And Bob Jones Says Hello

Bush Asked for Vatican’s Help on Political Issues, Report Says

This is the reason for the separation of church and state in a pluralistic democracy. It’s not that you don’t want politicians to be religious people or that you don’t want religious people to be political. It’s that when you get politics enmeshed in religion you screw up religion and politics to the detriment of both. Hundreds of years of bloody religious wars in Europe taught the founders of this country that religion can be a dangerous political weapon and they decided that the government should remain neutral on the subject in order to prevent both religious persecution and undue influence. It’s worked out pretty well for us up to now, at least better than most.

But that’s not the only reason why government and religion are a bad combination, and nowadays it’s not necessarily even the most important reason:

In the last six months, a handful of Catholic bishops in the United States have already weighed in on the presidential race by threatening to withhold communion from Catholic politicians who disagree with the church’s stance on abortion, a group that includes Senator Kerry.

Other bishops, however, have said that threatening to withhold communion goes too far, and the pope has warned of “the formation of factions within the church” in the United States. The bishops are expected to take up the matter at a closed-door conference this week in Colorado.

I realize that the american catholic church has a number of internal issues that are not related to politics, but surely this is not helping. And catholics aren’t the only churches dividing up into political factions. You can see it happening in the episcopal church with gay priests; the methodists and the baptists both have issues with women’s rights. Jews are fighting over the country’s stand on Iraq. Much of this stuff is purely doctrinal and hasn’t got much to do with government. But, our president and his braintrust’s obsession with the religion vote as a single constituency, is making these issues more and more explicitly political. It’s not only dividing the country, it’s dividing the religions themselves.

If you are a religious person you should be very worried about this development. It is not in the American tradition to treat “religion” as a political constituency and govern explicitly from a religious standpoint. This is new. But as much as that might be uncomfortable to despised atheists like me, it should be doubly uncomfortable to believers who care about their religious institutions. Priests and Pastors are as susceptible to vanity and power as anybody else — perhaps more. These are among the things that caused the schisms in Europe and led to reformations and huge changes. It hardly seems worth it in order to gain temporary influence over some politician whose time in office is short and whose loyalties are necessarily divided.

It’s not only that religion is corrupting the government. It’s that government is corrupting religion. That’s always been the problem.

Thanks to Tristero for the link.

Update: Julia points out that Henry Hyde is making veiled threats to the Catholic church.

She reminds us:

Mr. Hyde is, of course, the gentleman who took the lead in investigating Clinton’s blowjob, as well as the gentleman who was discovered while that investigation was going on to have committed a “youthful indiscretion” from the ages of 41 to 46 and precipitated the dissolution of the marriage of a woman with three children.

[…]

…I suspect that the bishops are not all that terribly likely to be led by Mr. Hyde’s non-traditional view of Catholic doctrine and the public responsibilities of a moral person in this matter.

Or, for that matter, to lift a finger to help someone who is attempting to blackmail them stay in power.

For the sake of all my Catholic friends, I hope not.