Francis Pushes Conservatives Into the Cafeteria

just 'cause he

clowns around,

don't think he 

doesn't mean 

business 

Well Pope Francis’ long expected encyclical on a Christian response to the impact of climate change on the environment is due to be released on Thursday and it is already causing a stir. Italian   journalist, Sandro Magister, an outspoken critic of Pope Francis and blogger for the Italian daily L’Espresso wrote the introduction for a bootlegged copy—or alleged copy—his editors had managed to purloin and was promptly and indefinitely deprived of his credentials by the Vatican Press Office.  But this is not simply a matter of a newspaper getting a scoop.  Magister has become one of the rallying forces in the anti-Francis movement and has close ties to some of the curial prelates who find Francis’ reforms very threatening to their lives of comfortable graft.  The Katholik Krazies are rallying around Magister in this latest kerfuffle as this encyclical is a particularly neuralgic point for them.  While previous Popes, including Francis’ predecessor Pope Benedict XVI, have spoken up to raise the issue of environmental responsibility (and Benedict was given the moniker “The Green Pope” in acknowledgement for his environmental concerns), with Francis a real danger to the industrialized establishment has arisen as Francis is not one to pull any punches.  Previous magisterial pronouncements have been limited to somewhat abstract moral principles.  Francis is not a theologian (he was trained as a chemist) but has a science background and tends to bring abstractions right down to the very concrete realities.  This makes nervous those semi-gnostics who like to divide creation into the material and the spiritual and think our only concern is to be about the spiritual. 

Sandro Magister is not the only water carrier for the big boys of industry whose productivity and wealth depend on an unlimited access to water, atmosphere, forests, and the earth.  Former Senator and professedly new to the Catholic Cafeteria, Rick Santorum, is no admirer of Pope Francis, espousing a Reform of the Reform Catholicism that is selective in its acceptance of the teachings and decrees of the Second Vatican Council.  The implications of the role of the Church in the modern world as outlined in Gaudium et Spes would seem to him and to many Catholics like him to put too much stress on the secular and to lose focus on the Church’s spiritual mission.  Of course the fact that Consol Energy, a Pennsylvania energy company with interests in coal and natural gas production, is one of Santorum’s clients compromises the former’s Senator’s objectivity when it comes to developing a Christian response to the moral imperative of environmental responsibility.  Senator Santorum said that the Pope should limit himself to spiritual matters and leave science to the scientists.  The Pope has an advanced degree in the sciences; Santorum’s academic background is Political Science (“not a real science” as Sheldon Cooper would say) for undergraduate; a Masters in Business Administration, and a Juris Doctor (Law School Graduate).  But then Cardinal Burke says that men need to dress like men so as they say on the lower East Side: “Go figah.” 

Jeb Bush is another Catholic running for President who weighed in against Pope Francis’ teaching on the moral issues regarding the environment though he was a bit more respectful in his tone than Senator Santorum.  The former Florida governor and latest scion of the Bush dynasty to seek the White House said that he would not pass judgment until he read what the Pope wrote, but thinks that the purpose of religion was about making us better people and less about “things that end up getting in the political realm.”  Again we hear the whine of that that mild gnosticism. Well, while Poppy Bush was devilishly intelligent (adjective meant to be taken literally), his sons are somewhat dim bulbs who seem incapable of making the connections between moral imperatives and political agenda even when a Pope sent Cardinal Pio Laghi, a family friend of the Bushes, to explain it. 

But the issue about Francis bugging the conservatives is more fundamental than his call for a responsible use of our natural resources and protecting the environment.  The heart of the matter is probably best explained in this morning’s New York Time’s article where Michael McKenna, an energy lobbyist and Republican political consultant—and a self proclaimed “conservative Catholic”—said the following

“For practicing conservative Catholics, the folks who sit in the pews on Sunday, this is not going to be an indictment of guys like Rubio and Jeb,” Mr. McKenna said. “Those guys have already made up their minds on climate change. For the real churchgoers, this is going to be an indictment of the pope.

“This pope is selling a line of Latin American-style socialism,” he continued. “This guy is not in sync with the American Catholic Church. Guys like Jeb and Rubio are more in line with the American Catholic Church than the pope.”

This is the problem: not that the Pope is speaking out on the moral imperatives of environmental responsibility but that the Pope is making it clear that unbridled free-market capitalism and the raping of the earth’s resources and environment that is consequent to lack of governmental—and international—control is not compatible with our Catholic faith and morality.  While previous popes—Leo XIII, Pius XI, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI—have spoken out loud and clear about the moral imperatives of social responsibility, Francis still represents a startling discontinuity with his predecessors.  The break is not so much in the message—it would be difficult to find more explicit challenges to the industrial and economic status quo than Rerum Novarum or Mater et Magistra—as in the stance from which the position is being declared.  At the end of the day Francis’ predecessors went home to the Apostolic Palace and its courtly life.  Francis, in his very public rejection of the pontifical life style and his frayed sleeves and down-at-the-heels black shoes lets you know that despite that friendly smile and his donning the occasional clown’s nose for a photo, means business.  His merciless reforms at the Vatican Bank, his virtual sacking of opposition Cardinal Raymond Burke, his plain-spoken off-the-cuff remarks to the press, his calling to account of Bishops who have covered up sexual misconduct by their priests tells us that this encyclical isn’t going to be ceremonially delivered and then go away.  Republican members of Congress (and potential Presidential candidates) should start sweating now about his September address to a Joint Session of Congress.  (Not that he will let Democrats off the hook when it comes to the unborn and probably same-sex marriage.)  But it will be much harder for Republicans in the upcoming elections to revive the Karl Rove strategy of convincing Catholics that our true political home is in the GOP. 

Francis himself has said that his papacy will be short but there is no doubt that he will not leave the Church as he found it and his legacy will be a pain in the ass for advocates of the old order of things.  It is a risky business for Francis personally but for the Church it is a defining entry into the realities of applying the Gospel to our contemporary world.  Angels need no longer dance on the head of a pin ‘cause we ain’t countin’ no more.  

Rick Santorum's Picks in the Catholic Cafeteria

St Catherine of Sieana, Great Falls VA
Rick Santorum's parish

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is no admirer of President John Kennedy but when Santorum swept the primaries in Alabama and Mississippi yesterday he did something that Kennedy could never have done and which he, Santorum, could not have done had it not been for Kennedy’s carving out a place in American politics for his fellow Catholics.  Santorum’s victory is a clear sign that the anti-Catholic bias that for so long has plagued the “evangelical” regions of the United States is a thing of the past.  Of course, in this election the choice was among two Catholics and a Mormon which, at least in days past, would have been an “evangelical’s” worst nightmare. 

     For years now each Sunday he is in town Rick Santorum has driven approximately twenty miles from his Leesburg VA home to his parish of choice, Saint Catherine of Siena in Great Falls VA.  Saint Catherine’s is a very particular type of Catholic Parish. In a diocese known for its distinct brand of conservative Catholicism with priests grocery-shopping in cassock and biretta and girls banned from serving at the altar, Saint Catherine’s is the Gold Standard for Catholic neo-traditionalism. Saint Catherine’s is a parish that in the days when the “Tridentine Mass” was not permitted, counterfeited the pre-Conciliar liturgy with Novus Ordo Latin Mass tricked out to look like the “real thing” complete with deacon and “subdeacon,”  with their backs turned to the congregation.  It is the parish of various Catholic luminaries such as Louis Freeh, former director of the FBI and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.  (It also was the parish of Robert Hanssen, devout Catholic and convicted Russian spy.  Santorum has this in common with Hanssen also: both men sent their sons to the private Opus Dei school, The Heights, in Potomac MD.) 

     Rick Santorum is well-known for his opposition to the legalization of Gay Marriage and even stronger opposition to legalized Abortion.  He considers contraception “dangerous.”  And, to his credit, the former senator not only “talks the talk” but “walks the walk.”  He and his wife have had eight children—one of whom, Gabriel, was born prematurely (20 weeks) in 1996, dying after only two hours.  Another child, Isabella, was born in 2008 (when Mrs. Santorum was 48) suffering from a rare genetic disorder.  Mrs. Santorum has home-schooled the children though the older boys eventually were, as mentioned above, to go on to The Heights.  (I am not sure if the girls were given the opportunity to attend Oakcrest, the Opus Dei private school for girls.  Let me also say that both The Heights and Oakcrest are top-rate schools, second only to the untouchable Gonzaga College High School in downtown D.C.) 

      Rick Santorum seems to be a Catholic’s Catholic and his Catholic supporters claim that the Santorums believe in a highly traditional Catholicism that adheres fully to what scholars call “the teaching authority” of the pope and his bishops. But does he? 

      While his stand on gay marriage, abortion, and contraception are consistent with Catholic moral teaching, Santorum differs from the Church on many other issues.  Rick Santorum was a strong supporter of George Bush’s war in Iraq despite Pope John Paul’s plea to the Bush administration not to go into that war and his subsequent condemnation of the war as unjust.  Among those things which the Catholic Church condemns as absolute evils is not only abortion, but torture yet Senator Santorum was supportive of waterboarding and other torture techniques employed for “enhanced interrogation” in the Bush administration. In his Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae Pope John Paul condemned the Death Penalty except under the most restricted of circumstances, circumstances not met in the American penal code.  The Pope even had the Catechism of the Catholic Church rewritten to make sure that the average Catholic is aware of this condemnation.  Santorum has consistently supported the Death Penalty, in 1994 voting against replacing the death penalty with life in prison and supporting limiting appeals from death row inmates.   Santorum believes that Climate Change is a fraud, declaring it “an absolute travesty of scientific research that was motivated by those who, in my opinion, saw this as an opportunity to create a panic and a crisis for government to be able to step in and even more greatly control your life.”  This differs from Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI who have each written and spoken about the need to protect the environment from the disastrous effects that industrialization is wreaking on our society.  Despite a consistent teaching of the Church on the rights of migrants dating back to the time of the Second World War but including papal magisterium from John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II, and now Pope Benedict, Santorum opposes any attempts for immigration reform.  Ever since Leo XIII wrote the encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891 the Catholic Church has defended the rights of labor to organize—a teaching repeated by Pius XI, John XXIII, The Second Vatican Council, Paul VI, John Paul II, and now Benedict XVI, yet Rick Santorum opposes the rights of public sector workers to organize and he consistently favors capital over labor in the private sector.  Similarly while the Church speaks of the importance of regulatory safeguards on the economy Santorum always voted against them and still opposes economic regulations. 

       Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind a Catholic candidate differing from the magisterium.  I think that while one must always follow one’s conscience, there are times when, to perform one’s public duties, one’s conscience may call the President, or Senator or Judge or Governor or Congressperson or General or Admiral or whatever to pass over a Church teaching to do his or her public duty.  (Note: I said “Church teaching.”  I did not say Divine Law, though “Church Teaching” may include the Church’s interpretation of Divine Law)   But this brings me into conflict with Rick Santorum’s philosophy too.  Santorum has decried the Kennedy doctrine which states    “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.”

     Santorum says that John Kennedy did great “harm in America” by insisting on the separation of Church and State.  I don’t know.  If it be harm, it wasn’t President Kennedy, it was future President Madison when he drafted the first amendment back in 1789.  And if it be harm, give me more of it for while I don’t want public figures to forsake their consciences, or citizens to abandon their moral principles and religious faith when voting, I do want religious institutions (and atheist and agnostic institutions) kept out of direct participation in public life.     

Reversing the Kennedy Doctrine

During the 1960 Presidential campaign, Democratic candidates John F. Kennedy—a Catholic—said in a famous talk to the Houston (Texas) Ministerium:

“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.” 

      Does anyone object to this statement—really?  Certainly, despite the desire of many in the Church for public support for parochial schools,  no Catholic voices were raised in objection when John Kennedy made this claim that religion should not have a direct role in the political process.  Now a prominent Catholic running for the American presidency does take exception?  Why has there been a switch?  Or has there—has Rick Santorum gone out on a limb—too far out on a limb—with his objection that the separation of Church is not “absolute?”  Is it a legitimate claim that he only wants to preserve the rights of religion in the “public square” or has he set up a straw-man with this argument?  Does the non-establishment clause of the First Amendment threaten believers with being pushed to the margins of the American political process?  I don’t know.  I have long thought that Mr. Santorum’s Catholicism was his own particular take on the Catholic faith; I now think his Americanism is his own particular take on our Constitutional heritage.

Freedom from Religion and Freedom of Religion V

John Kennedy, First and Only Catholic
to serve as President of the United States

During the 1960 Presidential campaign, Democratic candidates John F. Kennedy—a Catholic—said in a famous talk to the Houston (Texas) Ministerium:

     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.

     Kennedy’s speech to the association of Protestant Ministers in 1960 is one of the landmark speeches in the history of American Church/State relationships and has stood as the defining statement of the relationship of religion and government in the American constitutional system.  In the context of the time it was meant to answer those who were afraid that a Catholic in the White House would have to take direction from his Church and it was meant to criticize those Protestant pastors who were cautioning their parishioners that a vote for Kennedy was a vote to end religious freedom in the United States.  At the time no Catholic saw a problem with this statement—indeed Catholics, clergy and laity alike, endorsed it as they saw the possibility of a Catholic being President for the first time.  As I said it has stood for fifty years as the canon of independence for politician and voter alike.  It has served as a bulwark to protect public officials from religious pressure so that they can fulfill their constitutional mandate.   That being said, I wonder how many Catholics—especially bishops and clergy—would agree with  it today?  Among the laity, Senator Santorum for one has gone on record as disagreeing.  He may be right and the Kennedy doctrine no longer stands.  He may be wrong.  But we do need to give the subject some thought.   

 

The Knights and the Leesburg Crusade

Now, I admit it is a bit secular but wouldn't it be

nicer at the Courthouse than a skeleton in a Santa

suit--and more traditional too, in fact more in Virginia

tradition than a creche. 

There is definitely something in the water in Loudon County Virginia that causes Virginians to alter their reality coordinates.  Jeff Heflin and his mother mounted a holiday display of a crucified skeletal Santa Claus on the Courthouse lawn.  Now that may sound bizarre to you, but it is only the latest chapter in a long saga of religious wars in this solidly Christian and Republican town.  Leesburg, by the way, is the home of former Senator Rick Santorum, currently a 2012 presidential candidate, and the tainted water theory probably explains quite a few things there as well. 

      The issue began several years back when the County government said that there could be no holiday displays mounted on the Courthouse lawn in the center of Leesburg during the Christmas season.  Loudon County is pretty solidly Christian with both strong Evangelical and Catholic contingents.  (The Evangelicals represent many of the long-time residents; the Catholics came mostly with the housing developments that have just swamped this once charmingly rural area into what is now a bedroom-suburb of Washington DC, about an hour to the south along the Potomac.)   Many residents were outraged that there would be no crèche on the Courthouse lawn.  There had been a crèche placed there at private expense for over twenty years and the Rotary club had sponsored a Christmas Tree there for half a century. 

     Knights of Columbus Holy Family Council 6831 attached to Saint John the Apostle Church in Leesburg was not about to stand by for this secularization.  They organized a protest that led the County Board to reconsider the policy and the board decided in fairness to all citizens ten displays could be put on the Courthouse grounds on a “first come first serve” basis.  What the Knights had not foreseen was that not only would Christian groups with good will for all vie for Christmas displays, and perhaps a Jewish group would want a Chanukah display (there aren’t many Jews in Loudon County), but atheist groups might want their displays as well. (I am unaware of any requests from Islamic groups, but that would provoke an interesting response.)   In fact, since atheism isn’t seasonal, disbelievers mounted displays throughout the year.  Now as a reward to the Knights’ efforts, there is a war of competing ideologies going on in the middle of this otherwise quaint town.  It is a bit confusing about this crucified Santa however as the woman who put it up is an atheist but her son who helped her is a Christian.  They claim that it isn’t a pro-atheist statement but rather a “piece of art” that draws our attention to how the true Spirit of the Season has been corrupted into gross materialism.  Well, they do have a point but the work is somewhat ambiguous.  Art, after all, says what the viewer apprehends not necessarily what the artist intends. 

      Anyway, we owe this imbroglio to the Knights of Columbus who undoubtedly meant well but who opened Pandora’s Box of religious strife.   The Knights are now insisting that Christian displays be allowed but that atheists not be given space on the Courthouse lawn.  That solution will obviously not hold up constitutionally.    Tempers are running high in Leesburg and the Prince of Peace is becoming a symbol of civic strife—not for the first time in history.      Of course in colonial days when Leesburg had its origins there would have been no issue.  There would not have been a crèche—far too Catholic in a colony where Catholicism was illegal.  There would have been some festive holiday greens perhaps.  The Christmas tree had not yet come from Germany but Virginians draped laurel and evergreen and holly swags and wreathes to cheer them against the cold days and long nights of winter.  Perhaps if there is to be decoration of public property it should be this discreet sort of greening and let the religious displays be made on private and Church properties.  A crèche on the lawns of the Presbyterian and Methodist and Catholic  Churches would be lovely and a contest among them good ecumenical fun;  an electric Menorah at the synagogue (though I think Leesburg’s solitary synagogue is pretty far out of town center) would be pretty silhouetted against the darkening skies of December would non-offensively to anyone give hope.   And you know, I don’t think anyone—even an atheist—would really want a crucified Santa in front of their home.  As for the Courthouse, deck the halls and call it quits.  Besides, the lawns, though spacious, are not nearly expansive enough to handle ten displays without looking tawdry.    And Knights—let’s do something constructive that reminds the world that Christ came to gather all people together into one and not to stir up sectarian strife.  Crusades are over.  They were a disaster.  This is the age of Pacem in Terris.