Konspiracy Theories and The Things We Waste Time About

Well, the Krazies are all atwitter with their undies in a bunch (aren’t they always) over a “secret” colloquium held at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome this past week to discuss various topics that will be addressed in the upcoming October Synod II on the Family.   The blog Rorate Caeli, the Krazies version of L’Osservatore Romano, was just spitting nails (or s*itting bricks) about this “Vatican II style Rhineland coup.” I must admit that I am a bit baffled that Cardinals Burke, Bradmüller, Müller, Caffarra, and others can collaborate on a book to push their agenda, but other members of the hierarchy can’t sit down with a group of theologians and prepare their arguments for sound debate.   A university colloquium is far less influential on public opinion—and on the Synod Delegates—than a published book, especially one that has received such publicity as Remaining in the Truth of Christ.  Frankly I think it is a great idea for the Synod delegates on either side of the issues to do some serious theological research and reflection so as to be prepared for good discussion and wise discernment at the October meeting. 

The Conference at the Gregorian University was not an attempt to rally bishops to the banner of an Eucharistic olly-olly-in-free for everyone from the LGBT community to multiply married Hollywood film-stars and members of the Kennedy Family.  The Presidents of the German, Swiss, and French Conferences of Bishops were there but with only six other bishops.  There were seventeen theologians representing a variety of disciplines from Scripture to moral theology to canon law.  There was an auditor of the Sacred Roman Rota (the Roman “Court of Appeals” that deals with, among other things, marriage cases).  The President of the Sant’Egidio Community, a prestigious lay association tightly connected to the Vatican was also there.  All in all, no more than five of six participants are likely to be members of the upcoming Synod, but it did provide a good forum in which the theologians could advise the bishops what options for the future lay open to them for a more inclusive approach to Eucharistic participation by people who now feel “shut out” of the Church’s life.  A handful of journalists from Catholic media outlets were also invited to be present which is typical for such academic colloquia at the Gregorian or other Pontifical Universities. 

Why are the krazies so frightened of a change in Church discipline? Do they really think that Christ has deserted his Church and that it is fallen on them to guard the Deposit of Faith in his absence?  Actually, I think the agenda is far different and has little direct reference to the upcoming Synod or to the issues of Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried or people in same-sex marriages.  I think this has a lot to do with a fundamental shift in ecclesiology.

I have written about this before.  Avery Dulles in his book The Catholicity of the Church, makes the—I believe prophetic—claim that the in the first millennium the papacy was concerned with spreading the faith; in the second with power, and in the third will be with service.  This means that we are at a cusp where the institutional model of the Church will be giving way to another emphasis—the Church as Servant. In an earlier book, Dulles speaks of five models of the Church: Institution, Communio, Sacrament, Servant, and Kerygma.  We do see the power waning and a serious shift away from the Institutional model.  While there are those prelates like Cardinal Burke and Archbishop Cordileone who still like to parade around in glad rags that would make Marie Antoinette embarrassed, there has been an attempt to de-princify (or princessify) the Church.  I am not sure that I like the current CEO model any more than I liked the Renaissance Prince model of the olden years, but it does send a message.  Similarly, the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council have restructured  the Mass to emphasize its communal nature rather than the priestly emphasis of the old Liturgy.  Religious women have dropped the pseudo-medieval garb of the last two centuries as well as found new ways to live together without the faux-monasticism of convent life.  All this drives the Krazies even krazier because it undermines the institutional model to which they are clinging. 

While I think that that the model of the next millennium will emphasize the servant nature of the Church, I think it will also, by necessity, revive the kerygmatic emphasis.  It is increasingly clear that European and North American societies are a challenge for a “New Evangelization.”  And I think this is the neuralgic point for the krazies.  A “New Evangelization” needs a different face on the Church as Evangelizer than the Institution.  Today’s world is distrustful of Institutions.  The International Football Association (FIFA) is plagued by scandal.  Dennis Hastert, the “born-again evangelical” Republican  former speaker of the House whose smarmy holier-than-just-about-everyone-else attitude led him to be so self-righteous in regards to President Bill Clinton, is now accused of paying hush money to a man whom Hastert sexually abused when Hastert taught high school in Illinois.  Speaking of sex-abuse: it is no longer just a Catholic problem, or even Dennis Hastert’s issue: Boy Scouts of America, Little League, public and private high schools across the country.  And of course there is the sexual harassment issues that plague the military, correction institutions, private industry, professional sports.  And we have domestic violence just about everywhere you look.  And just to bring matters back home: once Pope Francis cleaned up the Vatican Bank, profits multiplied 20 times over.  20 times over!!!  Where was that money going before???  How will Gamarelli’s stay in business now that the graft has been exposed?  Who can afford to buy a cappa magna out of his own pocket?  Hopefully the Knights of Malta will pick up the tab for you know who. 

No, we have to let the Institution of the Church morph into something less powerful and certainly not the public face of the Church.  We’ve got to get those nuns on the bus back out there while they can still walk.  We need that 85 year old Sister Megan Rice who poured blood on the wall of a nuclear weapons plant to get out there in front.  C’mon Dan Berrigan—you’ve still got work to do.  Father Warren Hall—ok, so the Bishop doesn’t want you at Seton Hall for you asking why we can’t all get along (LGBT themed agenda, but a good question none the less) but hey, the students believe in you.  We need you up front, man, you got "street cred."  And you Missionaries of Charity, yeah you’re pretty traditional but that isn’t the issue: you get down and dirty with the poor.  You’re solid gold with this evangelization thing, ladies, and we need you.  You see, our task isn’t to preserve the Church—let God take care of the Church—our task is to bring the Good News of the Kingdom of God.  The Kingdom/Gospel is our end; Church is only the means.  Let’s not worry about the Synod and who can and who can’t go to communion.  That is simply Rome fiddles while the world burns.  We are just wasting our time trimming the Christmas Tree when we get caught in these endless arguments.  People who are in the state of grace know that they are in the state of grace; those who know that they have some remedial work to do before coming to communion know that they have some remedial work to do.  We need to call one another to be honest—brutally honest—about the state of our souls but not to waste time making judgments about others. God has more important work for us to do.   

Changes and Change: Know Your Church After Vatican II

My last posting illustrates, through the experience of one parish community, why for so many of us the hopes we found in the Second Vatican Council have not been fulfilled.  Don’t misunderstand me, more good has come from our attempts to implement the Council than failure, but in many places, too many places, the dream has faded and we need to ask if a people once disappointed can reasonably be asked to get up their hopes once again. 
I remember a professor of mine saying—almost forty years ago—that the major challenge facing the Church was the ongoing education and formation of its clergy.  Many priests bought into the “changes” of Vatican II without understanding the fundamental shift-of-ground the Church was experiencing.  This is why I have more respect for many who opposed the Council than for those who have accepted the changes in their course.  Those who have implemented the Council have too often gone along with the flow, while those who have opposed the Council, such as the Lefebvrists, the sede-vacantists, or the various schismatic groups, have understood the fundamental shift the Church has made at Vatican II.  They may have rejected it, but at least they have understood the depth of the change.  They have opposed it precisely because they have understood it, while many of us who “agree” with the Council do so only because we really don’t get it.  In other words we have seen the trees (liturgical changes, the occasional Thanksgiving Eve Lord’s Prayer with the Presbyterians, nuns in pants suits) but we haven’t recognized the very different forest we find ourselves in in the Church after the Council. 
In the first place the Church has a radically new vision of itself.  No one articulated this better than Cardinal Avery Dulles in his book Models of the Church where he proposes moving the emphasis from the Institutional model of Church to the Kerygmatic, Servant, Sacramental, and Communio models.  This shift in models has moved the Church from a pyramid of power to a community of believers with different gifts in the mission of bringing the Gospel to the world.  (I realize this is a gross over-simplification of Dulles’ contribution but the best I can do in one paragraph.  If you want the nuances—and you should—go read the book!)
Moreover, not only has the Council given us new ways to see ourselves as Church, but it has redefined our relationship to the world beyond the Church—whether as regards non-Christian religions and how and to what degree they reflect Truth or the contemporary secular society and the challenge we have to put ourselves as witnesses to the Gospel by service to all in the secular city.  No longer is the Church claiming a superiority over the world, but is anxious to present itself as a solution to the world’s problems and at service to its needs. 
The Council has also redefined our relationship to those we used to call “heretics” and now recognize as our separated brothers and sisters.  That by baptism they have a hold on the Church and are included in its fellowship—albeit to an imperfect degree (the imperfection of union being bi-lateral)—is a remarkable shift from having seen them as rebels and heretics. 
The sovereignty of human conscience and the dignity of the human person demanding the right be guaranteed for the individual to worship according to his or her conscience was another remarkable breakthrough.  This respects the mystery of grace as it unfolds uniquely in each human life and does not lay claim for the Catholic Church to arbitrate the conscience of believers or non-believers.  It dis-empowers us from political coercion to impose our moral schemata but at the same time it offers us the opportunity to call one another to the conversion of heart that is the earmark of genuine discipleship.   
Basically, at the core, we have a Church that seeks to accompany the human family on its pilgrim journey through this world towards God’s Kingdom instead of, to use a rather graphic image, forcibly herding all humankind along a cattle-like squeeze chute to the slaughter-house of its own institutional meat-packing plant.  In other words, we have a Church that sees itself as lighting the path of Salvation with the Gospel of Christ for all to see rather than a Church that is guards the door of the Kingdom lest any enter without the proper credentials. 
This is very threatening for those who have understood the medieval axiom extra ecclesiam nulla salus as meaning that one needs institutional membership in the Catholic Church in order to be saved.  These are those who have a theology of exclusivity that deny that God ardently desires the salvation of all and are anxious to draw lines between the “elect” (themselves and people like themselves) and the “lost souls” (those who are different from themselves).  In this post-conciliar understanding, the Church is still God’s fellowship to support one another along the path of salvation, and it is still a visible sign (sacrament) of the Kingdom, but this is a radically different understanding of Church.  It is far less institutional, far less easy to define.  It is obviously more inclusive than just those in formal communion with the Bishop of Rome.  In some ways it is closer to Calvin’s “invisible Church” of those destined for salvation more than the traditional Catholic “visible Church” of those in formal communion with the hierarchy.  Calvin would, of course, be very unhappy with such wide inclusivity as we are talking about, but the point is the same: the Church can’t take the place of God in deciding who is saved and who is not saved.  It may have the powers of the keys, but God has not resigned the sovereignty that gives him and him alone the judgment. 
But more important, perhaps, than who constitutes the Church is the question of what is our mission as Church.  Previous to Vatican II we saw our mission as giving perfect worship to God and this meant carrying out the divine cult and gathering the peoples of this earth into that perfect worship.  Worship meant of course the Liturgy, and perfect worship meant rubrical splendor rather than worship in Spirit and in Truth.  Today we still see the Liturgy as the source and summit of our Christian life, but we also link it to a much more dynamic sense of mission.  We see the worship of God manifesting itself not in pomp and panoply but in the conversion of hearts that makes us embrace the mysteries of the Kingdom that we celebrate.  Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI , and now Pope Francis have all called us to a “new evangelization” of bringing the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to shine out in our world.  But what does that mean?
This is perhaps the tragedy of disappointment.  The burnout of so many clergy and the disappointed dreams of so many laity have left far too many too tired and too exhausted to pick up the banner of the new evangelization.  We need that second wind, that second Pentecost, to energize one another for work at hand.  Never before has humankind so needed the Gospel witness.  With wars in a dozen countries, famine in scores of countries, seventy percent of God’s children living without basic necessities of health, shelter, food, or education –the world needs the Gospel.  The world desperately needs the Gospel.  There is no hope for the world other than the Gospel of Christ.  Pope Francis calls for a redistribution of the world’s resources so that each of God’s children can have the share of this world’s opportunities that God the Father of us all wants for his children but how can that call be a reality unless the Gospel is preached so hearts can change.  How many sitting in our pews Sunday after Sunday, or even day after day, refuse to hear that Gospel call much less become its messengers?
We do need to go back and build both a stronger theological and a stronger spiritual foundation for ourselves as Church so that we can embrace the mission at hand.  There is no going back to the Church before the Council.  It was, or what some want to revive of it was, a ghettoized, belly-button staring, narcissistic coven of people who forgot the call to put themselves at the humble service of the least of Christ’s brothers and sisters and it is too late to give in to that sort of self-indulgence with brocade robes and kissing the ring-bedecked gloved hands of our spiritual betters.  It is time to get out into the streets of Jerusalem and lift the cross from the shoulders of Christ and ease his suffering.  Pardon me for preaching today, but let us pray for one another that the Lord will open our eyes to the mission and enflame our hearts to embrace it. 

Why They Are Afraid of Pope Francis 16

Flannery O'Connor  1925-1964

The image of the church I like is that of the holy, faithful people of God. This is the definition I often use, and then there is that image from the Second Vatican Council’s ‘Dogmatic Constitution on the Church’ (No. 12). Belonging to a people has a strong theological value. In the history of salvation, God has saved a people. There is no full identity without belonging to a people. No one is saved alone, as an isolated individual, but God attracts us looking at the complex web of relationships that take place in the human community. God enters into this dynamic, this participation in the web of human relationships.

This is another quote from the interview that Pope Francis gave La Civilta
Cattolica (and reprinted in America) that explains the very Vatican II course he is charting for the Church in his pontificate.  While John Paul II and Benedict XVI both used the image “People of God” in reference to the Church it was not their operative ecclesiology and when they used it was a very sanitized “people” that they meant as “People of God.”  Of course, John Paul was a Philosopher and Benedict a theologian and they both—and especially Benedict—dealt better with abstractions than with the nitty-gritty dirt of the Incarnation as it unfolds in human life today.  Francis, on the other hand, has a background in the sciences and is more prepared to deal with concrete realities than the sanitized ideals.  Francis has made it clear, whether in regard to gay clergy or nursing mothers or every and any messy life in between, that the People of God is an inclusive reality to which all belong and where all have a seat at the table.  That doesn’t please the Pharisees who want the Kingdom of God to be a more exclusive affair to which the riffraff  find the doors barred. 

Francis also makes the point that God has saved a People and that does not sit well with the neo-trads who, despite their claims to Catholicity have bought into the Protestant idea that we are saved as individuals.  In our Catholic tradition, going back to the Fathers of the Church, we are saved precisely because we belong to Christ—not as his possessions but as his members, the members of his Body.  This is a major theme, of course, in the Letters of Saint Paul. We are the Body of Christ.  For Paul this is not a metaphor.  Paul sees us, corporately, as the physical Body of the Resurrected Christ and individually as the various members (or parts) of that Body.  We have a claim on sharing in his Resurrection precisely because of this membership, not because of any merits (or lack of faults) of our own. 

I remember how th neo-trads wailed and carried on when Hilary Clinton wrote her book It Takes a Village.  I am certainly not going to claim the distinguished Ms. Clinton as a voice that carries a Catholic message, but in this case—or at least in the concept embodied in the title—there is no idea more Catholic.  We Catholics are intensely corporate people and this is something that clashes with our American approach that so stresses individualism.  The neo-trads simply can’t get this.  The see only the individual and forget that the individual—saint or sinner, gay or straight, male or female, red-white-yellow-brown or black, contracepting or birthing, Democrat or Republican, orthodox or heterodox, liberal or conservative, A&P or every Sunday—once baptized, irretrievably belongs to Christ. 

The Catholic Short-Story writer, Flannery O’Connor caught this notion and articulated it well in her story “Revelation.”  Mrs. Turpin, the principal character in the story, is a woman who is very confident of her place in the social and moral hierarchy until an encounter with an ill-tempered girl in a doctor’s waiting room makes her confront her world from a more humbled perspective.  In one of my favorite passages in American literature, Mrs. Turpin sees her fellow denizens of this earth through a different lens.  She is standing one evening looking at the hogs in their pen on her farm:

Until the sun slipped finally behind the tree line, Mrs. Turpin remained there with her gaze bent to them as if she were absorbing some abysmal life-giving knowledge.  At last she lifted her head.  There was only a purple streak in the sky, cutting through a field of crimson and leading, like an extension of the highway, into the descending dusk.  She raised her hands from the side of the pen in a gesture hieratic and profound.  A visionary light settled in her eyes.  She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire.  Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven, there were whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black n****** in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs.  And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right.  She leaned forward to observe them closer.  They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.  She lowered her hands and gripped the rail of the hog pen, her eyes small but fixed unblinkingly on what lay ahead.   In a moment the vision faded but she remained where she was, immobile. 

We all need, like Mrs Turpin, to come to see that our standard of who stands right in the sight of God is a very arbitrary one and not necessarily the definitive judgment that lies beyond our mortal perception.  

Why Are They Afraid of Pope Francis? 12

Well—back to Pope Francis and his interview with La Civilta Cattolica/America and the reasons he is engendering fear in certain segments of the Church.  Now, keep in mind that my prejudices are with the Holy Father and my sympathies are not with those who are alarmed over the direction in which he is taking the Church.  As I keep hearing people say “now that the shoe is on the other foot,” meaning that those of us who were fearful that we saw the future eroding under John Paul II and Benedict XVI but stayed loyal to the Church now find a certain morose delectation (as the old manuals called it) or schadenfreude as Pope Benedict would say, in the discomfort of those who find their hopes for a more triumphalist Church to be dashed on the Rock of Peter.    But take a look at this remark in the famous interview:

“The Society of Jesus is an institution in tension,” the pope replied, “always fundamentally in tension. A Jesuit is a person who is not centered in himself. The Society itself also looks to a center outside itself; its center is Christ and his church. So if the Society centers itself in Christ and the church, it has two fundamental points of reference for its balance and for being able to live on the margins, on the frontier. If it looks too much in upon itself, it puts itself at the center as a very solid, very well ‘armed’ structure, but then it runs the risk of feeling safe and self-sufficient. The Society must always have before itself the Deus semper maior, the always-greater God, and the pursuit of the ever greater glory of God, the church as true bride of Christ our Lord, Christ the king who conquers us and to whom we offer our whole person and all our hard work, even if we are clay pots, inadequate. This tension takes us out of ourselves continuously. The tool that makes the Society of Jesus not centered in itself, really strong, is, then, the account of conscience, which is at the same time paternal and fraternal, because it helps the Society to fulfill its mission better.”

Notice the Jesuit is not centered in himself and the Society of Jesus also looks to a center outside itself—to the Greater Glory of God (Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam) and to the Church as the true bride of Christ.  Great!  So now that you have a man with this spiritual principle guiding the Church, you have a man who looks not to the person of the pope, or the institution of the papacy, or even to the institutional Church—but seeks only the Greater Glory of God and of his Church—not his Church as the powerful institution, but as the poor bride of Christ.  You have, as Francis speaks so well of, the image of the Church as poor and vulnerable as was her Lord.  This is a very different ecclesiology than that of John Paul II and even more of Benedict XVI who sought to build up and strengthen the Institutional aspects of the Church.  Now we have a Pope who places little faith and less interest in that institutionalism.

This brings me back to the writings of one of my heroes, Avery Dulles, whose remarks on the Church in his books Models of the Church and Catholicity of the Church make it clear that it is high time to move away from the models of power, legalism, and institutionalism which have characterized the Catholic Church for the last thousand years.  So: you go, Francis.  This is the Shepherd we need to lead us into the Church’s third millennium.

A Contemporary Reflection on the Becket Controversy

A Becket-in-the-making?

Cardinal Francis George

of  Chicago

Cardinal George’s dire forecast that his successors would die martyrs for the faith triggered me to write these reflections on the contemporary Church in the United States the martyrdom of Thomas Becket—who died not for the faith but to preserve the Church’s privilege of exemption from the Law.  Ironically I am  and have long been a devotee of Becket.  Given the understanding of the Church’s position in the 12^th century, I realize that Becket acted on a principle he cherished as a matter of faith.  However in the 20^th century none of us would hold to that same principle—well probably Cardinal Law would—that the Church is not answerable to any authority but its own when it comes to crimes by the clergy.  Of course Becket lived in a time when the Church was consolidating its power; today we are somewhat more suspicious about power and reluctant to see it go unchecked, even (and especially) in the Church. 
I have referred several times before to the insight offered by the late Cardinal Avery Dulles in his book, the Catholicity of the Church, that the first thousand years of the papacy were about witness; the second thousand about power; and the third thousand will be about service.  I agree with Dulles but I think the paradigm can be extended from the papacy to the Church itself and this would mean that Catholicism is at one of those great shifts in the theological tectonic plates as we move from the template of power to the template of service.  Little tremors have signaled the shifting ground ever since Bishop Emil de Smedt of Bruges declared in the opening session of Vatican II that the Church had to renounce the “clericalism, juridicism, and triumphalism” of the past and meet the modern world on its own terms.  Paul VI abolished the papal court, drastically simplified the costuming of prelates to be rid of the princely accoutrements.  Religious women, moving out of their large motherhouses, put aside their medieval garb and institutional ministries to undertake hands-on service of abused women, abandoned children, the homeless, the aged, the immigrant, and the mentally ill.  Jesuits and de la Salle Christian Brothers opened up inner city Christo Rey Schools to give the children of the poor an educational leg-up that would let them compete successfully for placement in the academies run by their orders.  Religious Orders of both men and women started NGO’s and Institutes and outreach centers that would interface them with the rank injustices that underlay our social structures on the local, national, and international levels.  New model bishops, noted for their simplicity of style and humble service, emerged in the Church in such figures as Dom Helder Camara of Recife Brazil, Remi de Roo of Victoria,  Bernard Topel of Spokane, Oscar Romero of San Salvador, and Thomas Gumbleton (auxiliary) of Detroit.   But it was an Albanian nun who most personified this new attitude, Mother Theresa of Calcutta, and captured the attention of the world by her devoted care of the poorest of the poor.  But it has not been a highway without its detours, roadblocks, speed bumps and potholes. 
There has been a strong current among social conservatives pushing a restorationist agenda in the Church to preserve the privilege and power of past centuries.  Recognizing that the liturgical changes introduced under Paul VI in the 1970 missal have probably been the strongest factor in awakening the social consciousness of the Catholic faithful, some bishops, many priests, and about five percent of the active laity have pushed to restore the pre-conciliar rites along with the elaborate costuming of prelates abolished by Paul VI.  There has been a revival of neo-traditionalist art and architecture in many Catholic parishes that focuses on splendor and material display.  Restorationist prelates such as Cardinal Raymond Burke, Cardinal Bernard Law, and Archbishop William Lori pushed for measures to rein in the religious sisters who have devoted themselves to the service of the poor and disenfranchised in our society.  Ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue and cooperation have come in most places to a grinding halt as Pope Benedict XVI changed the ground-rules from a tone of mutual cordiality and respect to a high-handed arrogance combined with a disdain for any whose understanding of Truth differed from the Catholic norm. 
Most troubling is that, at least on the American scene, the institutional dimension of the Catholic Church ceased speaking up for the least of Christ’s brothers and sisters and began shrill denunciations of those in our society who disagreed with the Church on two issues, abortion and same-sex marriage.  Catholic voices—some bishops, many priests, and a bloc of laity have called for the civil law to enshrine Catholic moral doctrine on these issues regardless of the fact that the majority of Americans do not agree with the moral principles on which the Catholic Church builds her case.  Catholics in public life have been threatened with Church censures if they did not do their jobs according to the directions of the hierarchy.  Catholics who voted for politicians who would not cave in to hierarchic pressure were threatened with censure and punishment if they did not follow the directions of the clergy in casting their ballots.  The Church was seen as using its moral authority to enforce a political agenda and that is not playing according to American Constitutional tradition. 
Fifty three years ago, a Catholic running for President spoke to a group of Protestant clergy declaring

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President -- should he be Catholic -- how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference, and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him, or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accept instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials, and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

At the time that man spoke, the Catholic voice stood behind him. It would be our first—and to date only—opportunity to have one of our own in the White House.  But today, many voices in our Church think that prelates should tell politicians how to act; Catholic pastors have no difficulty in telling their parishioners for whom to vote.  Today we see a religious body seeking to impose its will upon the general populace and the public acts of our elected officials. 

I don’t believe this means that Catholics need to be silent about abortion or about same-sex marriage—or about gun control, capital punishment, universal health-care, immigration, or the host of other hot-button political items that have religious implications.  I do believe, however, that our role is to educate and convince the electorate of the truth of our position, not to unilaterally impose our values on the larger society.  We can, as can any citizen or group of citizens, use the political system to further our convictions but we have no right to hijack it, even for the good ends we desire.