#415: Was Saint Patrick Catholic?

How the recent controversy in Boston disserves Catholic identity and the Church’s public image.

Back in the 1950s, Father Leonard Feeney made headlines by proclaiming loud and long that no one could go to heaven except members of the Roman Catholic Church.  For that he was excommunicated from membership in the Roman Catholic Church.

Years later Feeney and his followers were officially reconciled with the Church, but their take on Catholic life (ostensibly “hardline” but actually just weird) has not changed substantially.

And now the Feeneyites (officially, the “Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary” out of the Saint Benedict Center in Harvard, Mass.) are back in the headlines.  The principal of their school, Brother Thomas Dalton, withdrew his student band from marching in Boston’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade on the mere prospect that the kids would be marching down the same street as Mass Equality, a gay pride group.

Brother Thomas Dalton

Defending his position in a letter to the Boston Globe, Brother Thomas explained his opposition to associating with the gay marchers:

Jesus Christ once compared the Kingdom of Heaven to a wedding feast. When the king saw a guest not properly attired, he said to his servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth’ (Matthew 22:13). All that over improper dress; what would he have done to a group parading unnatural lust?

To many readers, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, this talk of “unnatural lust” probably sounds like typical Catholic teaching: backward and mean-spirited and exclusionary.  In fact, Brother Thomas’ sentiments are backward, mean-spirited, and exclusionary--but they are not Catholic teaching.

Brother Thomas is, of course, entitled to his own opinion (as well as to his dubious misinterpretation of a Biblical parable), and he even has the authority to impose his opinion on his students. In fact, when the gay marchers were finally rejected, Brother Dalton reinstated his children in the parade and led them in applauding their “victory.” All under the guise of providing a “Catholic education.”

But Brother Thomas is not entitled to his own facts--and he is not entitled to speak for the Church, let alone speak falsely.  In a time when Pope Francis is finally at long last reversing the appallingly bad (and mostly deserved) PR the Catholic Church has received over the last 20 years, the last thing we need is some loud voice distorting our Catholic identity in public view.

But I fear that many Catholics secretly (or even openly) share this man’s views, or at least believe that these are the Church’s views.  So a little plain talk about the Church’s teachings on homosexuals is timely. Here they are, drawn from the Catechism of the Catholic Church and from statements by the Vatican and the US Bishops:

1.   Homosexual orientation is most often experienced as given and discovered, not chosen--and is not in itself morally wrong or sinful.

2.   Given the inherent dignity of every human person, the Church teaches that “homosexual persons, like everyone else, should not suffer from prejudice against their basic human rights.”

3.   Violence in speech or action against homosexuals “deserves condemnation from the Church’s pastors wherever it occurs.”

4.   “Every sign of discrimination in their regard should be avoided.”

5.   Nothing in the Bible or Catholic teaching can be used to justify prejudicial or discriminatory attitudes and behaviors toward homosexual persons.

Note than none of this stopped Brother Thomas Dalton from using the Bible to imply that Catholic teaching DOES justify his discriminatory attitude.

Of course, Catholic moral teaching also finds no justification for homosexual acts. But the moral objections are essentially the same as the Church’s objections to masturbation, artificial contraception, pre-marital sex, adultery, coitus interruptus, oral and anal sex, etc.—namely, that only marital procreative sex is morally legitimate. Everything else—not just gay sex—violates natural law.

In other words, official Catholic morality opposes all those acts but not the people who perform them. Such opposition therefore provides no grounds for treating those people differently from anyone else--and that goes for homosexuals as well as for all the others!

Thus gays and lesbians have the same basic rights as all other human beings, and must be protected from discrimination like anyone else.  This principle holds even if we accept official church teaching on homosexuality as a “disordered” orientation.

In short, the Church sees active homosexuals as sinners.  But to be consistent, to avoid discrimination, one must treat them as we do any others whose behavior is called immoral.

Thus a true “hardline” would insist that the Saint Patrick’s Day parade exclude anyone who engages in masturbation, premarital sex, oral or anal sex, adultery, contraception, theft, lying, slander, cheating, etc—as well as any Catholics who deliberately ate meat the previous Friday (the second Friday in Lent). 

This would result, of course, in a very short parade,  made up mostly of marching Protestants.  Throw in the exclusion of those engaging in drunkenness and natural lust, and there would be precious few onlookers left to cheer the children marching (practically alone!) for Brother Thomas Dalton’s school.

So singling out gays is wrong, not because we are not entitled to disapprove of their behavior, but because we are not entitled to judge them while ignoring everyone else.

When Pope Francis famously said “Who am I to judge?” with reference to gays, he was thinking of two things.  First, Catholic tradition dictates that only one person can judge whether someone has sinned--namely, the sinner himself!  That’s why Catholics confess their sins, rather than being denounced for them.  Sin requires that one violate one’s conscience--and no one knows my conscience but me. 

Second, the pope had already described himself as “a sinner.” His point, of course, is that Catholics believe that sin is a universal phenomenon within the human family.  We all sin.  To judge that homosexual activity is sinful merely lumps gays in with the rest of us.  Far from justifying their exclusion, it confirms their inclusion in the company of sinners.

In this sense, the Saint Patrick’s Day parade is a parade of sinners, cheered on by thousands more sinners.  And it always has been. Who are we to judge that gays have no place among us?

Certainly, any such judgment cannot claim to represent true Catholicism.  And any event in honor of a Catholic saint is hardly enhanced by the proclamations of those who distort Catholicism and confuse the public. If we believe Saint Patrick was Catholic—and he was—then our celebration should reflect Catholic tradition, not distort it.

God willing, Brother Thomas Dalton’s band will someday learn about true Catholicism—but not, I fear, at his school.

  © Bernard  F. Swain PhD 2014

#393: Lost and Found--Pope Francis Retrieves Vatican II

After nearly 35 years of Catholic officials obscuring the vision of Vatican Council II, the new pope may already be rescuing its legacy.

The recent homily in which Pope Francis proclaimed Christ has redeemed all humanity, even atheists, has triggered seemingly endless commentary in the media - - print, electronic, and online. (homily text & video at http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2013/05/22/pope_at_mass:_culture_of_encounter_is_the_foundation_of_peace/en1-694445).

But most of it misses the point.  Amid the debates--over “Did the pope endorse universalism?” or “What is the difference between redemption and salvation?”--most observers (other than James Carroll) miss these facts: (1) Francis’ remark about atheists was neither new nor controversial; (2) his real shift was to leap back over the legacy of John-Paul II and Benedict XVI to invoke the extroverted optimism of Paul VI.  He thus retrieved Vatican II’s version of the Church’s mission - - a version that has been out of favor for 35 years.

Francis may be simple, but he is not simple-minded, so his startling break with his predecessors is couched in his soft proposal to build a “culture of encounter.”

Why does this matter?  Because an “encounter culture” is quite different from the “counter-culture”--and that difference could re-set the Church’s course for years to come.

If memory serves, I first heard the Church described as a “counter -culture” nearly 30 years ago, when Bernard Law took

Bernard Law

over the Archdiocese of Boston in 1984.  Six years after the election of John Paul II, he used the term to express his conviction that Catholicism should not conform or even adapt its traditions to the demands of modern culture.  Rather than blend Catholic faith with the surrounding secular culture, he wanted Catholics to hold fast to an alternative way of life that would “counter” prevailing mores and values.

Back then I found his terminology clever but troubling.  As a child of the 1960s, I already considered myself a proud member of the “counter-culture”--but to me that meant a wave of progressive movements ranging from rock music to civil rights to antiwar politics to the sexual revolution to the questioning of all authority, including church authority.  We were rebelling against much of post-World War II American culture: its conformity, its complacency, its superficiality, its materialism, its militarism, its racism, its spiritual impoverishment.

What Bernard Law called “culture-culture” meant something quite different.  It included scolding Boston College (as well as the students and parents gathered for commencement) for not being true to  its Catholic identity.  It included refusing to allow women to serve as Eucharistic ministers.  It included refusing to allow a Knights of Columbus fundraiser to serve alcohol.  It included forcing the Archdiocese’s charismatics to move their annual conference to the cathedral (despite its inadequate seating capacity) and then imposing his own agenda on the day.  Law was not into questioning authority.  For him, “counter-culture” meant imposing authority to make sure Catholics behaved the way he wanted them to.

I admit I resented this theft and reshaping of the term “counter-culture.” But I soon learned he was not alone. Increasingly in the 1980s and 1990s, US bishops, conservative commentators, and some theologians promoted the “counter cultural” mission of the Church on issues like abortion, sexual morality, “catholic identity,” priestly celibacy, sex education, and eventually same-sex marriage. 

They were so successful that the term “counter-culture” lost its original meaning for people like me, and came to be a code-word for a move to establish a certain understanding of Vatican Council II. This understanding saw the modern world embracing a “culture of death” and countered it with a “culture of life.” The opposition was as clear as black and white, and treated every church position as non-negotiable.

Vatican II

Within the Church itself, this movement was labeled “the reform of the reform.” It was driven by the belief that Catholicism after Vatican II had become too friendly, too accommodating to the modern world around it, and was in jeopardy of losing its own identity.  Supposedly this was the fault of those who exploited the “reforms” of Vatican II as an excuse to abandon traditional teachings and practices in favor of every new cultural trend.  Only by “reforming the reforms” could the Church achieve its “true mission” as a counter-culture.

That is why, in rejecting this view, Pope Francis is provoking such reactions.  In theory, no one is more “counter” to Christian faith than an atheist.  Yet Francis asserted that:

The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics.  Everyone!...  Even the atheists.  Everyone!

This is what Francis means by a “culture of encounter”: that whoever does good, regardless of their beliefs, creates a common ground where we can meet one another:

If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.

Such talk rings loud echoes for me of the talk Pope Paul VI gave at the final session of Vatican II in 1965:

Secular humanism, revealing itself in its horrible anti-clerical

Pope Paul VI

reality has, in a certain sense, defied the council. The religion of the God who became man has met the religion (for such it is) of man who makes himself God. And what happened? Was there a clash, a battle, a condemnation? There could have been, but there was none. The old story of the Samaritan has been the model of the spirituality of the council. A feeling of boundless sympathy has permeated the whole of it…But we call upon those who term themselves modern humanists…to give the council credit at least for one quality and to recognize our own new type of humanism: we, too, in fact, we more than any others, honor mankind.

Paul is clearly talking about an encounter between the Church and secular culture that can produce a working partnership--and he knew full well that some Catholics would criticize the openness required for such an encounter:

The council…has been deeply committed to the study of the modern world. Never before perhaps, so much as on this occasion, has the Church felt the need to know, to draw near to, to understand, to penetrate, serve and evangelize the society in which she lives; and to get to grips with it, almost to run after it, in its rapid and continuous change. This attitude, a response to the distances and divisions we have witnessed over recent centuries…between the Church and secular society—this attitude has been strongly and unceasingly at work in the council; so much so that some have been inclined to suspect that an easy-going and excessive responsiveness to the outside world, to passing events, cultural fashions, temporary needs, an alien way of thinking...may have swayed persons and acts of the ecumenical synod, at the expense of the fidelity which is due to tradition…We do not believe that this shortcoming should be imputed to it, to its real and deep intentions, to its authentic manifestations.

Observers have mostly overlooked this key fact about Francis: he is the first post-Vatican II pope!  The last five popes were all participants of the Council between 1962 and 1965, but Francis was only a seminary student.  He heard about the Council like the rest of us, from various reports and the media and perhaps by word of mouth. Unlike Benedict, who by the Council’s end felt it was moving too far and getting out of his control, Francis received the Council’s work as a blessing.  He took Pope Paul’s openness as an inspired vision.  Indeed, in his homily he warned against negative attitudes that insist on a “counter-culture” instead of an “encounter.” As reported by Vatican Radio, he contrasts the “counter” of the apostles with the “encounter” of Jesus:

The disciples, Pope Francis explains, “were a little intolerant,” closed off by the idea of ​​possessing the truth, convinced that “those who do not have the truth, cannot do good.” “This was wrong...Jesus broadens the horizon.” Pope Francis said, “The root of this possibility of doing good – that we all have – is in creation.”

Francis is, in effect, depicting Jesus as a bridge-builder among people.  This fits perfectly with our belief that Jesus is the Christ that bridges the gap, not only between people, but also between the human family and the divine family we called Trinity.  And this also fits perfectly the role of the pope, whose titles include “Pontiff” (from pontifex, meaning bridge-builder).

Francis demonstrates reaching out to Encounter

Francis contrasts this open-minded bridgebuilding encounter with the close-minded attitude that leads to conflict: “This ‘closing off’ that imagines that those outside, everyone, cannot do good is a wall that leads to war.”

This reminds us again of Paul VI, who described the Church's role in the world this way addressing the United Nations in 1965:
We here celebrate the epilogue of a weary pilgrimage in search of a conversation with the entire world, ever since the command was given to us: Go and bring the good news to all peoples.

Paul VI Addressing the UN General Assembly

 I, for one, am delighted and encouraged to hear the new pope talk this way.  Such talk is important not because it is about atheists but because it is about Catholics.  Francis is saying we should not be a people content to “counter” those who differ with us.  We must, as a matter of our faith, have the courage to “encounter” them.  
This means we must engage in a true conversation--not simply sharing our faith-based message, but also listening to the message of modern, even secular culture with an openness to the possibility that its message also brings wisdom that can enhance and enrich us.

Not only that, but Francis is saying we must build an “encounter culture” that leads away from conflict to the peace that Christ promised:

“Doing good” is a principle that unites all humanity, beyond the diversity of ideologies and religions, and creates the “culture of encounter” that is the foundation of peace.

For me, there is hope yet that the real renewal of Vatican Council II has not been lost on this pope, a man who has the wisdom to see the dangers lurking in the modern world but also has the courage to reach out and encounter it.  This was the true message of Vatican II, which has been nearly lost amid all the “counter-culture” negativism of recent Catholic leadership. I’m beginning to think that Francis is just the man to rescue Vatican II for us--just in the nick of time.

  © Bernard F. Swain PhD 2013

#385: The New Pope's Challenges

Some thoughts on the as-yet unfinished papal election: 

Black Smoke From Ballot #1

       The conclave’s first day has produced only black smoke.  Wall-to-wall coverage will continue, and millions will watch, until white smoke announces the election of the new pope and he appears before the masses in Saint Peter’s Square and the world’s TV screens.

If nothing else, the Catholic Church is good theater, and the conclave’s very secrecy generates the ironic suspense that comes when the players know more than the audience.

Some alienated Catholics, especially in North America, remain immune to a spectacle that offers no choice of movement on issues like contraception, same-sex marriage, or women priests.  For them, the whole papal election--indeed the papacy itself--is largely irrelevant.  That cuts both ways, of course: their concerns are largely irrelevant to judging what difference the new pope might make.

Since all 115 electors were handpicked by either John-Paul II or Benedict XVI, we know in advance that on major church teachings, as well as on the most controversial minor ones (mostly about sex and gender), the next pope, no matter who he is, will bring continuity rather than change.

But within the mainstream of that continuity are several challenges facing whoever is elected, and we will measure his success based on (1) how he sets his priorities and (2) how the engages them.

CrossCurrents readers know my take on this: the new pope inherits a 50-year process that has transformed the papacy itself, and our current challenges call for further transformation.  For me, this means taking action on several fronts:

Corruption and hypocrisy.  The fallout of the sex-abuse scandal is a widespread (and still spreading) perception of the Catholic Church is an institution steeped in malfeasance and cover-ups.  We cannot expect the next generation to invest themselves or their children in the Church unless that perception changes.  This will take visible action at all levels, and could take an entire papacy—or more—to accomplish.  So from the start, the new pope must bring a forthright and upright presence to his role by establishing accountability at all levels of the hierarchy.

Housecleaning.  Fifty years ago John XXIII hung the renewal of Catholicism on three things: Vatican Council II (1962-1965), the revision of canon law (moderately revised in 1983), and the reform of the curia (Vatican bureaucracy).  Since then, the curia is more international and has fewer minor clerics holding too much authority, but it remains an isolated bureaucracy.  Too many of its bishops are too far (in place or time or both) from the experience of day-to-day church life.

At Vatican II the curia’s scheme for a quick, do-nothing rubber stamp council exploded when the world’s bishops balked at being bossed by bureaucrats and recreated a meaningful council agenda.  The result: Vatican II was truly the product of the Church’s shepherds, not its bureaucrats.

But 50 years later the bureaucrats are back in charge (and often committing grievous errors of governance).

The last two popes not only allowed the world’s bishops to languish (the occasionally convened Synod of Bishops became increasingly toothless under John-Paul II and Benedict XVI), they also neglected their own responsibility to manage the curia.

The new pope will need to reassert the right order of things: his place as the leader of all bishops, with the curia under their direction.

On pilgrimage.  Since Paul VI, the papacy has become a pilgrim post, no longer secluded away in the Vatican but traveling the world’s continents to make the Church’s presence and mission visible in human form. His successors followed his example, but lost control of day-to-day management.

 The challenge facing the new pope: how can he continue this global presence but keep control of what goes on in Rome?  It will help if he is truly a man of the world, a people’s pope, rather than a closeted cleric.

Evangelizing.  Worldwide Catholicism continues to grow, but not everywhere: it is losing relative ground in Latin America, it is losing absolute numbers in North America (and only avoids shrinking thanks to millions of immigrants), and is nearly moribund in much of Europe.

Vatican II aimed to enrich the secular the world with gospel values by reaching out, by engaging in what Paul VI called “a conversation with the entire world.” But in many places that conversation has broken down even among our own members.

My view is simple: since Vatican II, secular culture has outrun Catholic renewal, and we risk falling further behind unless the new pope can preserve and rekindle the flame of renewal.  If Vatican II sought to assert Catholicism as a world church, the new pope must solidify the papacy’s role in world leadership.

These four challenges are central to the new pope’s success.  My own conviction is that such challenges are too big for one man to tackle solo.  Upon his own election in 1958, John XXIII knew he needed help to face post-war modernity, so he called the world’s bishops to convene in council.  In so doing he dispelled a century-old myth that the pope could lead the church alone.  We should hope and pray that the new man thinks like John, and mobilizes his bishops to join him in leading the way ahead.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2013

#371 Manipulating the Catholic Vote

Now that Catholics represent a critical swing-voting group, some Catholics cannot resist exploiting faith to push their political agenda.

We hear a lot of complaints about “cafeteria Catholics.” But every election cycle brings another kind of Catholic into public view: the kind ready to exploit our faith for political gain.  I call them “Self-serve Catholics”.

In our time, this has mainly happened on the conservative side of the political spectrum.  The original Self-serve Catholics were Goldwater Republicans, chronically irked by the steadfast support of Catholics (80%) for John F. Kennedy.  Such Catholics were delighted when Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights leadership (1964, 1965) undermined the “Dixiecrats” (conservative southern Democrats) and turned the south over to the Republicans.  They were equally delighted when Roe v. Wade (1973) polarized the Catholic vote.  Catholics had been block Democratic voters since the days of Al Smith (1928), but by 1980 many were “Reagan Democrats” and over the last 30 years Catholics have become the largest swing vote in the nation.

The results delighted Self-servers: from 1968 to 2004, every President elected came from the south or California, far from the traditional Catholic liberal bedrocks of northeast urban centers.  And in 2004, even Catholic candidate John Kerry managed to get only 47% of the Catholic vote, largely because a caucus of conservative American bishops labeled him a bad Catholic.

But then, in 2008, Barack Obama regained the Catholic majority, and became the first northern liberal elected since John Kennedy.  This has left Self-servers doubling their efforts to regain conservative control of the Catholic vote.

I have repeatedly demonstrated that neither major party platform conforms to Catholic Social Teaching (CST), so neither party can lay claim to the Catholic vote as a right.  But Self-serve Catholics, undaunted by facts, continue trying to manipulate the Catholic vote using two main tactics.  First, they argue that only one issue should determine Catholic votes.  Second, they demonize one party (the Democrats) as immoral, anti-Catholic, even godless.

1. Single Issue Crusades.  In the 1960s, Self-serve Catholics struggled to find a Catholic litmus test for Democrats to fail: prayer in schools, sex education, birth control.  But after Roe v. Wade, the struggle shifted to attacking anyone who did not agree that legal prohibition of abortion was the best way to stop abortions.  In the last 10 years, gay rights and especially same-sex marriage have become new “single issue” options, but this year Self-serve Catholics have gone back to birth control, like this argument by columnist George Weigel:

Over the past four years, the Federal government has made unprecedented efforts to erode religious freedom.  The gravest assault was the “contraceptive mandate” issued earlier this year by the U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services: an offense to conscientious Catholic employers who believe what the church believes about the morality of human love and the ethics of the right to life, and a frontal attack on the institutional integrity of the Church.  For with the HHS mandate, the Federal government seeks nothing less than to turn the Catholic Church’s charitable and medical facilities into state agencies that facilitate practices the Catholic Church believes are gravely evil.

I have already explained why “offense to conscience” is a bogus argument against the HHS mandate (see CrossCurrents #350).  In America, the issue of religious freedom is already guaranteed by the First Amendment—and enforcing it is the responsibility of our courts, not our elected officials.  In fact, the matter is already in court.  If the courts decide this mandate does infringe on the Church’s religious freedom, then the mandate will go.  If not, the mandate will remain and Self-serve Catholics will continue to fight it, but they will lose any legitimate claim that it violates our rights.  Either way, the outcome has nothing to do with elections.

But facts are no deterrent to Self-serve Catholics.

2. Demonizing Democrats. George Weigel leads the crusade with relatively moderate rhetoric that nonetheless crosses the line.  He says “The Catholic Church is under assault of the United States today.” He argues that this assault violates the principle that “the state respect the sanctuary of conscience, so that the Church’s people are not required by law to do things the Church teaches are immoral.”

I confessed this dangerous-sounding language baffles me.  I picture federal police force-feeding birth control pills to Catholics citizens.  I wonder: precisely what immoral action will the government require people to do?  Will it require anyone to use contraceptives?  No.  Will it require anyone to buy them?  No.  Will it require Catholics to prescribe them?  No.  Will it require Catholics to pay for them?  Possibly, indirectly, by subsidizing the coverage of contraceptives by insurance companies--but then, we Catholics already subsidize the pharmaceutical companies that sell contraceptives all the time.  I have already explained why participating in the marketing of contraceptives cannot reasonably be called immoral (see CrossCurrents #350).  Yet Self-servers like Weigel persist in charging their political adversaries with immoral assault.

Such talk inspires others Self-servers to more inflammatory rhetoric.  Consider these examples, taken from the “Letters to the Editor” section of the very same issue of the Catholic newspaper in which Weigel’s column appeared.

One reader wrote:

We are already witnessing an attack on our freedom of religion by government edict…As Catholics it is our responsibility to fight against this evil…We should gather…in our churches for prayers to end the assault on our morality by the present administration in Washington and replace it with people with values like our own.

The writer is perfectly justified, of course, in wanting leaders with values like his own.  But he is not justified in invoking his Catholic faith to demonize political opponents as “evil.” Once again, there was no recognition that freedom of religion is already a constitutional right, to be protected by the courts, not politicians.

Another self serving reader made his demonizing even more personal:

The Obama administration’s war on religious freedom launched another attack with help from inside the Church.  Aided by every Catholic heretic in the Massachusetts congressional delegation, the Democrats are attempting to force religious institutions, especially the Catholic Church, to provide immoral medical procedures in violation of God’s law… They’re trying to limit our practice of our faith and to exclude us from the public arena. Our love for Jesus Christ tells us that we cannot allow this. We must resist and disobey these immoral laws and regulations.

Notice two things here.  First, the reference to “Catholic heretics” is an explicit claim that Catholics with contrary opinions on policy somehow violate their faith.  Second, these heretics are “attempting to force” the Church to participate in immorality.  In other words, these are not only bad Catholics, but they commit deliberate, premeditated evil on others.  And finally, in that writer’s view, not only do they “support immoral actions” but they even “refuse to recant publicly”!

There is no attempt by any of these writers to debate the issues at stake.  To them, the moral questions are black and white, the policy implications are self evident and beyond dispute, and the deliberate malice of their opponents renders all dialogue futile.  These assumptions trump both the facts and our faith.

And there is more.  Amid these demonizing attacks there is no corresponding description of “people with values like our own.” Since the context of these attacks is the election, we can presume the writers mean Republicans.  In other words, these electoral appeals presume that Republican policies are Catholic-friendly.  This begs the question: do Republicans have “values like our own“?

To me, this means asking whether Republican values conform to Catholic Social Teaching (CST).  Posing this question exposes the hypocrisy of Self-serve Catholics. The truth is that CST teaching clashes with Republican values and policies on many issues.  Let me cite two examples: “big government” and “human rights.”

Big Government.  Clearly a major policy priority for Republicans is the promotion of smaller government, less regulation, less taxation, less public spending.  This is built on the classic belief “that which governs least governs best,” and is rooted in a narrow concept of “freedom” as personal economy.  That is, we are free to the extent the government does not intrude in our lives.

I have already explained (CrossCurrents #83) that freedom means much more in our Catholic tradition, but the simpler objection is this: CST teaching places no value on the size of government.  It focuses instead on the role government plays in promoting “the common good” - - which is the prime value of CST.  If the common good is served by a larger government, CST supports that. CST even recommends using taxation to fight inequality by redistributing wealth. Do Republicans?

Human Rights.  Politics aside, most Americans agree that securing human rights for the citizenry is the job of government.  But many Americans, even American Catholics--and especially Self-servers--embrace a list of human rights that is much shorter than the human rights recognized by CST.  This allows them to assume--wrongly--that the Republican Party is Catholic-friendly.

How often do Republicans acknowledge that “illegals” are actually exercising the human right to migrate, as Catholicism does?

How often do Republicans acknowledge that healthcare is a human right, to be guaranteed by government, as Catholicism does?

How often do Republicans call housing, education, and employment human rights, as Catholicism does?

In my view, both parties, Democratic and Republican, fail to consistently support CST.  Yet I feel no need to demonize either party, or to claim they’re attacking me or my faith.  For me, it is enough to say that CST sets a standard they both fail to reach.

But that is not enough for Self-serve Catholics.  They insist on demonizing Democrats as deliberately imposing evil, while blithely giving Republicans a pass on their own failures.  What else can I think but this: these Self-serve Catholics begin with a particular political bias, filter their Catholic faith through that bias, and then invoke that distorted version of Catholicism to attack their political opponents and advance their own political agenda?  And how can I not think that such an exploitation of our faith is self-serving?

I am open to dialogue with those who want to explain how demonizing Democrats, while absolving Republicans, is a reasonable application of our faith.  But until that happens, I will stand by this: these Catholics offend me with their Self-serving political exploitation of our faith.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2012