Advocacy for vulnerable

		Eye on the  Capitol  John Huebscher

The final week of April marked the third statewide Wisconsin Catholic Conference (WCC) Legislative Conference. Any attempt to influence public policy must take account of the "state of the union" in which policy issues are discussed.

As one assesses the civic environment in 2003, one can't help but notice how much it differs from that of spring, 1999 when the first "Catholics at the Capitol" took place.

Four years ago our nation was at peace. Today we are in the aftermath of a war with Iraq and in the midst of an ongoing undeclared war against international terrorism. The economy is not as robust as it was four years ago, and the state's budget situation is far worse.

Faithful citizenship

New faces are on the scene. Our nation has a different president, Wisconsin has a new governor and new legislative leaders. Nine of 33 state senators and 26 of 99 assembly representatives were not in office the spring of 1999. And, of course, Milwaukee has a new archbishop.

But some things don't change. The need for "faithful citizenship" is ongoing and the vulnerable members of our human family continue to be major advocacy priorities of the WCC. The issues that WCC asked those who attended "Catholics at the Capitol, 2003" to lobby had a common denominator - they all dealt with the need of vulnerable persons. While many groups who organize lobbying days in order to urge lawmakers to embrace positions that serve their self interest, the Catholics who went to the Capitol urged legislators to think of those who are not powerful or well connected.

Consistent life ethic

Catholics pressed lawmakers to back the ban on human cloning as contained in Senate Bill 45 and Assembly Bill 104. They affirmed the self-evident truth that human life as an intrinsic good may not be reduced to a means directed to the service of some other end.

Catholics echoed the message of U.S. Bishops Conference President Wilton Gregory that "human cloning . . . turns human reproduction into a manufacturing process, by which human beings are mass-produced to preset specifications."

Not everyone in the community is a sympathetic figure. Yet, even those who are not upright citizens have a claim on our concern. Thus Catholics urged legislators to oppose capital punishment by resisting efforts to restore the death penalty, not used in Wisconsin since 1854. Legislators heard that Catholic opposition to the death penalty grounded in our consistent life ethic and for Catholics being "pro-life" means protecting life from womb to tomb even when that life is morally flawed.

Anyone who has faced serious illness or seen a loved one do so knows how vulnerable human life can be. Once again, Catholics spoke for those who lack access to affordable health care, pressing legislators to reform Wisconsin's health care system by providing access to quality health care services for all Wisconsin citizens focusing on the needs of the poor and vulnerable.

Grounded in values

Catholics also allied themselves with needy families in Milwaukee who want to choose good schools for their children. We did this by backing two bills AB 259 and AB 260 that help increase access to the Milwaukee Parental Choice program.

As for the 2003 State Budget, we petitioned legislators to assess budget provisions in light of their impact on the common good and the poor. Programs like Community Aids, BadgerCare, and other programs for needy families and persons with disabilities are priorities.

This is not partisan agenda. Some of these priorities are popular with conservatives, others with liberals. Few legislators in either party will embrace all of them. But it is a consistent agenda grounded in the values of our faith tradition.

John Huebscher is executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference.

Great Divide: Force of law, law of force

		The Catholic  Difference  George Weigel

The juxtaposition of "the force of law and the law of force," a trope that got established in the Catholic conversation months before armed force was used to enforce disarmament in Iraq, will likely be a prominent feature of the post-war Catholic debate.

Such rhetorical devices are attractive because they seem to encapsulate the Great Divides in human affairs: for example, selfishness ("Ask not what your country can do for you . . . ") vs. duty (". . . ask what you can do for your country").

The problem, of course, is that such neat phrases lack content and context. "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" could just as easily have been declaimed by Mussolini, ranting from the loggia of the Palazzo Venezia in 1924, as by John F. Kennedy, giving a stirring inaugural address from the portico of the U.S. Capitol in 1961. Content and context are crucial.

Two camps

The "force of law/law of force" juxtaposition neatly divides the world into two camps. Those who wish to settle conflicts through diplomacy, political compromise, and the mechanisms of international law live on one side of this Great Divide; those who believe in using armed force are on the other. Given that dichotomy, the moral choice seems clear: the first camp.

The problem, which involves both content and context, is that the world doesn't work the way the trope suggests. Of course, legal, political, and diplomatic means of resolving conflict are morally (and politically) preferable to armed force. But what if these non-military means can't cope with a threat that cannot be ignored (German and Japanese ambitions in the 1930s; ethnic-cleaning in Bosnia; disarmament in Iraq)?

Can't proportionate and discriminate armed force contribute to the rule of law in international affairs, by demonstrating that lawbreakers will pay for their aggression and will not be permitted to destroy the minimum conditions of order in international public life? Is the relationship between international law and armed force a zero-sum game, such that every use of armed force necessarily entails a loss for the "force of law"?

Serving the rule of law

That is neither the lesson of history nor the way Catholics have typically thought about these things. In classic Catholic thought, armed force is not intrinsically suspect, morally speaking. Classic Catholic thinking about world politics understands that armed force can be used for good or evil, depending on who's using it, why, to what purposes, and how.

Armed force is one instrument among the many available to prudent statecraft. Other instruments should be tried first. But the use of armed force under certain specific circumstances - defined by the just war tradition - can serve the rule of law, not wreck it.

How could it not be so? Imagine a world that had evolved politically (and culturally, which is to say, morally) far beyond our present circumstances. Imagine a world in which there really were effective legal and political institutions and instruments for resolving conflicts between nations - the world sketched by Blessed John XXIII in Pacem in Terris. Even in that world, the option of armed force would have to remain open.

Why? Because the rule of law is not self-vindicating. Human nature being what it is, somebody is going to break the rules, and sometimes do so in ways that cannot be handled through diplomacy. Even in a world governed by the "force of law," the sanction of proportionate and discriminate armed force must be available, precisely to vindicate the rule of law.

Moral realism

The slow, steady creation of a world governed by the "force of law" must be an exercise in moral realism - in idealism without illusions - if humanity is to avoid catastrophe along the rocky road from the ways things are to the ways things ought to be.

Asserting that today's instruments of international law can resolve every imaginable conflict will not make it so. When today's international legal and political institutions refuse to do their duty, the duty to repel aggression and defend basic human rights will fall on "the willing." Their use of armed force, as a last resort, can help sustain the rule of law.

That must not be doubted - especially by those serious about the rule of law.

George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.