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In , Democrats and Catholics united to elect John F. Kennedy, How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics Can Save the Democrats.
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- Left at the Altar
- Catholics Perk Up To Pope Francis
- Being pro-life never used to mean being Republican | Angelus News
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Too often, though, Democrats speak of economic plans as if they were distinct and unrelated to any common national purpose. They speak in abstract, de-personalized terms. But insuring the uninsured is also a decent thing to do, providing better education is in part about valuing the work and wisdom of our ancestors, and raising living standards for the poor and near-poor is what we owe our least fortunate. Economic realities are, for everyone except economists, existential realities--and all these policies help enhance human dignity and further the common good.
Another long-standing principle of Catholic social thought--combining both the dignity and social good arguments--is that the government must intervene whenever the private sector fails to protect and provide for a specific group of people.
Left at the Altar
Government intervention on behalf of the common good is also well-suited to issues that cross geographic and generational boundaries, such as environmental and educational policy. Your factory in Ohio could cause acid rain that pollutes my farm in New York, so individual self-regulation or even policy initiatives at the state level are insufficient. Global warming is, well, global in scope and will require diplomacy to avert its horrific consequences. Educational policy must reflect the moral commitment of one generation to the next: We may not directly and materially benefit from the education our grandchildren receive, but we have a moral obligation to them nonetheless.
In April , Michael Tomasky famously argued that Democrats should embrace the common good, and chastised them for relying overmuch on rights-based language. And, to focus relentlessly and almost exclusively on sexual issues, at a time when the U. Church is still recovering from the sex abuse crisis, illustrates a tone-deafness that is astonishing and threatens to further weaken the regard in which the bishops are held by the laity.
But, when the Church presents itself as the guardian of transcendent truths about the human person, and then aligns itself with only one political party, the truths appear less transcendent and more partisan.
Catholics Perk Up To Pope Francis
Those who do not share that partisan affiliation feel left out and many, especially the young, begin to walk away from what they consider a too-politicized church. This happened in the early s. Back in , when the Supreme Court issued a ruling in the case Employment Division v. Smith , it was the conservative Catholic Justice Antonin Scalia who wrote a ruling that severely restricted religious liberty and the liberal justices who argued for stronger protections for religious freedom. The administration of Barack Obama has largely agreed with the position adopted by Scalia in its mandate requiring religious institutions to provide insurance coverage for contraception, sterilization and some drugs that the Church considers abortifacients.
Some bishops tried their hand at constitutional scholarship with predictably sad results, turning complex legal issues into bumper sticker slogans and prioritizing the fight against the contraception mandate above all other issues in the presidential election. One bishop compared President Obama to Hitler and Stalin.
The culture warrior bishops have even allowed this worldview to produce unhappy effects on the way they govern the Church, overturning basic pastoral instincts and distorting key moral concepts from our tradition. The policies of our Catholic school system exist to protect all parties involved, including the children of homosexual couples and the couples themselves. It also places unfair stress on the children, who find themselves caught in the middle, and on their teachers, who have an obligation to teach the authentic faith of the Church.
Persons who have an understanding of marriage and family life sharply different from Catholic belief are often people of sincerity and good will.
Being pro-life never used to mean being Republican | Angelus News
They have other, excellent options for education and should see in them the better course for their children. Does the archdiocese of Denver deny admission to the children of parents who are divorced and remarried? Or is it just the children of gays who get discriminated against? Most of all, how can Chaput justify — theologically or pastorally — baptizing the children of gay parents, and then denying that baptized child a Catholic education?
The difference? It was said she smuggled women in from other islands in oil barrels for her business. Some women suffocated in the crossing. She herself was murdered by her lover. I asked her what grade she was in. The other children were so cruel to her, she left the public school. Catholic schools exist for the good of the children and our admission standards must reflect that. We have never had categories of people who were excluded. We have often given preference to children from a parish where a school is located, siblings of children already enrolled at the school or Catholic children from nearby parishes.
Sometimes we might not be able to accept children, because of behavioral problems or other circumstances that would be disruptive to a school community. While there are legitimate reasons that might lead to a decision not to admit a child, I believe all would agree that the good of the child must always be our primary concern. The difference in tone is obvious, but the difference is more than one of tone. He did not just do right by the child, he called everyone involved — and everyone reading his blog — to holiness which, for a Christian, must include reaching out to and embracing those whom society marginalizes.
The problem with the culture war approach is that it loses the Gospel in its defensive moralism.
So busy wagging a finger at the culture certainly never at oneself or at the Church the culture warrior never engages the culture in a way that makes evangelization possible. Even with its demonic elements, the culture must be loved, because you cannot evangelize what you do not love. The concept is precise in our Catholic tradition. To say that a given act is intrinsically evil is to say that, no matter the consequences or circumstances, the act harms the person doing it. To know that an act is intrinsically evil is not necessarily to know whether it is fit for legal adjudication.
The culture warrior bishops, however, use the concept to highlight a few issues they think are critical — abortion, same-sex marriage, contraception — and say that no Catholic can ever vote for a candidate whose policies endorse these intrinsically evil acts. Conveniently, these three issues also define a key political divide within the U. But, lying is an intrinsic evil too, yet our law only criminalizes lying when it negates a contract by making it fraudulent, or when the lie obstructs the administration of justice, when it becomes perjury.
That is a lie. It is intrinsically evil. There is a place in American politics for clergy who stand up and denounce certain trends in the culture. But, it is difficult not to notice that the things the culture warrior bishops condemn all align with a certain partisan agenda.
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Rarely do you hear a culture warrior bishop denounce the evil effects of market capitalism. If President Barack Obama had said such a thing, he would have been denounced as a socialist. Another enormous problem, one American Catholics share with many other American Christians, is the extent to which consumerist affluence and its pursuit is perceived as a non-problem, rather than as an ethos antithetical to the Gospel and Catholic teaching. Yet, we rarely hear any of the culture warriors challenge this acquisitive facet of U.
Most Americans are unfamiliar with some of the silly, materialist, hyper-secular writings of university professors, but we Americans all grow up with the experience of going to a supermarket and encountering a thirty-foot long aisle with nothing but hair care products. We grow up assuming we get to choose everything in life. Why would a young Catholic raised amidst the material plenty of contemporary culture with all its choices think that certain choices are forbidden by his or her religious tradition?
And how could some raised amidst such affluence hear the Gospel which is good news to the poor not the rich.
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I joked once that when Cardinal Dolan went to the Republican National Convention to offer the Benediction, he should have led the assembled in the Magnificat. If the bishops are to raise a prophetic voice against the culture, it must be more even-handed and comprehensive if it is to be persuasive. Otherwise it will be dismissed as mere partisanship and it will blend in to the cacophony of voices in the political arena. The principle that could form the foundation for a sustained critique of American politics is a determined opposition to libertarianism, the idea that the most important value in political, economic and social life is individual freedom.
There are libertarians on the left, who highlight the need for a woman to be able to choose to have an abortion and the right of gay people to marry.
There is a libertarianism on the right that believes taxes are evil because they entail government taking money from the people who earned it. That said, I think the bishops would be well advised to shun the taking of an overtly prophetic stance and return to their methods of earlier times. Prophets emphasize the importance of clear, unambiguous witness to the transformative power of the inbreaking Kingdom of God.