Faith Requires Commitment, Not Warm Fuzzy Feelings about the Blood of Jesus!

GK Chesterton, the great English apologist for the faith wrote: "It is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."  I recently received this comment in response to my posting: “Bringing False Christianity Into the Public Square:

You have shown well the shallowness of our commitment to Christ. Your own commitment could be deepened by ceasing to use abortion as a foil to the rest of your argument. It shows that you haven't really taken to heart the realization that abortion is the taking of an innocent life. How else could you describe as 'sanctimonious veneer' the countless hours spent by thousands fighting for the pre-born, helping the newborns and comforting those recovering from the horror of abortion. When using the "what if Jesus walked in" standard, you could speculate on what He would say about the killing of huge numbers of innocent children and its comparative importance to health care and other important needs.

Now the curious thing is that in the postng while I mentioned universal access to health care, immigration, the death penalty, warfare, on the poor both here and abroad, violence as entertainment and weapons of violence, care for the environment, and the gross disparity of wealth in our society, I did not mention abortion.  If I did not mention, it I can hardly be accused of using it as a “foil.” Moreover there were other issues I did not mention, some of because there is no question that evangelicals embrace them.  They are not the contentious issues that can provide a litmus test of fidelity to the preaching of Jesus.  There is no doubt that evangelicals—authentic and phony—oppose abortion.  My denunciation is that opposition to abortion is no guarantee that a person is evangelical.  People are opposed to abortion for many reasons.  Some are opposed for religious reasons—including Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists.  Some are opposed for philosophical reasons—including many atheists and agnostics.  Some—indeed many—are opposed because they see the links between abortion and the collapse of traditional social values: same sex marriage, divorce, pre-marital sex, changing attitudes on gender.  Some even see it as a woman’s health issue and view abortion as potentially dangerous to the health and welfare of women.  All that is well and good.  But all I say to them is “Good luck with your endeavors;  I hope we have some mutual success.”   The only reason that counts in my book for being opposed to abortion is that it undermines the Kingdom of God as proclaimed by Jesus in the Gospels, God alone is the author and giver of life and God alone can directly take a human life.  Life is totally within the authority of God and a disciple of Jesus Christ must be committed to that principle.  In the same sense just because a person is in favor of providing refuge to immigrants or health care to the poor doesn’t mean he or she is an evangelical.  I am happy to see people working for goals I believe are central to the Kingdom of God regardless of their personal religious convictions, but my passion lies not with the issue but the motivation. 

Now I am not going to get into the “seamless garment issue” though I firmly espouse it.  What I am going to say is that the principle of protecting the Life of the Unborn is one jewel in the Catholic Magisterial Crown, it is one jewel and we have to buy the entire package.  If we are authentically Catholic—and for me the person who is fully Catholic is fully evangelical because the teachings of the Catholic Church, though not yet perfect, enshrine the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we must accept the entire magisterium of the Church.  This is neither liberal nor conservative.  The magisterium of the Catholic Church says that the direct taking of an unborn life is a grave sin of injustice.  The magisterium of the Catholic Church says that the sacrament of Matrimony is between one man and one woman for the duration of their lives.  But the magisterium of the Catholic Church also speaks about all God’s children having a right to education.  And it speaks of all God’s Children having a right to migrate to seek better and safer lives.  And it says that the salaries of workers and managers should be in reasonable proportion.  And it says that all life—even the life of the criminal—must be protected, explicitly citing the United States as a particular example where the death penalty is being abused. 

You can be opposed to abortion—that does not make you a disciple of Jesus Christ.  You can be in favor of liberal immigration policies—that does not make you a disciple of Jesus Christ.  It is the whole ball of wax, embraced not because it fits our political agenda or because our friends think that way but because when I encounter Jesus in the Gospel and the community of the faithful that adhere to the Gospel, I realize it can be no other way. 

Now not everyone can equally invest himself in one facet or another of working for God’s Kingdom.  Some will put more of their energy in one cause or another than a third.  What is important is that Jesus’s disciples work together in harmony.  And so when I refer to “the sanctimonious veneer” of those who spend “countless hours fighting for the pre-born,”  I am not referring to true disciples but to those who pick and choose the unborn but turn their back on the immigrant or the person without health care.  I can also speak of the “sanctimonious veneer” of the pants-suited 80 year-old-nun with a pro-choice button protesting at Fort Benning GA.  It is not enough to be liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican.  And the end of the day we have to be disciples, pure and simple, nothing else.

Liars, Damned Liars, and The American Life League

There is no Gospel that is not a Social Gospel

I am sorry for the most recent hiatus.  I was giving a retreat this past week and found myself without internet connections at the center.  I hope to have a strong week with several postings but then the whole month of September could be up in the air as I will be overseas at a series of meetings and don’t know what to expect.

I want to make some progress on the Church of England postings as we are just at the most interesting part of the of the story and how the separation came about between the Church of England and the Catholic Church in communion with the See of Rome.  But there are so many other things to comment on as well.

I see that in the blogs the complaints about the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, Catholic Charities USA, and Catholic Relief services is heating up.  Voices of the pseudo-magisterium—Michal Voris, Judie Brown and Michael Hitcborn and their American Life League, LifeSiteNews, and dozens and dozens of minor blogs are banging the drum against the those programs by which the official magisterium of the Catholic Church in the United States conducts its outreach to the poor, the sick, and the emarginated both here at  home and around the world.  The real issue is a battle for the “soul of the Church” and the battle ground is the Church’s commitment to striving for greater justice in our society and in other societies and cultures. 

Several years ago ex-Catholic and self-appointed theological expert Glen Beck declared that “Social Justice is a perversion of the Gospel.”  It is—for many both in the Catholic Church and beyond who espouse a new Gnosticism that wants to spiritualize the teachings of Jesus so that they have no bearing on the social order.  Ignoring the entire tradition of the prophets—most notably Amos, Isaiah, and Ezekiel—they claim that God has no interest in seeing a world in which each of his children has a sufficient share in the world’s goods to live in a dignity befitting the children of God.  They speak of a religion that is about “souls” with no regard to the bodily hunger, thirst, nakedness, illness, imprisonment and homelessness of which Jesus spoke in admonishing us as to the criteria by which we would be admitted to eternal life. 

This false Christianity promoted by Voris, Brown, et al beneath the guise of an empty piety and an alleged concern for human life is closely tied to—and indeed is no more than a front for—the most abject right-wing politics that seeks to turn our society into a revival of the ancien regime in which a small wealthy minority held absolute sway over the liberty-deprived and economically enslaved masses.  I wish I could believe that they were sincere in their devotion to human life as an absolute value but the selectivity about which they defend human life and freedom fails to cloak their real agenda of advancing an American theocracy, and an American theocracy that enshrines a religion of the most narrow prejudices and the self-interest of those who wish to protect their own ascendency over those whom they deem to be less worthy in both this world and the next than themselves.  They have drunk the dregs and now pass around to others the Kool-Aid Karl Rove so successfully used in the Bush campaigns to blind Christians to their political responsibilities to work for a more just world.    And this, in a democracy such as ours, is their right to do but  their sin is attempting to market this poison as some sort of authentically Catholic drink when its very recipe is so devoid of basic Catholic moral principles about the role of the Christian in the modern world.    Their campaign of misinformation and deceit has taken on an urgency with the election of Pope Francis and  his prioritizing the Church’s mission to the poor has made them beat their drums all the louder in an attempt to drown out the Church’s authentic voice calling for greater economic and social justice.  CRS, CCHD and Catholic Charities represent the Church’s concern for justice and unable to take the Pope on directly they are determined to undermine his efforts by attacking with lies and disinformation, Karl Rove style, the agencies by which the Church reaches out to remedy the injustices in the world in which we live.    

When the Internet first became a forum for public information, there was a Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to devise a branding system by which sites could be guaranteed for their Catholic content.  Now personally, I don’t claim to be a Catholic Site or to speak for any sort of authentic Catholicism.  I speak only for myself and this site is about the history of the Church—past and present—and not about its doctrines.  Unfortunately the short-sightedness of our bishops failed to appreciate the importance of establishing some sort of Catholic “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” for Catholic websites.   We need that because Michael Voris and Judie Brown and the American Life League speak for no one other than themselves and their followers.  They do not represent the voice of the Church and they are not reliable sources of Catholic teaching.  And the same goes for the swarms of blogs and web-pages by self-appointed Catholic spokespersons.  

A New Day Has Dawned

As I ran to the grocery store this afternoon, a program came on the car radio.  A neuro-scientist by the name of Ari Handle was relating a story from this student days when, as part of his Ph.D. program he had to train monkeys to play simple video games in order to learn about how the neurons in the brain respond to particular stimuli.  One monkey, named Santiago, was especially engaging and Ari developed a strong affection for this monkey.  But Santiago was highly intelligent and at a certain point at least seemed to realize that Ari wasn’t just playing with him but was using him for Ari’s own purposes and Santiago’s response was to “go on strike” and refuse to play anymore.  A war of the wills ensued between Ari and Santiago and Ari was eventually to win out by denying Santiago any rewards while at the same time being overly generous with the other monkeys in the lab.  Eventually Santiago began playing the games again—but without the joy and enthusiasm which had previously characterized his behavior.  Ari said that he, Ari, realized that he had won but at the cost of breaking Santiago’s spirit. 
As I was preparing this blog I could not but help think how many of us had felt our spirit cracking and beginning to break over the last twenty years as first Pope John Paul and then Pope Benedict began to “re-interpret” the Second Vatican Council and we saw the pre-conciliar Church being raised from its sepulcher like a ghoulish caricature of what had been in its day a glorious past but now was only a plaid and semi-decomposed faith.  We saw the retreat from Ecumenical and Inter-faith dialogue to the phobia of the world beyond the Catholic Church that underlay that most unfortunate of encyclicals, Mortalium Animos, condemning Ecumenism.   Dialogue was breaking down on the official level but even worse, on the local levels, interfaith and ecumenical prayer and collaboration in social ministry had totally collapsed.  It was bad enough to see the pre-conciliar liturgy springing up in parishes and chapels as an alternative Catholicism, but then to see the liturgical reforms of the Council being undone as the “Ordinary Form” was made to look more and more like the “Extraordinary Form.”  Even more disheartening was to see a reclericalization of the clergy as young fellows rooted around attics and basements for birettas and maniples and Brussels lace by the yard and incoherently mumbled a Latin they never really learned.  To see a twenty-something year old priest scold a seventy-nine year old woman who had been at daily Mass for over fifty years because she insisted on receiving the Eucharist in her hand and standing when he insisted on giving Holy Communion only on the tongue and kneeling made one wonder what was going on in our seminaries today.  And while both Pope Benedict and John Paul had been ardent defenders of the poor—where were the calls to social justice that we heard after Mater et Magistra and Gaudim et Spes and Popolorum Progressio?     Instead we had only vapid ferverinos on why women should keep their heads veiled in Church and how lonely Our Lord is in the Tabernacle when we don’t come to see him every day.  Forget how lonely Jesus is in the Tabernacle: think how hungry he is in the least of his brothers and sisters or how abandoned he is in the kid who is bullied.  But we don’t hear that. 
The election of Pope Francis has been for many of us a breath of fresh air, a sign that the time of sourpuss Christianity is waning and we are back on track to offering the world a faith that brings joy to those who have weathered the long night of religious discouragement.  We aren’t seeking changes in faith or morals but only relief from the negative energy proposed by pseudo-Christians whose Jansenist tendencies have stressed the Divine Justice to the eclipse of the Infinite Mercy that flows from the Cross of Jesus.  Pope Francis has given us hope that the Pharisees who worry about the worthiness of others to approach the Eucharist while they glory in their own supposed “orthodoxy” are not going to control the temple after all.  Pope Francis has given us hope that clergy and laity stand together in the Body of Christ with different functions but without the artificiality of a hierarchy of dignity.  Pope Francis has given us hope that laity will be given access to a full, conscious and active participation in the Liturgy as befits a priestly people.  Pope Francis has been a breath of fresh air in the Church like many of us had forgotten could be.  God Bless Pope Francis.  Our spirits aren’t broken after all. 

 

An Example To Us All

Did you see this article by J David Goodman in the New York Times?  There was a day when you would say: “DePrimo?  Hmm, Italian, must be Catholic.”  Those days are gone, unfortunately—but I hope this guy is on our team because this is what our faith is about—not Father Mumbo Jumbo Hocus Pocus with his biretta and pious condemnations of all things Obama.  There is no Gospel that is not the Social Gospel—no Message of Christ that is not Good News to the Poor, sight to the blind, release to captives, and freedom to the oppressed/      
On a cold November night in Times Square, Officer Lawrence DePrimo was working a counterterrorism post when he encountered an older, barefooted homeless man. The officer disappeared for a moment, then returned with a new pair of boots, and knelt to help the man put them on.
The act of kindness would have gone unnoticed and mostly forgotten, had it not been for a tourist from Arizona.
Her snapshot— taken with her cellphone on Nov. 14 and posted to the New York Police Department’s official Facebook page  late Tuesday — has made Officer DePrimo an overnight Internet hero.
By Wednesday evening, the post had been viewed 1.6 million times, and had attracted nearly 275,000 “likes” and more than 16,000 comments — a runaway hit for a Police Department that waded warily onto the social media platform this summer with mostly canned photos of gun seizures, award ceremonies and the police commissioner.
Among all of those posts, the blurry image of Officer DePrimo kneeling to help the shoeless man as he sat on 42nd Street stood out. “This is definitely the most viral,” said Barbara Chen, a spokeswoman for the department who helps manage its Facebook page.
Thousands of people commented on Facebook and Reddit, which linked to the post on Wednesday. Most of them praised Officer Deprimo, yet some suspected the photograph had been staged. Many debated whether the officer’s actions were representative of police officers in general, or were just unusually exceptional.
“I still have a grudge against law enforcement everywhere,” wrote one commenter on the police Facebook page. “But my respects to that fine officer.”
I don't have grudges against law enforcement officers--I know there are rotten apples in the barrel, but hey--show me the barrel that doesn't have a few.  But these men and women put their life on the line every day.  I never pass a police car or see an officer that I don't offer a quick prayer for them--but I hope that this officer will someday say a prayer for me 'cause I bet God hears this guy. 

There is One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism

The Reverend Mark Schloneger is a Mennonite Pastor in Indiana.  The Mennonites come out of the Anabaptist movement of the 16^th century and like their theological siblings, the Amish, have a strong theology of what they believe should be the proper relationship of a Christian with the State.  Mennonites are committed to pacifism and insist that any loyalty to earthly government comes only after our total commitment to Jesus and his Gospel. 
I did an entry several days ago about Joseph and Michael Hofer, two Hutterite men who were arrested and died in prison during World War I rather than compromise their beliefs. Hutterites are also a part of the Mennonite family of Anabaptist Christians and demand that our first and only true allegiance must be to Christ and his Gospel.  Pastor Schloneger and several other Christian clergy came up with the idea of Election Day Communion as a way to remind Christians that Christ must shape our entire lives and that our politics need to flow from our commitment to the Gospel.  Sharing Holy Communion on this day is also a vivid reminder that while we may have differences in politics, we must maintain our unity in Christ first and foremost.   Pastor Schloneger’s idea of Election Day Communion is a good one.  For us Catholics, of course, we are used to the availability of Mass and Communion each day but that is not the case for almost all other Christians.  Even Greek and Russian Orthodox usually only celebrate on Sundays and maybe twice more during the week.   Episcopalians and Lutherans as well as Churches in the Campbellite tradition—Churches of Christ and Disciples of Christ—almost always celebrate Holy Communion every Sunday but rarely during the week.  Most Protestants share Holy Communion only monthly or even quarterly so for a special Communion to  be shared on election day is a powerful reminder that we are called to be One Body in Christ’s One Body and One Fellowship in His Blood.
Let me reprint the internet article to which I was directed for more information.   You can find it for yourself on the CNN Belief Blog.  http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/

It seems frivolous, even foolish.

On Tuesday, as the world turns its attention to who will occupy the most powerful office of the world’s most powerful nation, hundreds of churches will gather across the United States to worship a servant. As votes are counted to elect a president, thousands of Christians will take the bread and the cup to remember their crucified Lord. As winners are projected and the electoral map is updated, Christians of many denominations will sing their praises and proclaim their loyalty to Jesus.  It seems ridiculous, even silly. After all, America is at a crossroads, and we are in the midst of one of the most critical presidential elections of our lifetimes. We know this because people have recited this same tired mantra before every presidential election.
Our fears, our hopes, our worries and our struggles are the currency that buys our votes. And how do politicians and their supporters acquire this precious currency? They invest billions of dollars to foment fear, inspire hope, create worry and exploit our struggles. It’s a power play. Some of us are pawns, and some of us are participants. But some of us are choosing a different part.
I initiated the Election Day Communion Campaign out of a concern that Christians in the United States are being shaped more by the tactics and ideologies of political parties than by our identity and unity in Christ. Out of this concern, a simple vision sparked the imaginations of congregations nationwide: the church being the church on Election Day, gathering at the Lord’s Table to remember, to give thanks for, and to proclaim its loyalty to Jesus. Gathering for Communion on Election Day seems fitting, for the practice of Communion is an inherently political act. It is both a pledge of allegiance to Jesus and a declaration of independence from all other powers making claims on our bodies, minds and souls.
Far too often, the church has abandoned its first love for the siren song of political parties promising protection, prosperity and peace. Far too many times, the church has ceded the practice of its faith to the spiritual and the private while leaving others to address matters of justice. And far too frequently, the church has attempted to speak truth to power while seeking and relying on that same power for protection. The bread and the cup are God’s antidotes to our fickle memories. As we eat and drink together, we remember that all things fall under the lordship of Christ. We remember our sin and need to repent. We remember that God has lifted up the humble, filled the hungry with good things, and chosen to reveal God’s strength through our weakness.  We remember that the only Christian nation in this world is the church, the holy nation that transcends all human-made walls, boundaries and borders.
As we gather at the table, we remember that the power to redeem, to save, and to transform comes not from atop the seat of power but from within the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
We will gather for Election Day Communion not because we think that the issues at stake in this election are unimportant or that our votes don’t really matter. No, we will gather for Communion because we think that the issues at stake in all elections are far too important to be relegated to our votes alone.
The Lord’s Supper reminds followers of Jesus to practice the politics of Jesus. To me, practicing the politics of Jesus means working to protect the sanctity of all human life, whether it is found in the womb, in prison, or in countries at war against us.  It means choosing the way of forgiveness and reconciliation rather than vengeance and violence. It means practicing an economy based on generosity and mutual aid. It means offering care and compassion to suffering people regardless of their immigration status, economic class or religious practice. It means being good stewards of God’s good creation. And, most of all, it means allowing God’s kingdom to break into the entirety of our lives, from the privacy of our homes to the politics we practice in public.
The bread and the cup keep calling me back to the table inscribed with memory. There, I remember God’s choice for the transfer of power. There, I remember where to go with my fears, my hopes, my worries and my struggles. At the table, with my sisters and brothers, I am in the presence of the Holy. Though I’m interested in the outcome of the presidential election, I won’t be watching the projected results as they are announced. I’ve made a prior commitment. I intend to honor it.

Apologia Pro Vita Mea

Bless me Father, for I

have sinned; I am a

Registered Democrat

In interest of full disclosure, I am a Democrat.  I can’t help it, I was born that way.  I grew up in South Buffalo—the same neighborhood as the late Tim Russert.  Remember how Tim used to describe South Buffalo:  where you are born Democrat and baptized Catholic.  He wasn’t exaggerating.  And I grew up in a Church family.  My dad was a daily communicant—as was his dad.  We went to Catholic School—the Sisters of Mercy.  Like Tim, when it was time for High School, I was sent cross-town, out of the Irish ghetto, to the Jesuits.  I learned my faith—at home, in Church, and at school. 

And what was that faith I learned.  I learned from the good nuns that Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore had gone to bat for Terrence Powderly and the Knights of Labor when more conservative churchmen like Archbishop Corrigan and Cardinal Taschereau were labeling them communists and socialists.  I learned from the nuns that Pope Leo XIII had embraced the side of the working classes against the robber barons with the encyclical Rerum Novarum.  And I learned the Pius XI had reinforced this with Quadrigesimo Anno some Quadrigesimo annos later.  I learned that Monsignor John Ryan who had taught at the Catholic University of America for many years and was the Director of the Social Action Department of the National Catholic Welfare Council (the predecessor of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) wrote about the rights of labor and the responsibilities of management.  I learned that  Bishop Francis Haas of Grand Grapids had served as a member of the National Labor Board and that Bishop Haas and Monsignor Ryan had worked with the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations to help pull us out of the Great Depression which had been caused by the reckless pro-rich policies of the Harding and Coolidge Administrations.  I learned that AFL-CIO President John F. Sweeney had said of Monsignor George Higgins of Catholic University: “He has been an irresistible force in bringing labor and church together…we respect him for his strength, we revere him for his conscience, we stand in awe of his intellect and we thank him for his love.”  I learned from the nuns that discrimination against people for any reasons whatsoever—in those days it was mostly because of race but the nuns didn’t limit their condemnations to that—discrimination against people for any reason whatsoever was sinful and wrong.  And by the way—all this was before Vatican II.  I learned that people had a right to live wherever they wanted and that it was wrong to refuse to rent or sell them property because they were “different.”  And I learned that yes, there were priests and even bishops in some places in the United States that believed that not all people should have equal rights but that they differed from the teaching of the Church and were an embarrassment to her.  I learned that we were here to serve the needs of others regardless of race or religion or any other barrier. In those days, of course, we didn’t have gay rights or women’s rights so those weren’t the issue but we weren’t taught issues, we were taught principles from which we could make rational applications to the issues at hand.  We did learn that rights and responsibilities were not limited to Catholics and did not depend on the state of one’s soul but only on the fact that they were human persons created by God.  The good Sisters themselves probably didn’t understand the implications that would unfold a half-century and more later from their teaching but they laid the groundwork—along with my parents and the parish priests—for the kind of Catholic I am today.
The Jesuits added to this not so much in content as in depth.  They gave us discipline and taught us character.  Their students were not all from the Irish Ghetto and as many came from wealthy families we were a far less homogenous group politically and socially.  The good Fathers of the Society of Jesus were far more sophisticated than the Sisters had been.  We learned more about the abstractions of what justice is from a theological viewpoint.  We learned that the Gospels put before us a certain vision of society—for example we learned that there are frightening implications in the story of Lazarus and the rich man.  What does that story say about distributive justice?  Unlike the nuns, the Jesuits did not give us answers—they posed questions, dilemmas, anomalies, and paradoxes.  They didn’t think for us but they taught us to think and they told us that no one else could think for us.  They refused to think for us and they told us not to let anyone else—no politician, no prelate (nor even a pope), no priest, to professor, no parent, no nobody think for us because God had given us an intelligence and would hold us to account for it one day.  It was and has proved to be a huge responsibility and when people comment on how many Jesuit alumni have left the Church and even devolved into atheism I think it is precisely because the Jesuits would not let us shirk moral responsibility and that proved too heavy a burden for those who wanted to choose “success” or “happiness” or whatever rather than integrity. 
With this sort of a background how could I have become anything other than a Democrat.  Now remember, growing up in New York State in the 50’s and ‘60’s the Republicans were the liberal party—the party of Rockefeller and Javits.  But there is more history than that.
The Catholics in the first days of our Republic gravitated to the Federalist party.  Catholics—in those early days—were heavily of the Maryland aristocracy.  They were moneyed and propertied.  The French Revolution scared them from Jefferson and his Republicans who naively idealized the revolution and its goals.  Jefferson’s party would eventually grow into today’s Democratic Party but the Catholics would find in it a refuge from the more extreme liberalism of the Whigs and the Republicans.
By the 1824 presidential election the Federalist party had collapsed.  George Washington had never wanted to see political parties as he believed—from the experience of the Whigs and Tories in the England of his day—that they divided the nation and that seeking the common good was a collaborative and not a competitive effort.  But political parties were an inevitability given the way government was structured—and probably even more that human nature has been flawed by original sin—and there seems to be an inevitable need, for people to see themselves in opposition to others.  All may want the “common good” but different people will see from different perspectives diverse propositions of what the common good may be.  And so as the Federalists died away it was all but inevitable that a counter-weight to Jefferson’s (and now Jackson’s) political machine should develop. 
You may remember from earlier entries (Jan 22, 23, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, Feb 1, and March 7, 2011) that it was at this time—the 1830’s—that a virulent strain anti-Catholicism first began to reemerge in the American Republic.)  Catholic support for the American Revolution and the spirit of tolerance that pervaded the Republic through its early years had muted the tradition of anti-Catholicism that the colonists had brought with them from England.  But as the first great wave of immigration brought Catholics in great numbers—mostly Irish and German at this point—to America’s shores, there was a negative reaction from those who wanted to “keep America American.”  Episodes like the Charlestown convent burning and the anti-Catholic riots in Philadelphia and New York represent this caricature of Catholicism as a “foreign” and “unAmerican” religion.
Now pay attention as this explanation is going to use terms in ways that are a bit different than we use them today.  It was the “liberal” faction in American society that wanted to keep the country from immigrant (and Catholic) influence.  They saw Europeans as monarchy-loving and unable to absorb the democratic principles on which our nation was founded.  They sought to pass laws limiting numbers of immigrants except Protestants from Britain.  They wanted to put in difficult barriers from those born in other European countries attaining citizenship.  They wanted to limit positions as public school teachers to Protestants.  This was all to protect the American tradition from being corrupted by monarchy and Catholicism.  Catholicism was identified with the European absolutist monarchs—France, Spain, Portugal, Bavaria, the Austrian Emperor, and, of course, the Pope who himself was king of a significant slice of the Italian Peninsula called the Papal States. 
The Jefferson-Jackson party—the Democratic Republicans—today’s Democrats—were the conservative party.  And while Jefferson had thought religion, all religion, was only for the common sort of people and not intellectuals like himself, and while Jackson had a frontier Second-Great-Awakening prejudice against Catholicism, their party offered a safer refuge for Catholics than the liberal “Whigs” who saw Catholicism as unAmerican and dangerous to democracy. 
The Whigs themselves soon, by the 1850’s, morphed into what we know today as the Republican Party.  Catholics were, for the most part, not as bitterly opposed to “The South’s Peculiar Institution” (slavery) as the evangelicals that made up a significant part of the Whig (and then Republican) Party.  (Yes, these were days when the Evangelicals and Republicans were liberals.)  In the Civil War while Archbishop John Hughes of New York was an ardent supporter of the Republic and encouraged recruitment in the  “Fighting 69th  (New York 69th  regiment) among the Irish immigrants of New York City, Catholics in general were more tepid supporters of “Mr. Lincoln’s War.” 
After the Civil War the estrangement between Catholics and the Republican party only grew stronger.  In the 1884 presidential campaign, Republican candidate James G. Blaine, was on the platform when a speaker, the Reverend Dr. Samuel Burchard declared “We are Republicans and we don’t propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.”  Blaine did not disassociate himself from the remark and it cost him the Catholic vote and the election.  It also firmly impressed on the Catholic memory that the Republican Party was no friends of the Catholics. 
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were marked by massive immigration from Catholic Europe—not only Ireland and Germany, but Italy and the Austro-Hungarian empire.  Once again the Liberals—and this politically meant the Republicans—were alarmed at the number and influence of the immigrant populations.  Quotas were imposed, though not very successfully, favoring Protestant nations of northern Europe over the Catholic populations of central and southern Europe.  The interventions of Pope Leo XIII to try to avert the Spanish-American War were resented by the Republicans—the party of Teddy Roosevelt who declared: “it’s a little war, but it’s the only one we have.”  The liberal goal was to spread America and American democracy—and with it Protestantism—around the world and the defeat of Spain put both Cuba and the Philippines under American tutelage. 
It is difficult for us to think of Manifest Destiny (a polite term for American Imperialism), colonialism, anti-immigrant sentiment, English-only, etc. as a liberal agenda.  It only goes to show how ideologies, like fashions, change.  But as for American Catholics, they saw themselves as being pushed to the margins of a society that idealized and identified itself with old blood and old money.   This view of America believed and taught that anyone could pull themselves up by the bootstraps and holding up rugged individualism as the American way saw labor unions and collective protection of workers as subverting our American principles.  Consequently the immigrants and factory-workers—overwhelmingly Catholic—turned to the Democratic Party where they felt they were being heard.  The dedication of Church leaders such as Cardinal Gibbons solidified the ties between working-class and immigrant Catholics and the Democratic Party. 
Not all bishops supported the working classes, of course. Corrigan of New York and O’Connell of Boston—an arrogant blowhard of a mitered Pharisee if there ever was one—supported the Protestant ascendancy of the old and moneyed families and the few Paddy-Catholic nouveau riche against the social and economic interests of the sheep entrusted to their episcopal care, but while these bishops had great power they did not have the respect that was given to Gibbons and those bishops who were concerned about the working classes—many of whom were forced to live in squalor while their employers, the great Robber-Barons, had their Fifth-Avenue townhouses and summer homes in Newport.
Just as not all bishops supported labor, nor did all Democrats like Catholics.  Woodrow Wilson, in so many ways an idealist, had a strong streak of anti-Catholicism.  He was, after all, a preacher’s kid from the Old South and carried all those prejudices.  He made sure that Benedict XV was kept out of the peace conferences that ended World War I and that may have played a role in the unhappy and unjust “peace” that would bear fruit in a resentful Germany rising from the encumbrances placed on it by the Allies and striking back in World War II.  But at home in the United States the Catholic faithful overlooked Wilson’s biases and maintained their loyalty to the Democratic Party.  In 1928 the Democrats took a bold chance and nominated a Catholic, Governor Al Smith of New York, for the presidency.  Bold, it was also a bad choice.  A tsunami of Anti-Catholicism swept over the country as rumors of a papal takeover and destruction of the Republic threw the nation into a frenzy.  Smith lost in a landslide as Protestant Ministers joined Ku Klux Klanners in rallying bigots of every shade of sickly pale from Boston Brahmin to Southern Cracker to keep the nation Protestant and Republican.  But it was still good for the Democrats.   The defeat of Smith solidified Catholic support for the Democrats as the sense of shared defeat made the Catholics feel that the Democrats were their protectors while in fact the Democrat machine probably saw them more as a constituency to be manipulated than an honored ally.
FDR made the most of that alliance.  In his programs to rebuild the nation from the disaster of the Great Depression he made fast the ties between the Catholic Church and the Democratic Party.  Roosevelt came from a very blue-blood WASP family who only knew Catholics as chauffer’s and parlor-maids, but he didn’t let his personal prejudices get in the way of valuable political alliances.  He courted the Catholic Church.  He made it clear that he wanted the national capital to be the seat of an Archbishop: the honor of the United States required it.  He appointed prominent priests and monsignors to various posts—mostly having to do with economics and labor relations.  He sent a personal representative to the Vatican.  (Congress, or the national mood, was not about to let him establish formal diplomatic relations.)  Not all Catholics liked him.  Father Charles Coughlin, a Michigan priest with a popular—very popular—radio following, quickly turned from a Roosevelt supporter to a Roosevelt foe but Coughlin, a notorious anti-Semite, was probably more valuable as an enemy than a friend.   Roosevelt actively courted Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago, and Mundelein, though no liberal, relished the attention. Then there were any number of social progressives in the hierarchy—Cardinal Mooney of Detroit, Archbishops McNicholas and Sheil, Bishop Frank Haas of Grand Rapids, Monsignor John Ryan of Catholic University.  Harry Truman, a Baptist, also kept the Catholics on his side continuing the alliance between Democrats and labor.  This was a time when Catholics worked in factories or construction and depended on labor unions to protect them.  Catholic teaching on the rights of labor, articulated by Leo XIII and Pius XI, brought politics, economics, and religion into harmony.
The apex of the Catholic/Democrat alliance was reached when John F. Kennedy was the Democratic nominee for President in 1960.  Catholics saw the day come when the highest office in the land was now open to one of their own and they were no longer second class citizens.  The anti-Catholicism that had surfaced during the campaign only served to solidify the marriage of Catholics and the Democratic Party, but things were already beginning to change. 
Thanks to the GI Bill Catholics were beginning to move up the social ladder rapidly and from the blue collar workforce into the professions.  Democrats too were changing—from working-class liberals to suburban liberals.  The issues had changed from economics to social questions and Catholics, particularly those who attended Church, were not always ready to move.  Catholics had been slow to get aboard the Civil Rights movement though eventually they came over—not without some pushing from Rome—and they were even slower to stand up against the war in Vietnam.  But where the great divide fell into place was with Roe vs. Wade and the consequent legalization of abortion. 
Abortion has been perhaps the most divisive issue in America since the Civil War, but what is the most dangerous aspect of the polarization caused by this issue is that the various sides have been unable to establish any dialogue or discussion that can bridge the divide and find some common ground on which to build a national consensus.  When the late Cardinal Bernadin called for such an initiative his fellow prelates, especially the much admired Cardinal Law and his shanty side-kick, the ideologue Cardinal Hickey publicly ripped him apart in a shameful manner.  One can be solidly pro-life and willing to speak with—and listen to—those who are “pro-choice.”  Indeed, if we ever want to resolve this issue in order to protect the unborn we will have to listen attentively to one another.  A refusal to dialogue only condemns the reluctant mother to be pitted against her unborn child, but at this point both sides are so septic that I wonder if any rational conversation is in the realm of possibility. 
Catholics only began going over to the Republican party in the 1984 election as Ronald Reagan had begun to win their trust against a Democratic Party that had begun to take them for granted.  Unlike in the America of my salad days, Catholics are no longer automatically Democrats.  Now there is a split down the middle.  Most who have become Republicans have done so not so much for the conservative social agenda as Catholics, abortion aside, still tend toward the left on social questions (“tend” being the operative word).  White, professional Catholics from the more secure social classes feel more at home in the Republican party as that is where their colleagues and neighbors feel most at home.   Blue collar, racially diverse, lower economic strata Catholics (of which there are fewer and fewer)—along with us educated old liberal leftovers from the sixties—still hang out with the Democrats though we often feel like the patronized stepchildren of the chic arm-chair liberals that run the party.  Sometimes I wish I had taken less philosophy courses and more business ones and then I too could have voted for Newt in the primaries.  But at the end of the day I can’t slip my history, my Catholic history and while I have voted for Republican candidates when I think they are the better person for the office, and while I will at times vote Republican again—like Tim Russert I am going to have to explain to Saint Peter why, at heart, I am a Democrat regardless of the attempts of our good bishops to convert me. 

The Council and the Move to the Left

Archbishop Thomas Toolen of

Mobile Alabama who forbad

his clergy to participate in Civil

Rights Demonstratons

I want to give another example of where the Council brought about a change of direction in the Church—here perhaps more of what Pope Benedict would call “reform” rather than “rupture” but a change none the less.  Robert Blair Kaiser writes in his Tablet article to which I have referred in my last two posts:  

Before the Council, we thought we were miserable sinners when we were being nothing but human. After the Council, we had a new view of ourselves. We learned to put a greater importance on finding and following Jesus as 'the way' (as opposed to what we said in the Creed. It didn't matter so much what we said. What mattered was what we did: helping to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and find shelter for the homeless. That's what made us followers of Jesus. …. Before the Council, we identified 'salvation' as 'getting to heaven.' After the Council, we knew that we had a duty to bring justice and peace to the world in our own contemporary society, understanding in a new way the words that Jesus gave us when he taught us to pray, 'thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.' By the end, among the most influential figures at the Council, we encountered two humble souls, one a woman, Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, who wasn't allowed to speak to the assembled bishops at Vatican II (no woman was), and a bird-like figure, Dom Helder Camara, the archbishop of Recife, in Brazil. Both of them went around Rome telling individual bishops and those who were putting together the Council's crowning document, Gaudium et Spes: please don't forget the poor.

The Council did not forget the poor, and the statement out of Rome in October 2011 allying the Church with the world's have-nots only proves that even the current powers-that-be in the Church (still so unaccountable in so many other ways) get it. I will quote Gaudium et Spes: The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.

The Council radically reshaped what we meant by “sin.”  Before the Council sin meant—to the Catholic-in-the-pews a personal violation of the Church’s moral code.  While this  most frequently fell into the category of a sexual transgression, there were other types of sin possible ranging from missing Mass on Sundays or Holy Days to eating meat on a day of abstinence to stealing from one’s employer to lying under oath.   The pivotal element was, however, that it was a personal violation of the moral code.   There was no awareness—to the ordinary Catholic—of the social dimension of sin.  While various popes such as Leo XIII and Pius XI had written encyclical letters talking of the rights of labor and the obligations of employers towards their employees, connections were not being made in the pulpit or confessional between such magisterial teaching and moral culpability.  Of course, in the first half of the twentieth century, as in the century before, most people in a position to exploit their employees were in the Protestant ascendancy in this country and Catholics were far more likely to be sinned against than sinning when it came to the sins outlined in the economic theories of the magisterium.  But the Church’s hands were not entirely clean.  Such prelates as Cardinal O’Connell of Boston and Archbishop Corrigan of New York, being Paddies of the most shameless social-climbing sort,  had always allied themselves with the Protestant ascendancy and its economic interests.  And of course Cardinal Spellman in 1949 sent his seminarians to dig graves to break a strike by cemetery workers in Archdiocese of New York graveyards—and was proud of it. 

Moreover, while the Church did have—at least on paper—a credible theology of defending the rights of workers, there were other social sins rarely spoken of and even more rarely condemned.  Racism was not only rarely denounced from the pulpit but the Catholic Church had long supported policies of segregation and did not accept African-American candidates for the priesthood until the ordination of Father Augustus Tolton in 1886 and such vocations remained rare until the mid-twentieth century.  Tolton himself had to be sent to Rome for his studies as no American seminary would have him as a student.  (In telling this story I have omitted the saga of the Healy brothers who—despite their slave mother managed to be accepted and treated as whites—one becoming a bishop, a second a Vicar General of the Boston Archdiocese, and a third, president of Georgetown University.  See entry for February 14, 2011.)  Cardinal Glennon of Saint Louis blocked the integration of Webster College and tried to do the same with Jesuit Saint Louis University.  Archbishop Toolen of Mobile forbade his priests to take part in any civil-rights demonstrations and won the support of other bishops who initially forbad their priests to travel to Alabama to be part of the marches led by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  Cardinal McIntyre suspended priests and expelled from this Archdiocese priests and religious who preached or spoke on civil rights.  (See entries for August 31 and September 1, 2011).
All this changed with the Second Vatican Council.  Catholics have become very much aware of the social dimension of sin and consequently have moved from being a conservative force in American society to a force for social change and liberation.  This fits the model of a “hermeneutic of reform” more than a “hermeneutic of rupture” as the Ecumenical and Interfaith issues addressed in yesterday’s posting.  However it is probably one of the reasons that some influential members of the hierarchy are so anxious to “turn back” the Council and the Church’s record of social progress during the last 50 years.