WaPo Honors Social Liberal Chris Matthews on Page One as 'Devoutly Catholic'

Jer, I gave you the parameters as I see them.

Submitted by motherbelt on Tue, 11/16/2010 - 2:09pm.

I thought my point was clear.

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Fun questions

Submitted by KC Mulville on Tue, 11/16/2010 - 8:14pm.

I deny that they're empowered, since I don't think the Constitution actually gives them the right to "shape" anything. However, the Founders never anticipated that the judiciary would grab such power, so the Founders never created any mechanism to prevent it. The effect, sadly, is the same. But I digress.

Let's pass the judiciary question, since it shouldn't be very interesting. Instead, let's consider a Catholic legislator. That's where the fun is. 

First, we make the necessary distinction between religious faith and religious authority. The legislator's authority comes from the consent of the people, not from the bishop. Therefore, when representing his district, he is morally forbidden from "taking orders" from the bishop. That's a violation of Catholic law, never mind the civil law. (We can generalize it. Suppose you're a general making decisions about war. You do not have to submit to the bishop about how you conduct war. The bishop is your bishop ... he's not your absolute Sith Lord.) If a bishop tries to intimidate you into doing what he tells you, especially about exercising your office, he is abusing his authority and violating his own office. A Catholic politician is not a vassal, in the technical term.

The real fun is found in the question of, whether he's Catholic or not, how does a legislator represent his district? Is he merely a message-carrier, and therefore duty-bound to vote however the majority decides on any given issue? Or is he expected to add his own judgment?

• Before we answer that question, let's remember history. Throughout most of history,  we didn't have instant mass communications. Therefore, whenever a king needed to negotiate with a foreign territory, it was never possible for the king to do the haggling himself. He had to rely on his ambassador. Like it or not, when a king sent an ambassador, the king had to accept whatever deal the ambassador made. The ambassador had the power to make decisions as if he were king. Naturally, the king insisted, demanded, threatened, held families hostage, and rewarded ambassadors if they did what the king wanted. But kings still were basically at the mercy of whatever the ambassador negotiated.
• The same was true in the early days of the United States. You sent a representative to Washington, but once he was gone, you had no control over him. The representative was free to vote however he desired. If you didn't like his votes, you shouldn't have sent him. 

The answer to the question of Catholic allegiance depends on how you view representatives now. If you think that representatives are "ambassadors," and you elect a Catholic, then you can't complain if he makes decisions based on his Catholic morality. He's made no secret (we assume) of his faith, and has campaigned on his value system, and if you elect him, well, it's your fault.

However, mass communications has made it possible now for the people to be in daily contact with their representative. Before, a Catholic legislator never really had to separate his personal view from the majority view of his district, because it wasn't possible to know the majority view on every issue. Now he can. 

So - I argue - a contemporary legislator still has the latitude to vote according to his own morality and value system. But that could soon be changing. Voters may not get a plebiscite on every issue, but they may very well start demanding more input into the day to day votes. This could very well become a big issue in a few years.

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