James Carroll on abortion, health care, and single-issue politics

[MBS]

Focus is on Catholic Church, but he also draws insightful parallels to single-issue and hate politics in US today. .
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-10/the-churchs-abortion-mistake/full/

What happens when a mainstream institution is taken over by its fringe? One answer plays itself out in the Republican Party, where lunatic rhetoric now defines politics. Another shows itself in the Catholic Church, whose leadership has fallen into the trap of single-issue moralism. That the aggressively lobbying Catholic bishops were prepared to kill the health-care reform bill in the House last week over abortion shows how far they have come from the broad tradition of Catholic social teaching that sees the common good as involving multiple values. Negotiation and compromise are essential to solidarity. When values conflict, as they inevitably do in legislation, ethical reasoning assumes a delicate balance, weighing one issue against another. . .

. .. . The ethical ideal of “common good” has its secular equivalent in the political idea of “commonwealth,” but in America that has yielded to a new organizing image—the casino. The world is divided between the lucky few and the miserable many, with everyone agreeing that there simply isn’t enough to go around. Therefore, it’s me, myself, and I. Our traditional faith (evident as recently as during the civil-rights movement) that a commonwealth can actually be achieved and protected has been eroded, with the Republican Party as the chief exemplar and advocate of this radical individualism. But that’s not all: Our self-aggrandizing polarization is driven also by contempt for out-groups like dark-skinned newcomers, gay people, and the very poor. We know who we are by whom we hate. Alas, Catholic leaders talk like that now, too—about their opponents in debate.. .

We hear little or nothing from Catholic leaders on such questions because, just as extreme voices have made American politics toxic, so extreme voices have poisoned the teaching authority of the church. Slash-and-burn single-mindedness is fanatic. Hence the excluding absolutism on the abortion question. Hence the dangerous exacerbation of the worst trends in American public life. . . .