Serious Catholics wind up 'politically homeless' in America
Print Friendly Version| All Things Catholic by John L. Allen, Jr. | |
| Friday, October 24, 2008 - Vol. 8, No. 5 |
So far, I've managed to avoid devoting a single "All Things Catholic" column to the 2008 elections. Secular politics isn't my beat, and anyway, it seemed desirable that there be a reporter left in America following something other than the stock market and Obama vs. McCain.
Along the line, however, that determination began to feel more like stubbornness than good journalistic judgment, given all that's at stake and the obvious passion people feel for the subject. On the lecture circuit I've been repeatedly asked for a take on the election, and so this week I'll summarize what I typically say in terms of three points to ponder about seeing the race through Catholic eyes -- points which, at least from where I sit, have not yet attracted the consideration they merit.
First, a disclaimer: This is not one of those nod-and-a-wink exercises, technically phrased in non-partisan language but obviously crafted to support one candidate or another. There's plenty of that already in Catholic discourse, from a handful of bishops on down. Instead, I'd like to try to think for a moment beyond Nov. 4, to the long-term implications of these elections for Catholicism in America.
Political Homelessness
Most analyses of the "Catholic vote" presume there are three basic camps: pro-Obama Catholics, pro-McCain Catholics, and the undecided. For purposes of electoral handicapping, that's a natural way of slicing the pie, but it neglects another important constituency. This block has no candidate, no network of think-tanks and advocacy groups, and it only registers indirectly in the polls: Catholics alienated from both parties, who aren't undecided but rather disenfranchised.
I was in Baltimore earlier this week for a speaking engagement, and fell into conversation with a bright young Catholic theologian who offered a terrific sound-bite for this camp: "I can't help thinking that both parties are addicted to preemptive strikes," he told me, "whether it's in the womb or on the battlefield."
John Carr, a veteran policy expert for the U.S. bishops, has said that Catholics who take the church's social teaching seriously wind up "politically homeless" in America. Just like the real homeless out on American streets, the politically homeless are often forgotten, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
If you want proof of the point, just look at the data from the Pew Forum about the preferences of religious sub-groups. The results for white Evangelicals, white mainline Protestants and black Protestants form flat lines since June; their attitudes haven't really budged in statistically significant fashion. White non-Hispanic Catholics, on the other hand, have oscillated dramatically. In July, they were going 47-44 for Obama; in late September, it was 52-39 for McCain; and by early October, it was 54-39 for Obama. One obvious reading is that there's a sizeable chunk of the Catholic population that simply isn't persuaded by either guy.
Here's a thought exercise: In the abstract, what would the political fortunes be in America of a candidate who actually embodied the full range of Catholic social concerns? What would happen if a serious candidate came along who's pro-life, pro-family, anti-war, pro-immigrant, anti-death penalty, pro-sustainable development, and a multi-lateralist in foreign policy concerned with religious freedom and a robust role for believers in public life? My hunch is that such a candidate could be attractive to a broad cross-section of moderates and independents. The machinery of both major parties, however, appears almost designed to prevent such a person from ever being nominated.
After Nov. 4, Catholics on the winning side will start scrambling for various forms of access and patronage from the new administration, while those who backed the loser will start organizing the opposition. In other words, both the victors and the vanquished in American politics know exactly what to do once the smoke from battle clears.
For disenfranchised Catholics, the road ahead is far less clear. For what it's worth, my own reading is that it's no use trying an end-run around the two-party system. If a holistic Catholic sensibility is ever going to cut ice in American politics, it will have to come from one of the two parties being hijacked from within -- the way Reagan moved the goalposts for the Republicans, or Clinton for the Democrats. (Or, if you prefer an overseas example, the way that Blair built "New Labour.")
In that light, it would be an interesting experiment if a network of Catholic policy groups, activists, and intellectuals were to take shape once election season is over, devoted to laying the groundwork for influencing both parties from within. I'm talking not just about making compelling arguments, but doing the hard nuts-and-bolts work of political organizing, including identifying potential candidates and making them battle-ready.
All that would, of course, require time, money, and expertise, and I'm not sure where any of it might come from. In the absence of such an effort, however, many of the best and brightest in American Catholicism are doomed to feel perpetually alienated, forever choosing between the lesser of two evils. While no political system is ever perfect, the question these Catholics are asking is: Can't we do better than this?
Beyond Nov. 4
When the U.S. bishops gather in Baltimore for their fall meeting Nov. 10-13, just six days after the election, they plan to discuss the hot-button topic of abortion and politics for the third time as a conference.
To some extent, this discussion was thrust upon them when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Joseph Biden decided to award themselves honorary degrees in theology and to publicly challenge the bishops' reading of Catholic teaching on abortion. Whatever else one might say about it, that move was destined to provoke a backlash from the bishops, and the agenda item in Baltimore is one clear result.
Quite probably, the bishops will travel one more time down the well-worn grooves of their discussions from 2004: What should the pastoral response be to a Catholic politician who votes in favor of abortion rights? Does such a vote constitute "formal cooperation" in abortion under canon law, triggering automatic excommunication? What about Catholics who assert there are other ways to be "pro-life" beyond seeking the reversal of Roe v. Wade?
Those are notoriously hard questions, and there's little reason to believe the bishops are closer to a consensus than they were four years ago. In a sense, however, talking about them after the election is over is a bit like a general still fighting the last war.
If the polls are to be believed, there's a strong likelihood that by the time the bishops gather in Baltimore, President-elect Obama's team will be hard at work just down the BW Parkway organizing its hold on power. In that event, the Realpolitik question for the bishops becomes how they want to carry forward their relationship with the new administration.
To put a sharper point on the question, an Obama victory will almost certainly mean that the odds of reversing Roe v. Wade become remote, at least in the short term. Do the bishops want their relationship with an Obama White House to be dominated by a political and judicial struggle they almost certainly can't win? Or would it be more prudent to seek common ground -- for example, on immigration reform, health care and attacking the social conditions that sometimes drive poor and vulnerable women to consider abortion in the first place?
Ironically, this may be easier nut for the Vatican to crack than the U.S. bishops. The Vatican has centuries of experience in dealing with regimes that, in one way or another, are hostile to church teaching. When Pope Benedict XVI travelled to Spain in July 2006, for example, many analysts expected an Ali/Frazier-style prizefight with Socialist Prime Minister José Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero, who has done battle with the Catholic church on every imaginable front: same-sex marriage, divorce, abortion, stem cell research and more. While the pope laid down unambiguous markers about the church's positions, his overall thrust was positive. In an interview shortly after the trip, Benedict suggested it's better to present attractive models of Christian life rather than forever stressing what the church is against. When he and Zapatero met in Valencia, they also identified areas of agreement on inter-cultural dialogue, peace-making and multi-lateral approaches to foreign affairs.
Should Obama prevail, the question the U.S. bishops will face is whether they want to pursue a similar policy of constructive engagement, or one of unrelenting opposition. Naturally, this isn't an either/or choice, and no doubt the bishops will do some of both. It's a question of accent and emphasis, and their Nov. 10-13 session should offer the first indication of how this may shake out. In truth, however, this isn't a question just for the bishops, but for all Catholics who care about the intersection of faith and public life.
Communion in a Divided Church
All the polling these days shows Catholics fairly evenly divided between Obama and McCain, with Obama enjoying a slight edge. That result more or less mirrors trends among voters in the overall national population.
The split among Catholics is conventionally understood through the lens of Red States vs. Blue States, meaning the divide between the church's liberal and conservative wings. There's obviously some truth to that; while most Catholic pro-life groups, bloggers, and some media outlets skew to both the theological and political right, a substantial share of the Catholic academy, in tandem with other media outlets and a galaxy of peace-and-justice activists, leans to the political and theological left. That division helps explain the contrasting preferences of some Catholic voters.
Less noticed, however, is another reality about Catholic demography in America that lends logic to the polls. Beneath the overall split, one finds a clear division between white and Hispanic Catholics. Despite the swings noted above in the preferences of white Catholics, they remain at least 25-30 percentage points more likely to support McCain than Hispanic Catholics. Obama may have had a "Hispanic problem" in the primaries, but it's largely disappeared in the general election.
Beyond their implications for the presidential horse race, these results point to a deeper truth about Catholicism in America: In some ways, we are at risk of becoming two separate churches. One church is white, affluent, well-educated, and votes on the basis of ideologies of either the right or the left; the other is Hispanic, disproportionately poor and under-educated, concerned with advancing its class interests, and votes Democratic -- a "back to the future" dynamic reminiscent of the blue-collar, ethnic Catholicism of the 19th and early 20th centuries. These are, obviously, over-generalizations, but nonetheless they highlight something real.
In principle, this diversity is marvelous. It becomes dysfunctional, however, if these Catholic subgroups aren't talking to one another, and in some ways come to see one another as the opposition.
As the Hispanic presence in American Catholicism continues to swell, the centrifugal pressures will only become more intense. Increasingly, Catholics at all levels will have to ponder how we can foster a sense of being one church, one family of faith, despite our growing diversity -- and, at times, our deep divisions.
The challenge of fostering communion may, in fact, be the deepest question posed by the '08 elections for American Catholics, even if it's not one given much space on political blogs or newspaper op/ed pages. One hopes that it, too, surfaces when the bishops gather in Baltimore to take stock.
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Terrific piece. I especially
Terrific piece. I especially like the observation about Catholics being politically homeless from John Carr. Much of the problem stems from the party system. Various attempts at a Catholic take on politics--whether defending the Republicans or the Democrats--seem to start from the point of view of a partisan preference and then use Catholic Social Teaching to defend the preference. In one case, then, such issues as peace, concern for the poor, and the environment are reduced in importance--or sometimes even ridiculed and contradicted. In the other case, the central importance of the pro-life issue is denied, and occasionally morally unacceptable political rhetoric on personal choice or private decisions are adopted. Instead of starting with the Gospel amd being the "light of the world", Christians are allowing themselves to be told what to think by the false magisterium of political ideologies.
Human beings are good and created to love the good. It's impossible to assert that half the electorate--whichever half one doesn't like--is enamored of something totally evil. The problem is that the modern political system splits the good in two. Not that the party system should be scrapped--it may be like what Benjamin Franklin said of democracy, "The worst form of government except for all the alternatives." But maybe the project is for Catholics of both stripes to adopt more of a posture of transforming the parties towards Catholic Social Teaching and less of a willingness to be transformed by the parties.
By the way, David Carlin, a sociology professor and Catholic writer, ran for the Democratic nomination for one of Rhode Island's two seats in Congress in 1992. He was pro-life, with positions that hewed closely to Church teaching, and he had been majority leader in the Rhode Island Senate. In the most Catholic state in the Union he seemed to be a very apt candidate. However he lost in the primary by a large margin to a standard-issue pro-abortion Democrat. The latter in turn lost to the incumbent who, if I recall, was a pro-choice Republican--in other words as far as you can get from Catholic social teaching. That's a sad story, but I still think John Allen is write that such candidates as David Carlin can be appealing in the right circumstances.
With some 70 million
With some 70 million Catholics in the USA, representing close to 25% of the electorate, did you know that if all Catholics refused to vote for a pro-abortion politician, then both parties would have to be pro-life if they wanted to win an election? Only once in USA history has a presidential candidate won the election by a margin of more than 25% of the popular vote: that was Warren Harding over James Cox in 1920 by a margin of 26%. The problem of abortion in America has been, and remains, the division within the Catholic Church in the USA.
CJOM Thank you for entering
CJOM
Thank you for entering the conversation on the election in the US. We have just been through a federal election here in Canada where more and more, our five weeks on the hustings are taking on a US election style flavour with one exception, the absence of the churches and bishops painfully acting out their diverse theological and pastoral positions. Here, the bishops and church leaders are ignored. The bishops excelent statement on the election and key issues that Roman Catholic's should keep in mind did not even get into the media, never mind the hands of parishioners. I would greatly welcome the voice of the churches in the conversations leading up to the election but I would hope that the confusion that we read about in the US could give way to a more engaging and "real" discussion of issues that are very important to our time. I do wonder what the long term effect of the "who is the more Catholic, Catholic" debate will have for the future. Will the election debate and conversation in four or eight years in the US ignore the churches and bishops in the US as ours has just done here?
If the Republican party
If the Republican party takes as hard a loss as it appears they might this year, it would seem a possible target for the kind of hijacking John Allen writes about above. I don't imagine it would be easy to get current Republicans to care much about immigrants, poverty, other countries, or peace, but that's sort of the point of the "hijacking", isn't it?
Likewise, if the Democrats lose, it would seem impossible not to throw in the towel on the thing. I mean, if they can't win this year, when will they ever? I don't imagine it would be easy to get current Democrats to care about the unborn, but that's sort of the point of the hijacking, isn't it?
I suspect that either effort will take much more effort, engagement, leadership, and organization than American Catholics currently display as a group. We are lazy, disengaged, adrift, and splintered. Prospects seem dim. My only consolation is that the church has faced steeper odds before; the first century was such a time. With God, nothing is impossible.
Why do so many Catholic
Why do so many Catholic continue to be anit-war. Catholic social teaching does not teach that all war is immoral. In fact, it does teach, following St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, that it is sometimes immoral not to act. Which of these Catholics would say it was immoral to remove an unjust dictator that was killing thousands of his own people? The Church has never stated that the war in Iraq is an unjust war. If it had, our Catholic bretheren serving in the military would be cut off from the sacraments. According to Church teaching, the one who has the moral obligation to decide wether or not a war is just is the State, since the state has more of the pertinant facts than the Church in these civil matters. To have a candidate that is %100 for Catholic social teaching does not mean they must be anti-war. It also, does not mean that one needs to be a practical socialist. Prefrencial option for the poor does not mean government run programs. We do have a long way to go, but it seems we also have a lot of studying to do!
In Jesus through Mary,
Blake Helgoth
Maybe you didn't hear Pope
Maybe you didn't hear Pope John Paul II. Here is a quote from the Houston Catholic Worker paper by Mark and Louise Zwick:
In the weeks and months before the U.S. attacked Iraq, not only the Holy Father, but also one Cardinal and Archbishop after another at the Vatican spoke out against a "preemptive" or "preventive" strike. They declared that the just war theory could not justify such a war. Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran said that such a "war of aggression" is a crime against peace. Archbishop Renato Martino, who used the same words in calling the possible military intervention a "crime against peace that cries out vengeance before God," also criticized the pressure that the most powerful nations exerted on the less powerful ones on the U.N. Security Council to support the war. The Pope spoke out almost every day against war and in support of diplomatic efforts for peace.
John Paul II sent his personal representative, Cardinal Pio Laghi, a friend of the Bush family, to remonstrate with the U.S. President before the war began. Pio Laghi said such a war would be illegal and unjust. The message was clear: God is not on your side if you invade Iraq.
After the United States began its attacks against Iraq, FOX News actually reported the immediate comments of the Holy Father, made in an address at the Vatican to members of an Italian religious television channel, Telespace: "When war, as in these days in Iraq, threatens the fate of humanity, it is ever more urgent to proclaim, with a strong and decisive voice, that only peace is the road to follow to construct a more just and united society," John Paul said. "Violence and arms can never resolve the problems of man."
Americans were largely unaware of the depth and importance of the opposition of Church leaders to an attack on Iraq, since for the most part the mainstream media did not carry the stories. In the same way, many Americans were unaware that Pope John Paul II spoke against the first Gulf War 56 times. Media in the United States omitted this from the commentaries on the war. Many have also been unaware of the number of Iraqis killed in that war (not to mention the war which recently "ended"). In February 2003 Business Week published an interview with Beth Osborne Daponte, a professional demographer who worked for the Census Bureau. The first Bush administration tried to fire her because her published estimates of the number of Iraqi deaths conflicted with what Dick Cheney was saying at the time. She was defended by social science professionals and was able to keep her job. Her estimates: 13,000 civilians were killed directly by American and allied forces, and about 70,000 civilians died subsequently from war-related damage to medical facilities and supplies, the electric power grid, and the water system.
In the past few years, Catholic neoconservatives have been attempting to develop a new philosophy of just war which would include preemptive strikes against other nations, what might be called a "preventive war." George Weigel has published major articles defending this position since 1995. First Things magazine published his articles and editorially agreed with this point of view. The present Bush administration has used these writings to defend the strike against Iraq. Shortly before the war began, through the U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, President Bush sent Michael Novak to go to Rome to try to justify the war to the Pope and Vatican officials. Catholic News Service reported that the two-hour symposium was attended by some 150 invited guests, including lower-level Vatican officials, professors from church universities in Rome and diplomats accredited to the Vatican. Since with one voice Rome had already rejected the argument for a preventive war, Novak took the approach that a war on Iraq would not be a preventive war, but a continuation of a "just war," Iraqi War I, and actually a moral obligation. He argued that a was also a matter of self-defense, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, was an un-scrupulous character, and therefore it was only a matter of time before he took up with Al Qaida and gave them such weapons.
Novak did not succeed in convincing Church leaders-in fact, some commentators reflected that his efforts might have had the opposite effect. Novak's credibility in this argument was perhaps under-mined by his employment at the American Enterprise Institute, heavily funded by oil companies, some of whom began advertising in the Houston Chronicle for em-ployees to work in Iraq even before the war began. Administration officials denied for months that the goal of the war on Iraq was related to oil. On June 4, 2003, however, The Guardian reported the words of the U.S. deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz (one of the major architects of the war). Wolfowitz had earlier commented that the urgent reason given for the war, weapons of mass destruction, was only a "bureaucratic excuse" for war. Now, at an Asian security summit in Singapore he has declared openly that the real reason for the war was oil: "Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defense minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."
John Paul II has sought to distance the Catholic Church from George Bush's idea of the manifest Christian destiny of the United States, and especially to avoid the appearance of a clash of Christian civilization against Islam. Zenit reported that in his Easter Sunday message this year John Paul II "implored for the world's deliverance from the peril of the tragic clash between cultures and religions." The Pope also sent his message to terrorists: "Let there be an end to the chain of hatred and terrorism which threatens the orderly development of the human family." As he had done in his invitation to religious leaders from many faiths to Assisi at the beginning of 2002, he reached out again to leaders of other religions: "May faith and love of God make the followers of every religion courageous builders of under-standing and forgiveness, patient weavers of a fruitful inter-religious dialogue, capable of inaugurating a new era of justice and peace."
Catholic World News quoted the Latin-rite Bishop of Baghdad, Bishop Jean-Benjamin Sleimaan as saying in the Italian daily La Repubblica that the Pope's high-profile opposition to a war on Iraq has helped to avoid a sort of Manichaeism that would set up an opposition between the West and the East, in which Christianity is linked to the West and Islam to the East.
While the Iraqi War II turned out to be "short," violations of "just war" principles abounded. Bombing included such targets as an open market and a hotel where the world's journalists were staying. While most television and newspaper reports in the United States minimized coverage of deaths and injuries to the Iraqi people, reports of many civilian casualties did come out. CBS news reported on April 7 stories of civilians pouring into hospitals in Baghdad, threatening to over-whelm medical staff, and the damage inflicted by bombs which targeted homes: "The old, the young, men and women alike, no one has been spared. One hospital reported receiving 175 wounded by midday. A crater is all that remains of four families and their homes-obliterated by a massive bomb that dropped from the sky without warning in the middle afternoon." The Canadian press carried a Red Cross report of "incredible" levels of civilian casualties from Nasiriyah, of a truckload of dismembered women and children arriving at the hospital in Hilla from that village, their deaths the result of "bombs, projectiles."
As talk escalated about a U. S. attack on Iraq, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, began stating unequivocally that "The concept of a 'preventive war' does not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church." His comments had been published as early as September 2002 and were repeated several times as war seemed imminent.
Cardinal Ratzinger recommended that the three religions who share a heritage from Abraham return to the Ten Commandments to counteract the violence of terrorism and war: "The Decalogue is not the private property of Christians or Jews. It is a lofty expression of moral reason that, as such, is also found in the wisdom of other cultures. To refer again to the Decalogue might be essential precisely to restore reason."
Preparation of a new shorter, simpler version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church will soon begin and, according to reports and interviews with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, it will probably include revisions to clarify the section on just war, as the official version has done against capital punishment in a civilized society. Cardinal Ratzinger will head up the Commission to write the new catechism. In an interview with Zenit on May 2, 2003, the Cardinal restated the position of the Holy Father on the Iraq war (II) and on the question of the possibility of a just war in today's world.: "There were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq. To say nothing of the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a "just war."
In almost every one of his addresses to groups large or small and in each visit to other countries, such as his recent visit to Spain, John Paul II has cried out for peace.
At the Ash Wednesday Mass this year the Pope reemphasized the theme that peace comes with justice: "There will be no peace on earth while the oppression of peoples, injustices and economic imbalances, which still exist, endure." He insisted that changes in structures, economic and otherwise, must come from conversion of hearts: "But for the desired structural changes to take place, external initiatives and interventions are not enough; what is needed above all is a joint conversion of hearts to love."
In his Easter message the Holy Father drew attention not only to the Iraq War, but to "the forgotten wars and protracted hostilities that are causing deaths and injuries amid silence and neglect on the part of considerable sectors of public opinion." The official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano carried the Pope's Easter message of peace with a headline in very large letters, Pace (peace), taking up a quarter of a page. He has asked Catholics to pray and do penance and ask Christ for peace, a peace "founded on the solid pillars of love and justice, truth and freedom."
Houston Catholic Worker, Vol. XXIII, No. 4, July-August 2003.
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Just thought I'd point out that the pope was against a pre-emptive war.
I will read Allen's column
I will read Allen's column more thouroughly but a quick scan, which is often useful to detect subliminal messages, revealed, for me, two telltale, unwarranted comments that seem to amount to an 'imbedded message'.
First is the reference to US VicePresidential candidate Biden and House Speaker Pelosi "....award(ing) themselves honourary degrees in theology"; the second,"...the vatican (as opposed to the US Bishops) has centuries of experience in dealing with regimes, which in one way or another are hostile to Church teaching".
Not being a US voter I see these statements as fundamental orientations of Allen's column and contradictory to his self-proclaimed intention to avoid thrashing old ground whatever other merit it might have.
Once again it seems to boil down to a question of whether one looks to Christ as the model or the Church. Allen, to some extent understandably, requiring the 'blessing' of the hierarchy to do what he does seems to side subtely with the Church.
Dennis, with no rating
Dennis, with no rating system, I must commend your very astute and intelligent detection of the subliminal messages in Allen's column. I was a bit surprised to see the reference of two members of the laity who happen to be Democrats and Catholic so callously tossed into the column about Serious Catholics wind up 'politically homeless' in America. It seemed, well, opportunistic, and perhaps quite possibly brown-nosing as some call it.
That "bright, young Catholic
That "bright, young Catholic theologian" who you quote as saying that "...both parties are addicted to preemptive strikes whether it's in the womb or on the battlefield" doesn't seem terribly "bright" to me, at least on the basis of that comment. The pro-choice politicians, whether Obama, Kerry, Clinton, or whoever, are not themselves personally guilty of killing anybody unless she or he were personally involved in obtaining an abortion, whether for themselves or somebody else, whereas George W. Bush is personally and directly responsible for the deaths of the tens of thousands of human beings that resulted from his ordering the "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad and the subsequent invasion and occupation of Iraq. A "bright" theologian, or a "bright" anybody else, for that matter, ought to be able to make that distinction.
As to the question of what would happen if a "serious" candidate were to run who was both anti-abortion and anti-war and anti-death penalty, I suspect that "conservative" Catholics and "conservative" Christians would still vote against him or her. Why? Because to people such as these, "anti-war" is synonymous with "traitor" and anti-death penalty synonymous with "pro-crime". I would be willing to bet that if Rudy Giuliani had been the Republican nominee, we would have "conservatives" out there telling us why it is OK to vote for a pro-choice Republican, but not OK to vote for a pro-choice Democrat.
John, you are to be
John, you are to be commended for the most insightful piece of Catholic writing on politics that I have seen in many a year.
Your main point -- that serious Catholics are politically homeless -- is dead center on target. Thus it is, thus it always has been, and thus it always shall be.
Regretably, from that point on your aim kind of wandered away from the target. Please permit me to try to come back to the target.
No serious Catholic can ever find a home in any political party. The Holy Father has stated the reason many times: the secular culture is the "culture of death" -- and politics is inherently secular.
Indeed, the ante-Nicene Fathers already realized this and counseled appropriately: "Quid est imperatori cum ecclesia?". (I know this aphorism is attributed to more than one of the Fathers, but since Tertullian was the earliest, let us credit it to him.) In other words, politics and the church do not mix.
Of course, today "imperatori" no longer is simply an emperor -- that function has been taken over by an oligarchy. The oligarchy presents the voters with the charade of two supposedly opposing parties, when in fact they are presenting a Morton's Fork. No matter which candidate the voters select, the oligarchy will continue to run "business as usual", concentrating the wealth of the world into the hands of its members. The voters will continue to be underpaid and overcharged, lose their homes and other property to sub-prime loans or similar manuevers, etc. ad inf. Oh, and no matter who is chosen, abortions will continue, legally or illegally (anyone old enough to remember before 1972?) -- you cannot legislate morality.
The serious Catholic could choose to abstain, to pray, and to evangelize. But few parishioners and Bishops seem willing to accept that choice.
"Trust in God and not in man."
-- a homeless Catholic
Dear Irene, I agree with
Dear Irene,
I agree with most of what you wrote, except for that crumbling logical cookie at the end, "you cannot legislate morality." We do this,if not by name, all the time. We disallow armed robberies which will continue, legally or illegally, but we do not give them our stamp of legal approval. Ditto for racial profiling, drug trafficking, excessive speeding, tax evasion, etc., etc. As the bishops have pointed out, overturning Roe vs. Wade is not all that should be done, but it *is* a necessary first step.
Best, - A fellow homeless Catholic who has resigned himself to single-issue voting because it is a necessary, if insufficient, first step toward ending abortion in this country.
You're looking for things
You're looking for things that aren't there. John Allen would have made the same comment if a high-profile Republican politician had made similarly ignorant comments about Catholic teachings being compatible with war, any war. Any layman who makes authoritative-sounding statements on the Catholic church's teaching (especially utterly, demonstrably false ones) has awarded themselves an honorary degree in theology and deserves mockery. Also, I think an excellent case can be made that the Vatican has viewed the Bush administration as a hostile regime. The pope may not preach hellfire-and-brimstone homilies condemning Bush's wartime actions, but the essential message can come across just fine in diplomatic exchanges. So what if an Obama administration is viewed as hostile on a (slightly different) range of issues? It won't be a big change for the way the Vatican deals with the United States on a diplomatic level.