By George 3

George Weigel

Let me come back to George Weigel’s book Evangelical Catholicism.  I had begun to discuss this in a number of earlier entries (November 19, 20, and 22^nd 2013). To recap, Weigel credits contemporary Catholicism as finding its roots in the vision of Pope Leo XIII, a pope who very much—in his day—engaged the (then) modern world and its questions and issues.  And, appropriate to his ministry, Leo brought the rich theological heritage of our Catholic faith into the dialogue.  Leo is probably best remembered for his startling encyclical, Rerum Novarum, which for its day was every bit as “radical” as the recent papal letter, Evangelii Gaudium.  I think Weigel fudges his history a bit—or rather paints the picture with strokes so broad as to be inaccurate in some details—but I think he is on to something in his thesis.  (My objections would center mostly in that I don’t see Pius X and his pontificate as standing in continuity with Leo (his predecessor) or with Benedict XV and Pius XI, his successors.  But I am willing to let the point pass.)   I am very much taken, however, by Weigel’s vision of an Evangelical Catholicism that anchors Catholic life in taking the Word of God to bear in our daily lives and nourishing ourselves by fully participating in the sacramental life of the Church.  Indeed, I think it was this immersion in Word and Sacrament that gave us the Second Vatican Council and especially its Liturgy.  The spiritual energy of places like Maria Laach and Beuron Abbey, Saint Séverin in Paris and Combermere in Ontario, the witness of people like Edith Stein and Dorothy Day and the Dominican friar Jacques Loew, and the scholarship of Josef Jungmann, Augustin Bea, and Marie-Dominique Chenu all reflect this spirituality of Word and Sacrament and all provided the resources from which the Council Fathers were able to imagine a new and renewed Church  that could project in our day and in our world the enthusiasm with which the Apostles propagated the Gospel in theirs. 
At the same time that this tremendous energy was flooding the Church, the world around the Church—or at least the European and American worlds—were falling into a post-Christian culture that would present the Church with an incredible challenge but one which we could meet strengthened by these resources of revived engagement with the Word of God and Sacramental Life.  The problems that prompted Leo to write Rerum Novarum—the sordid view of the Robber Baron Capitalists that the human person is no more than a tool to be used to make money—threated industrial societies with the grossest dehumanization.  Nihilism, the cynical philosophical system that swept away any idea of a moral compass by which the industrialists, the wealthy classes, and the State should be governed in their relationship with the masses, devoured whatever soul remained in Western society after the rise of secularism consequent to the “Enlightenment” and the Revolution it spawned.  The emergence of Leninism/Stalinism in Russia and its devaluation of the human individual in favor of the State as well as the rise of National Socialism with its dehumanization of the individual and its repugnant racial ideology were the results of this collapse of humanistic thought. 
In the face of this implosion of civilization, Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular had the resources to provide an alternative view in which the human person retained his or her worth as a being and not dependent on the usefulness of the individual  to society or to the state.  Catholic philosophers such as Paul Claudel, Etienne Gilson, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,  and Gabriel Marcel presented philosophies in which the human person, far from being a tool of the State or having no intrinsic value, is the raison d’etre of being, the very center of existence for whose sake and good interest society exists. 
The philosophic debate is not over.  In the post-World War II period, secularism has espoused and advanced a philosophy in which there is no concept of the common good but in which ethics are guided by self-interest of the individual.  The impact of Ayn Rand, the doyenne of this school of radical self-interest, has transformed American society (and not, to my mind, for the better.)   American society today would seem to recognize no good that trumps the self-interest of the individual.  We are left with a “trickle-down economics” that sees the gap between a rich minority and an ever-poorer and growing majority increasing by the year. In 2009, the average salary of a CEO was 263 times that of the average American worker, a situation every bit as evil as that against which Leo XIII wrote in Rerum Novarum.  Americans are obsessed with alleged personal rights whether it is the right to possess firearms or the right to have an abortion.  We find our chief form of entertainment in the vicarious disposal of human life through media ranging from movies through television to video games for youth and consider this to be our “right.”  We perceive pornography—whether sexual or violence—to be a “victimless crime.”  The family is in shreds because “I don’t want to be married anymore” is sufficient cause—again the triumph of the selfish individual—to overturn commitments of marriage and parenthood.  Both “the left” and “the right” have bought into this heresy of “it’s all about me and my happiness.”
The antidote to this moral chaos is Weigel’s Evangelical Catholicism.  It is a revived commitment to a scriptural spirituality in which, as one medieval spiritual text explains:  Let the Sword of the Spirit, that is the Word of God, dwell in your minds and in your hearts that all that you do may be done in the Word of the Lord. What has been the genius of evangelical voices throughout the history of Christianity has been this call to “hear the Word of God and put it into practice.” (cf Luke 11:28).  
The error that I see Weigel making is not in his vision of Evangelical Christianity but in his understanding of how it is to be presented.  He sees it as a bastion against the philosophical/moral chaos of post-modern society.  He wants Christians to use their clout to contain and suppress this modern heresy of an “ethics” of self-interest.  He falls into the same error our bishops have fallen into these past thirty some years since Roe vs. Wade: change laws and everything will be alright.    But if Weigel knew the scriptures himself he would know that the mission God gave to the prophets and Jesus gave to his disciples is to change hearts.  It is a far more challenging mission to change hearts than to change laws, but it is the only path that will bring success.  I am all in favor of Evangelical Catholicism but it must be, well, evangelical—you know—evangelizing. 
I remember thirty years ago I was part of a committee a young priest was trying for form in our parish.  It was an evangelism committee—an attempt to evangelize our neighborhood in which many had fallen away from the faith and even more had never had it.  At the end of the organizational meeting a wise old nun (yes, an LCWR nun) who had served as novice mistress in her community observed: “ok, fine, but who will evangelize us so that we can go and evangelize the neighborhood?”  Yes, who will evangelize us?  I think Weigel makes an important contribution to this task but he needs to go back and re-read those scriptures. 

On All of Our Shoulders II

Yesterday I posted the first two sections of the statement “On All of Our Shoulders,” an evaluation of the Ryan Budget proposal according to the norms of the magisterium issued by 150+ Catholic scholars and theologians.  Today I am posting the next two sections.   My point, as I wrote yesterday, is not to portray Congressperson Ryan in a negative light and certainly not to make him out to be a “ bad Catholic,” but only to demonstrate that the choice for Catholic voters in this election is not a moral “slam-dunk” in the Romney/Ryan hoop.  I believe that a Catholic can, in good conscience, vote for the Republican ticket because of its opposition to legalized abortion.  I also believe that a Catholic can look at the moral issues of the Republican Platform’s economic policies and compare them unfavorably—again, from a moral standpoint—to those of the Democratic candidates and go for the Obama/Biden ticket.  There are serious moral flaws in the projects of each party.  Ironically the Democrats seem to understand this better than the Republicans, but I think it is important that we not only look at the spectrum of issues in making our choices, but respect those who also look hard at the same moral spectrum of issues and make a different choice.  So now, back to “On  All of Our Shoulders….”

Prudence Misused

Catholic promoters of Ryan's policies often invoke "prudence" to argue that since bishops are not competent to judge the details of policy proposals, there is no properly "Catholic" problem with his policies. This distorts the authentic Catholic meaning of prudence. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines prudence as "right reason in action." It is the virtue through which we "apply moral principles to particular cases." [2] In St. Thomas Aquinas's words, no one "can properly apply one thing to another unless he knows both the thing to be applied and the thing to which it has to be applied." [3] Thus, prudence demands both knowledge of the principles of Catholic Social Doctrine and honest attention to the details and realistic consequences of policies.
Aquinas also warned that prudence is a risky business. We are perennially tempted to use it as a cover for achieving goals contrary to our professed principles. Aquinas taught that the vice of "craftiness" often masquerades as prudence. Craftiness uses "means that are not true, but fictitious and counterfeit" to achieve its ends "whether good or bad." [4] For that reason, we must always scrutinize the principles that inspire our actions in prudential matters. Are our actions and policies consistent with the ideals we proclaim? Or would an honest assessment reveal they are guided by less laudable motives?
Prudence and Principle, Love and Truth:
The Church's social doctrine is not simply an imperative to believe in God and help the poor, for which any proposal can claim equal legitimacy by promising positive consequences. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church states that the Church teaches specific principles of social doctrine.
These principles of the Church's social doctrine "concern the reality of society in its entirety: from close and immediate relationships to those mediated by politics, economics and law; from the relationships among communities and groups to relations between peoples and nations." [5]
A Catholic use of prudence requires evaluating the compatibility between policy proposals and these substantial teachings.
Benedict XVI expressed the true challenge of Christian prudence in his great social encyclical Caritas in Veritate: the truth of Christian love must animate all dimensions of society. Caritas is more than a generic inspiration, if love is truth, it must give specific form to our actions.
Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love. It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word "love" is abused and distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the opposite.
Without truth, without trust and love for what is true, there is no social conscience and responsibility, and social action ends up serving private interests and the logic of power, resulting in social fragmentation, especially in a globalized society at difficult times like the present. [6]

Prudence and Policy

Prudence also requires consideration of the full range of options available and an honest assessment of the outcome of policy proposals. After decades of tax cuts, honesty requires considering revenue increases in addition to program cuts. Government programs are not perfect and need to be improved. Proposals to slash or eliminate programs without proposing alternatives, however, is exactly the kind of indifference Jesus condemned in the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Rich Man and Lazarus.

Footnotes

2. Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1806
3. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II: 47, 3 resp.
4. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II: 55, 3 resp.
5. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, #161.
6. Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, #3,4.

Catholic amd Democrat--The Roots Are Deep

When a Methodist gets money, he becomes an Episcopalian

When a Baptist gets money, he joins the Presbyterian Church.

The Rev, Samuel D.

Burdhard whose quip

that the Democrats

were the party of Rum,

Romanism and Rebellion

sealed the deal between
Catholics and the
Democratic Party

When a Catholic Priest is named a bishop

He becomes a Republican. 

Catholics have traditionally been Democrats—after all, the Democrats are the party of Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion. (See entry for March 7, 2011.) What has caused our hierarchy to shift to the Republicans?  And why is our laity not following?

I was shocked to see that according to a recent Pew survey, President Obama leads Governor Romney among Catholics 54% to 39%.   While the majority of African-American Catholics and Hispanic Catholics are strongly pro-Obama, a slight majority of White Catholics are now sliding into the Obama camp.  A clue to this surge might be found in the surveys that indicate that the one faction of the Catholic vote that is not weighted toward the President are the White Catholic weekly Mass-goers among whom Romney has a slight edge.  Some attribute this to weekly Mass-attendees being “more faithful” Catholics who are inclined to follow the leadership of their bishops.  While that may be true, the converse conclusion must then also be true: that there is a majority of White Catholics, including both those who attend Mass weekly and those who have stopped attending regularly, who have lost their confidence in the leadership of the bishops.    
What shocked me about the Pew Survey results is not that the majority of Catholics are not following the bishops’ lead, but that I would have thought that since the majority of (white) Catholics in this country have gradually slipped up into the better-off classes and are no longer among the working (labor union) class, that their politics would have turned as well from the traditional alliance between the Catholic Church and the Democratic party.  But they haven’t.  What are the reasons that they are staying locked in the Democratic Party?
It may be that despite their newly acquired relative affluence Middle and Upper Class Catholics are still convinced of the basic Catholic view of society as a cooperative unit in which those who have more have responsibility for those who have less. Catholic social teaching over the 120 years or so since Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum has embraced the idea that not only are individuals responsible for works of charity but that society itself has an obligation from each of its members towards all of its members.   This corporate view is at odds with Paul Ryan’s Ayn Rand views of a world in which each person must look out for his or her own interest first rather than for the “common good.”   It may be that the boomer generation of Catholics gratefully remember their parents’ stories of  the Church’s support for organized Labor in the years of the great depression and realize that without the boost that Catholic Social teaching—along with the Democratic New Deal and the G.I. Bill—gave their parents, they—the boomers—would not have had the social and educational opportunities that empowered them to make the jump into the Professional and Managerial classes.   It may also be—and given that the Catholic boost in the Obama ratings comes because of the non-weekly attendees—a sign that not only have the bishops become irrelevant to many of the Catholics-in-the-pews but there is actually a backlash against their leadership among those whose disaffection with the leadership of the last twenty years or so has made them indifferent towards formal Catholicism.  Given the recent scandals and the poor quality of Episcopal leadership this factor cannot be discounted.  As hard as the Timothy Dolans and Sean O’Malleys try to pedal forward the bike of American Catholicism, the number of foot-draggers on the bishops bicycle built for 450 (or whatever the number of American bishops) is holding back the advance of the Institutional Church.  O well, there may be grace in that too. 

Paul Ryan and the Catholic Cafeteria



Thomas Aquinas

 Vice-Presidential nominee Paul Ryan is a cradle Catholic.  He attended public schools in Janesville WI and Miami University in Oxford Ohio where he became interested in the writings of liberal Austrian economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, and the American, Milton Friedman.  Now one of the tricky things is to understand that when you talk about “liberal” and economics, you are not talking about “liberal” in the ordinary sense we use it today—a political liberal.  To the contrary—usually those who espouse economic liberalism (which is unrestricted free-market capitalism) are politically conservative.  Economic liberalism is the foundation for “Big Business” and is geared to the issues of corporate good rather than the interests of the working and consuming classes.  Congressman Ryan is also a devotee of the late philosopher/novelists Ayn Rand.  In a 2005 speech he said

"I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are and what my beliefs are. It's inspired me so much that it's required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff.  . . .the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand. And the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism."

Congressman Ryan claims that his social and economic philosophy is rooted in the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas though it does not appear that he has ever studied Thomas in any depth.  Indeed nothing could be further from Thomas’ vision than the radical individualism of the atheist Ayn Rand for whom the individual was the only focus of “the good” whereas Catholic social theory has held for the “common good,” an idea that Congressman Ryan labels “collectivism.” 

While Congressman Ryan is with the Church on specific issues of the right-to-life of the unborn (he is not consistently pro-life but anti-abortion) and same-sex marriage, he differs from Catholic teaching in other areas such as the rights of immigrants and rights of workers to organize for collective bargaining.  More the point, however, is that he lacks a Catholic understanding of the nature of society and the primacy of the common good over the interests of individuals.  Some of his other stands are troubling as well. 

It is unrealistic to expect a politician today to form his political philosophy totally in accord with his religious faith.  No one else does.  That is unfortunate.  But Paul Ryan shows us that cafeteria Catholicism is the norm. It seems that no one but a bishop eats a full meal these days, and most of those gentlemen could afford to lose some weight.