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Bishop Bernard McQuaid--19th century architect
of American Catholic Isolationism. Like they say,
a picture is worth ten thousand words--not the
faithful kept behind the fence.
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WASHINGTON
— Shortly before leaving the Capitol for the holiday recess, Senate Democrats gathered
behind closed doors to lay out an agenda for 2014. When the majority leader,
Harry Reid, exhorted colleagues to “deal with the issue of income inequality,”
the talk took a spiritual turn.
“You know,” declared Senator Bernard Sanders,
the Vermont independent, who caucuses with Democrats, “we have a strong ally on
our side in this issue — and that is the pope.”
That Mr. Sanders, who is Jewish, would invoke
the pope to Mr. Reid, a Mormon, delighted Roman Catholics in the room.
(“Bernie! You’re quoting my pope; this is good!” Senator Richard J. Durbin of
Illinois recalled thinking.) Beyond interfaith banter, the comment underscored
a larger truth: From 4,500 miles away at the Vatican, Pope Francis, who has
captivated the world with a message of economic justice and tolerance, has
become a presence in Washington’s policy debate.
The
above is taken from an article that appeared in the New York Times a few weeks ago and it illustrates why this papacy
is a very different papacy than its recent predecessors. We have a Pope that isn’t playing in the
intramural league. This papacy is not
nitpicking over internal issues like liturgical translations or nuns not being
appropriately veiled. It isn’t simply
that this pope doesn’t think that we should stop “obsessing” over same-sex
relationships or contraception, but he has taken the Church back out onto the
court for serious game with the big boys.
When President Obama visits the Vatican in March it won’t be for the
genteel sit-down and photo-op that it was with Pope Benedict. This Pope is saying something that Mr. Obama
(and Mr. Hollande, and Mr. Putin, and Mr. Peres, and Ms. Merkel, and other
world leaders) are very interested in.
We’re back in the game now that we have stopped the navel-gazing and
remembered our mission to announce the Kingdom of God. But this is alarming to certain factions
within the Church, and the American Church in particular, who are anxious to
restore the ghetto mentality that pervaded American Catholicism from the final
quarter of the nineteenth-century to the Second Vatican Council when the opened
windows in Rome blew a wind strong enough to knock down the isolationist walls
that had been carefully constructed by generations of American clergy who were
terrified of the world outside the boundaries of the Church. In the famous words of Bishop McQuaid of
Rochester (1823-1909), one of the chief architects of the isolationist policy
of the American Church: “If the walls are not high enough, they must be raised; if they are
not strong enough, they must be strengthened…” When a pro-choice Jewish senator cites the
Pope for policy support to a pro-choice Mormon senator—you know those walls
aren’t standing anymore. And this means
that Catholics have to deal with the reality of a very non-Catholic world out
there. We can’t stay in our own enclave
cheering each other on in our own in-house competitions and refusing to play
ball with people who do not accept our basic premises.
Twenty
years ago Cardinal Bernardin tried to stem the re-ghettoization of American
Catholicism with his appeal for the Catholic Common Ground Initiative. He was crushed by his fellow Cardinals
Bernard Law and James Hickey who were determined that isolationism was the best
policy for American Catholicism. The
complex ambiguities of Pope John Paul II’s papacy allowed the narrow vision of
Hickey and Law to prevail and it led the American Church into a long cold dark
night of increasing irrelevance. With Cardinal
Law the “kingmaker” of American bishops we were given a hierarchy that can only
be described as masturbatory in its ecclesial leadership-- Francis George, Raymond Burke, Edwin O’Brien,
William Lori, Michael Sheridan, Edward
Egan, John Myers, Edward Slattery, Charles Chaput, Joseph Martino, Fabian
Bruskewitz, Thomas Olmstead, John McCormack, Richard Lennon, Thomas Tobin, to
mention a few. It didn’t get better with
the rise in Roman influence of Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke and a new generation of
bishops who lack vision such as, among others, Robert Finn, Salvatore
Cordileone, Thomas Paprocki, Kevin Rhoades, Frank Dewane, and David O’Connell. This is not to say that there have not been
good bishops—and some very good bishops—over the last twenty-five years—but that
the balance of power tipped to men who tried to re-fortify the American Church
against the larger society. I have no
doubt that this was done in good faith but the results have been
disastrous. The Church not only
retreated into a cultural isolationism—losing credibility among many of the
more intellectual faithful in the process—but gained a reputation for being
intellectually closed and negative in tone.
As one priest often said in his homilies “everyone knows what the Church
is against; no one can articulate what it is for—and that is a disastrous
position from which to evangelize.”
Pope Francis has
changed all that but to the consternation of those who favor ecclesial isolationism. It should not be surprising that these same
people favor a cultural isolationism that wants to preserve American
Catholicism from the rich diversity that its membership reflects. Their idea of church buildings is the retro
appeal of a 1930’s “Chicago basilica style.”
Music is limited to organ accompaniment and Latin libretto. Religious art is of the pre-Raphaelite
revival. Prayers are found in the Enchiridion or to be said on beads. Mariachi bands, gospel choirs, and dance have
no place. The politics follow with anti-immigrant bias and an identification of
Catholicism with what might be called “Spellman Capitalism” in honor of the
Cardinal Archbishop of New York who vigorously supported the “military
industrial complex” in its war to defend American economic hegemony. But that is not where Pope Francis is. Here he is giving his weapons to those closet
Marxists who call themselves “Democrats” and overturning all that we Americans
hold dear in our dream that any red-blooded American boy can claw his way to
the top, earning 230 times what the slaves who toil in his industry earn. What would Jesus say?
