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Victor about to defend the Kennedys.

You ask, Justin, "How could it ever be possible for defying God to be in the national interest?"

When it isn't possible for God's will to be implemented. When the nation is too deeply divided over discerning God's will. When the survival of a secular nation not consecrated to God is at stake.

The examples that Kennedy gives are instructive. Birth control the Church teaches as always immoral and civil divorce as almost always immoral. Or to paraphrase, God's will is that people should not do these things. And yet the Church does not teach that either of these things should be illegal, nor does it enjoin Catholic government workers (to my knowledge) from cooperating with laws or the enabling structures that allow people to do these immoral things. Defying God's will.

The Church does teach that pornography is always wrong, but forbids anyone from involvement with it, and teaches that it should be suppressed through the law. Fair enough; example fits.

But gambling goes the other way. Many Protestants (the dominant ones in parts of the country) insist any and all gambling is vicious and immoral, contrary to God's will. The Church does not. Protestants say allowing gambling is defying God's will.

It's fine to say, "well, we can discern the will of God, and it is [whatever]." The problem is that being right does not necessarily constitute a political argument. The very fact that politics isn't about salvation (is about small things sub specie aeternitis) means that salvation is not a criterion of political judgment. So unless we're gonna be ruled by philosopher-kings (which even Plato thought was impossible) or maybe theologian-philosopher-kings for this example, we're left with one or another imperfect way of determining political legitimacy, and in a democratic nonconfessional republic, that standard cannot be God.

Victor,

To be honest, I don't know that what you've written precludes my suggested statement; most of your replies fall under "bounds and structures of my office" and "rule of law and... representative democracy."

Regarding Kennedy's point, my objection is that he invokes the concept of "conscience" yet divorces it from his religion. More than that being impossible, it's not desirable. There will be instances for which it doesn't fall to the President to push laws that accord with his beliefs. There will be other instances in which the difference between the government's allowing its citizens the freedom to defy God (such freedom itself being a positive good — God, after all, gave us such freedom) and actively defying God.

Indeed, this is a distinction for which our Church has its own guidelines. As you say about birth control and divorce, "the Church does not teach that either of these things should be illegal."

Consider, in contrast, abortion. The distinction that I'm trying to make is between a politician's actively seeking to make abortion a government policy and his acceptance that he can't and shouldn't undermine the stability of our government to forbid it.

The bottom line statement would be something like this: "When I am called to act according to my conscience, my religious faith, which helped me to form that conscience, will come into play."

Oh, I don't mean to defend Kennedy in that sense. Yes, the notion of conscience apart from religion (in some sense of that word) is utter nonsense. And yes, most of the examples I cited do fall into the category of letting people sin for the sake of freedom and social harmony.

But I also gave a third reason why defying God could be in the national interest of a secular polity, such as the United States, though I gave no specific examples. And that was when the survival of the polity as such is (really) at stake. As I once put it on the site of Someone Else Who Shall Remain Nameless: I don't want to be ruled by a politician who'd put his soul above our collective life and most of our individual lives.