COUNTING VOTES : Not in the pulpit.

I heard an interesting story from a reliable source the other day. The administrative board of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops recently sent a pamphlet, Faithful Citizenship, to all the parishes in the United States. The document encourages the religiously informed participation of Catholics in the political process, and more specifically in this year's election. (The bishops have been issuing such exhortations every presidential election year since 1975.) Although scrupulous about not endorsing any candidates or party, Faithful Citizenship lays out in some detail the church's social teaching as it touches on issues such as the minimum wage, health care, housing, and of course abortion and the death penalty. "Politics," the bishops write, "is about more than our own pocketbooks or economic interests."

Sounds like boilerplate stuff, really. But not everyone is content with boilerplate. In one of the nation's most conservative dioceses, a substantial number of more recently ordained clergy rebelled over the careful political neutrality of the document. The church has a moral obligation to endorse prolife candidates, they argued, and priests should do so from the pulpit. These priests are strong papalists who have taken to heart John Paul II's critique of modern society as the "culture of death." If one lives in a culture of death, extraordinary measures are called for.

In my parish an explicit prolife statement is made from the pulpit every week. It is hard to imagine there exists a single American who doesn't know where the Catholic church stands on legalized abortion. Of course, given the habitual way in which so many Catholics tune out the homily, perhaps the church's prolife stance would be news to some regular churchgoers. So if nothing else, endorsing candidates from the pulpit might rouse the dozing parishioner. It would not, however, increase the credibility of the church on issues of great public moment, nor will it advance the prolife cause.

Endorsing candidates from the pulpit crosses the line separating church and state and raises legitimate questions about the tax-exempt status of religious organizations. Nonpartisanship is the price paid, and rightly so, for tax-exempt status. It is also worth noting that a church that endorses candidates will inevitably endorse losing candidates and thereby greatly diminish its influence on those who do win elections. Nonpartisanship has its own kind of moral leverage.

Nor are American Catholics likely to take kindly to being told whom to vote for by their priests. Any priest who thinks he can dictate the political choices of his parishioners is living an ultramontane fantasy. (The reaction of non-Catholics traditionally suspicious of papal power need hardly be elaborated on.) Of course the Left is also not immune from this tendency to identify the church with a particular political agenda. I know I react skeptically when liberal Catholics equate the church's social teaching with the most "progressive" wing of the Democratic Party or when it is suggested that the Catholic solution to our economic and social problems is to import what amounts to European social democracy. I do not look to Europe, let alone the Vatican, for models of democracy.

Yes, politics is about more than one's own narrow economic interests. But politics is not an exercise in altruism by other means, either. Americans keep their own interests in mind when voting for more than selfish reasons: they are responsible for themselves and their families in a way that a good deal of papal social teaching doesn't quite comprehend. Even on stark issues like abortion, there can be no simple equation between the church and any political program or party. Because of the number of actors involved and the variety of interests at stake, political action is inherently complex and fraught with unintended consequences. Given those facts, how you conjure up an unambiguous endorsement of specific programs like affirmative action or public housing subsidies or the abortion plank in the Republican platform as "Catholic" positions has always eluded me. Don't get me wrong. Catholics have an obligation to seek social justice, house the homeless, feed the poor, and reduce the number of abortions. However, the best way to pursue these goals is hardly self-evident. A larger federal government, for example, may not be the best solution to economic inequality. A job, as the saying goes, is the best antipoverty program. But what is the best way to create jobs? The answer is not found in the Gospels or any encyclicals I've read.

Electoral politics is a complicated business, with fair-minded people spread out across the political spectrum. Yes, abortion is a moral abomination, but at this late date it is an abomination beyond the ability of any single party or candidate to bring to an end. Americans, I believe, are looking for an honest compromise that will restrict late-term abortions. Endorsing prolife candidates from the pulpits of Catholic churches will destroy any chance of reaching such a compromise. And without compromise, the "culture of death" is likely to become more virulent, and faithful citizenship even more precarious.