Note to bishops: Use fewer words, say more

People are confused in the culture. Catholics want guidance on Church teaching. And the U.S. bishops wanted to provide sharpened answers and clear relief for difficult questions on abortion and politics at their recently concluded conference in Baltimore.

The opportunity and timing were just right for clarification.

Trouble is, they needed an editor. Like, Phil Lawler.

Brevity is a virtue, particularly in the field of practical politics. If you can compress your argument into a 20-second “sound bite,” or encapsulate it on a bumper sticker, you can capture public attention. If you issue a verbose 44-page statement, on the other hand, you cannot expect to command full attention.

On page 5 of their prolix statement, the US bishops announce that they “do not intend to tell Catholics for whom or against whom to vote.” A hard-nosed political analyst, reading the statement without any particular knowledge of the circumstances, might have stopped reading at that point. He wouldn’t have missed much.

Just imagine, for the sake of the argument, what might have happened if the US bishops approved a statement something like this:

A Catholic voter who casts a ballot in favor of a candidate who supports legal abortion or same-sex marriage should recognize that he may be guilty of grave sin.

Perhaps that statement is badly worded. I would welcome friendly amendments. But please give me credit: I got the job done in one sentence, not 44 pages.

That document could have been much shorter, and said much more. But that would have made it unambiguous.