability and liability. I believe the citizens of a country can be considered liable, to one degree or another, for the actions of their country, regardless of whether they supported those policies or not, whereas their moral culpability would depend on their support for the policies, participation in implementing them, etc. In some situations, greater moral culpability might mean greater liability, as well, but in other cases, this is impractical—for example, U.S. taxpayers were on the hook for the reconstruction of Iraq regardless of whether they supported or opposed the Iraq War. In some cases, “liability” may simply mean a duty to resist injustice, or to advocate for justice for the victims of harmful policies.
One objection to this line of argument does give me pause, however. Cases in which one group are the victims of government policy—such as the U.S.’s long history of slavery, institutional racism, and discrimination against African-Americans, or labor policies that encourage the exploitation of workers—push this idea of common liability to the breaking point. It seems perverse to argue that victims are liable (although admittedly not at all causally responsible or culpable) for their own victimization.
But maybe there are reasons not to abandon the idea of common liability. One might argue, for example, that it is still possible to speak of an oppressed or exploited group having a certain responsibility to resist, within the means available to them, even if other groups advantaged by the unjust situation have a much greater liability, compounded by the latter’s potential moral complicity in the injustice. Another possible response to the problem might be to recall that the notion of common liability is based on the shared sense of participating in a common endeavor I described earlier, and in a situation in which one group is excluded from full participation in community life, then the sense of common liability is therefore diminished, as well, with liability for the government’s actions falling on those with the power to affect it rather than on those with little power.
I think this broadened notion of political responsibility, including not just a responsibility to vote for candidates who support policies consistent with Catholic principles, but also a certain liability for the consequences of policies undertaken by the government, is consonant with a Catholic approach to politics. We have a responsibility to resist unjust policies through protest and, in some cases, civil disobedience, to ameliorate the harms experienced in our communities as a result of bad policies (or even of the unintended consequences of good policies), and to advocate for better policies that will systematically address these harms. In my earlier article on the bishops’ voting guide, I argued that “faithful citizenship” should include not just voting, but also engaging in “different forms of political participation and public dialogue in between elections.” A broadened sense of what political responsibility entails can help flesh out the forms this political participation ought to take.
Of Interest…
In an interview with the National Catholic Register, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, claims that efforts by Pope Francis and Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the current prefect of the DDF, to clarify the teachings of Fiducia Supplicans, the DDF declaration that opened the door for blessings for people in same-sex relationships and other irregular situations, have only “deepened” and “widened” the confusion over the issue. Frankly, I don’t know what the cardinal is talking about. In particular, Pope Francis’s recent remarks to the plenary assembly of the DDF, in which he insisted that “[W]hen a couple spontaneously comes and asks [a priest] for this [blessing], it is not the union that is blessed but simply the persons who together have asked for the blessing,” cleared up what I had considered the main ambiguity in the document, namely whether it is describing blessings of a same-sex relationship or of the individuals in the relationship. As I noted in January, if it is the latter—which has now been clearly demonstrated to be the case—then Müller’s more substantial criticism of the document, which centers on the claim that FS permits the blessings of a relationship that is inherently sinful, falls apart. Müller seems to recognize this, now retreating to the argument that “There was no need for this document,” as if it says nothing new. Yet he likewise accuses the declaration of “relativizing the truth and cheapening grace.” But on what basis? In his earlier statement, Müller himself had admitted that individuals living in sinful situations can be offered a blessing—“The Church does not require the same moral conditions for a blessing as for receiving a sacrament”—which is precisely what FS teaches. This doesn’t cheapen grace, it’s the very nature of grace: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). Müller likewise complains, “They cannot explain what the difference is between a liturgical and the private benediction.” But as I noted at the time, Müller himself makes this distinction, contrasting blessings associated with the sacraments and blessings “addressed to persons” outside the liturgical context. Readers will remember that Müller’s actual accusation against FS was that it invented a third type of blessing that could be offered to something inherently sinful. At the time, I argued that this point isn’t supported by the text of FS, a claim clearly vindicated by Pope Francis’s more recent remarks. So, Müller seems to have backed off the accusation that FS invents this mysterious third type of blessing, but now claims FS’s distinction between liturgical and extra-liturgical blessings—and I repeat: a distinction he himself had made earlier—is confusing. In reality, it seems to be Cardinal Müller’s shifting and conflicting criticisms of the declaration, and not FS, that are confusing.
Back in January, Pope Francis had suggested in an interview that he hopes that no one is in hell. At the time, I noted that I find Karl Rahner’s argument that our hope that all will be saved should be tempered by the recognition that human freedom makes Hell a real possibility more convincing than Francis’s Balthasarian position or an even more thoroughgoing universalism. Likewise responding to Pope Francis’s remarks, church historian Candida Moss, writing at America, traces the development of increasingly elaborate images of Hell in the ancient world. Perhaps the most interesting takeaway is that images of Hell drew heavily from the realities of imprisonment. The essay is well worth reading. Moss provocatively writes, “Since none of us would support these conditions in the real world, it is curious that some insist on them in eternity.” It would be fascinating if someone brought contemporary ethical thinking on criminal justice and punishment, including Pope Francis’s remarks on capital punishment and life imprisonment, into conversation with theological thinking about Hell and the afterlife.
Coming Soon…
In my recent note to readers, I mentioned some upcoming plans for the newsletter, which I will repeat here. First, I hope to soon write something up on the nearly complete abandonment of the Catholic approach to migration and asylum in U.S. politics. Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, the USCCB’s chair on the migration issue, seems to share my conclusion. Hopefully I can get to this by next week.
I will soon make an appearance on the Pope Francis Generation podcast, talking about Pope Francis, the discipline of theology, and nouvelle théologie. I will hopefully be able to cross-post the episode when it is available.
I also hope to fit one or two interviews in during the next two weeks, although that depends on how busy things get here.
Finally, the one-year anniversary of Window Light is soon approaching, so look for a promotion to celebrate the anniversary of the newsletter!