Fighting battles we can win

0 ne must applaud the bishops of England and Wales for urging Catholic voters in the coming election to question candidates about their views on abortion, euthanasia and cloning, issues which lie at the heart of our perceptions of the individual in society.
In 1996 the bishops' guide The Common Good was criticised for seeming to indicate, though not quite saying that Catholics should vote Labour: it was their failure to place sufficient emphasis on these three key moral considerations, however, which earned them a cryptic rebuke from the Pope when they made their next ad limina visit to Rotne.
Vote for the Common Good, which is already being called Son of the Common Good because it is much shorter than its predecessor, is certainly much more outspoken, though its trenchancy is diluted by the assurance that a general election is not a single issue referendum; the trouble with this is that most referenda are not decided on the basis of one issue either.
The bishops are certainly wise to go no further in criticising the general drift of moral criteria at this time. British public opinion is clearly evolving. Although a spirit of hedonism is detectable many people with whom the Church must co-operate if it wishes to influence the political arena are uneasily being persuaded to accept changes in the law on the assurance that these are necessary to advance medical and scientific development; nevertheless the moral issues involved are steadily beginning to emerge in public debate.
While we have an absolute duty to do what is right, it is important that political battles should never be enjoined unless there is strong reason to expect success. Twenty-five years ago Edward Heath afforded a valuable lesson when he called a general election on the issue of whether his government or the trade unions governed Britain. The electorate agreed with him but declined to vote for the confrontational style of his Tory administration; as a result the curbing of union power was left to Margaret Thatcher when she was elected five years later.
Unlike their Scottish brethren, the English and Welsh bishops may turn out to have been unluckily premature in relessi rig their document just before the election was postponed. They could have made a greater impact on the electoral debate if they had restricted their guidance to the three major issues.
InStEnCI , they have attempted to cover a wide lunge of areas of concern in an effort to set Catholics' duty to vote in a philosophical context. This may be a valuable exercise as a part of an overall discussion, but philosophy tends to count for rather less than specific policies in election campaigns.
It is questionable whether %re for the Common Good should have referred quite so much to Catholic social teaching which is associated in the mind of an increasingly eurosceptic public, including many Catholics, with the labyrinthine and oveibearing activities of an ever more ambitious European Union.
An even more alarming hostage to fortune is the document's veiled hint that a Britain which is becoming ever more exasperated with the flood of illegal immigrants should be taking in not just those fleeing persecution in their own countries but economic migrants seeking a better standard of living. Only a few months ago Cardinal Biffi of Bologna raised the question of whether Italy should be endangering its national identity by admitting so many Muslims from North Africa. This caused surprisingly little comment among Catholies in Britain, but at some stage the Church here may have to produce a coherent Catholic approach to the issue which does not threaten the nation's stability by simply saying we must take all corners.
Above all, it should avoid springing its thoughts on the public at election time.
David Twiston Davies works for The Daily Telegraph