Serious Catholicism for a serious election

Full disclosure, up front: Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver is an old friend; the Archdiocese of Denver syndicates this column to Catholic papers throughout the country; I played a (very) minor role in introducing Archbishop Chaput to my friends at Doubleday.

So I'm not exactly a disinterested party in the matter of the archbishop's new book, "Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life." I trust that doesn't preclude my suggesting that it's essential reading for serious Catholics in an election year fraught with consequence for core Catholic issues in 21st century America.

Archbishop Chaput is a pastor, first and foremost; his book is a pastor's book. It's informed by scholarship, and by the archbishop's extensive experience in wrestling with issues at the intersection of morality and public policy.

At the same time it's a book for ordinary Catholics who want to be faithful to the Church and faithful to the first principles of justice in their civic lives. Here's the argument, concentrated into nine key points.

1. Schizophrenic Catholicism is neither Catholic, nor responsible, nor patriotic. "We have obligations as believers," the archbishop writes. "We have duties as citizens. We need to honor both, or we honor neither."

2. Postmodern secularist skepticism about the truth of anything is soul-withering; in C.S. Lewis's phrase, it makes "men without chests." The current social, political and demographic malaise of aggressively secularist Europe is an object lesson, and a warning, for America: "A public life that excludes God does not enrich the human spirit. It kills it."

3. The new anti-Catholicism in the U.S. is not built around antipathy to the papacy, the sacraments, consecrated religious life, or the other bugaboos of those who once ranted about the "Whore of Babylon." Rather, it's an assault on religiously informed public moral argument of any sort, an attack against "...any faithful Christian social engagement." So we can't rest easy with the fact that the Catholic Church plays a considerable role in American society. There are forces in the land that would banish Catholicism, and indeed classic biblical morality, from a place at the table of democratic deliberation.

4. Because the Catholic Church's defense of the first principles of justice --- principles that can be known by reason --- has specific policy implications for public life, the Church's teaching has political "side-effects." Anyone who considers this partisan meddling is simply mistaken. The most powerful "political" statement Catholics and other Christians make is to acknowledge the sovereignty of Christ as the first sovereignty in our lives. This confession of faith in fact helps make democracy possible, by erecting a barrier against the modern state's tendency to fill every nook and cranny of social space.

5. America was founded on the convictions that there are moral truths that we can know by reason, and that the state has no business doing theology. The result was the vibrant, religiously informed public moral culture that amazed Alexis de Toqcueville in the 19th century. That distinctive American experience later shaped Vatican II's teaching on religious freedom and the limited, constitutional state.

6. Work for social progress, however noble, is no substitute for ongoing personal conversion to Jesus Christ. True conversion will almost inevitably extract costs in politics. Catholic politicians who seek to avoid these dilemmas by hiding in the underbrush of a public square stripped of religious and moral reference points should reflect on the lives of Thomas More and Martin Luther King.

7. There is a bottom line in all this: the life issues are "foundational ... because the act of dehumanizing and killing the unborn child attacks human dignity in a uniquely grave way."

8. Responsible citizenship means making choices, not simply voting the way our grandparents did. Citizenship is an exercise in moral judgment, not in tribal loyalty.

9. Nothing in politics is perfect, including candidates. Yet unless we fight for the truth, "we become what the Word of God has such disgust for: salt that has lost its flavor."

(George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.)

http://www.catholic.org/printer_friendly.php?id=28905&section=Cathcom

Excerpt: ‘A tale of two Bishops’
By Archbishop Charles J. Chaput 8/14/2008

“In recent American politics, the line that divides “prophetic witness” from “violating the separation of Church and state” usually depends on who draws the line, who gets offended—and by what issue. The line wanders conveniently. But Catholics, in seeking to live their faith, can’t follow convenience.”

ROME (Chiesa) - From “Render Unto Caesar”, beginning of chapter 4, pages 55-58.

“Archbishop Joseph Rummel served the Catholic people of New Orleans from 1935 until his death in 1964. By the 1950s, he faced an increasingly ugly problem. The Archdiocese of New Orleans had the largest Catholic population in the Deep South and many thousands of black Catholics. It also had segregated schools. Rummel and previous bishops had always ensured that black students had access to Catholic education. However, segregated parochial schools had the same scarce money and poor quality as the segregated public schools.

After World War II, Rummel began desegregating the local Church. In 1948, his seminary welcomed two black students. In 1951, Rummel pulled the “white” and “colored” signs from Catholic parishes. In 1953, a year before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down segregation in public schools, he issued the first of two strong pastoral letters: “Blessed Are the Peacemakers.” Pastors read it to their people at every Mass one Sunday. In it, Rummel condemned segregation. It drew a quick response. Some parishioners bitterly resented hearing from the pulpit that “there be no further discrimination or segregation in the pews, at the Communion rail, at the confessional and in parish meetings, just as there will be no segregation in the kingdom of heaven.”

In 1956, Rummel said he intended to desegregate Catholic schools. Tempers ran hot. Most parish school boards voted against desegregation. Rummel didn’t budge. A year earlier, he had closed a parish when its people objected to their newly assigned black priest. But to compound the archbishop’s troubles, many parents had moved their children from public to Catholic schools, hoping to avoid desegregation. Members of the Louisiana legislature threatened to withhold then-available public funds for Catholic schools if Rummel went ahead with his plans.

In early 1962, Rummel said that in the following year, Catholic schools would integrate. Several Catholic politicians organized public protests and letter-writing campaigns. They threatened a boycott of Catholic schools. On April 16, 1962, Rummel excommunicated three prominent Catholics – a judge, a political writer and a community organizer – for publicly defying the teaching of their Church.

The New Orleans events made national news, covered by “Time” magazine and the “New York Times.” The “Times” editorial board gushed that “men of all faiths must admire [Rummel’s] unwavering courage” because he has “set an example founded on religious principle and is responsive to the social conscience of our time.”

In 2004, another archbishop, Raymond Burke of St. Louis, drew national headlines. In his final weeks as bishop of La Crosse, Wisconsin, he asked three Catholic public figures to refrain from presenting themselves for Communion. He then asked his priests to withhold Communion from Catholic public officials who supported abortion rights. The three offending politicians claimed merely to be pro-choice. In Burke’s view, though, their actions showed a material support for abortion and a stubborn disregard for their own faith. All three had voted for or otherwise supported forcing Catholic hospitals to provide abortions. In effect, they had publicly tried to coerce the Church to violate her teaching on a serious sanctity-of-life issue.

Burke’s action, though softer than Rummel’s, made quite a few enemies, even among people who saw themselves as Catholic. Unlike Rummel, Burke received no glowing praise from the “New York Times”. He got rather different treatment from the news media. But again like Rummel, he hadn’t checked with the “Times” for its approval. What the “Times” thought didn’t matter. What the Church believed, did.

The moral of our story is this: First, when Catholics take their Church seriously and act on her teaching in the world, somebody, and often somebody with power, won’t like it. Second, in recent American politics, the line that divides “prophetic witness” from “violating the separation of Church and state” usually depends on who draws the line, who gets offended—and by what issue. The line wanders conveniently. But Catholics, in seeking to live their faith, can’t follow convenience.”

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