Benedict XVI once wrote on the
Parable of the Sower and the Seed: “When anyone hears the word of the kingdom
and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown
in his heart; this is what was sown along the path.” Our Lord
reminds us here that His teaching on the Kingdom of God in its fullness remains
fruitless for those who see the Kingdom as merely an earthly kingdom, having
rejected its supernatural dimension. This seed bears no fruit, and its fate is
the spiritual fate of the hearer. What the Sisters of Notre Dame DeNamur taught
me in my formative years was that there was more to my existence than things
temporal, challenging me to work toward holiness and the salvation of my soul Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam that I might enjoy happiness with Him
forever. Here is the lastest example of furuitlessness:
Perspective
Evangelicals and Catholics made their peace. Catholics are paying the
price.
Some have begun to
realize they traded orthodoxy for political expediency.
By Elizabeth Bruenig October 27
In 1994, 39 church leaders and
scholars — some Catholics, some evangelical Protestants —
published a statement of reconciliation.
“We together, Evangelicals and Catholics, confess our sins against the unity
that Christ intends for all his disciples,” they said, and over the course of
their letter laid the foundations for political and spiritual cooperation. They
would work together, they declared, to strengthen the family, defend democracy
and end abortion on demand. Over the next decade, signatories of the 1994
document, Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT), would confer again and
pen further statements , all in hopes of establishing a durable
accord between their traditions. These were the leaders and the elites: the
pastors and priests, professors and bishops, notables and worthies from each
side of the great schism. Together, and for what they saw as the greater good,
they would overcome the old hostilities dividing rank-and-file pew-sitters.
They had a
reason for dramatic measures. For decades, evangelicals and Catholics had
struggled to work together even on political issues both groups took seriously,
such as abortion and prayer in schools. Old animosities divided them, and
mistrust poisoned attempts at cooperation. In the 1950s, Catholics resented the
proto-evangelicals pushing for prayer and Bible readings in schools — from
Protestant texts and translations. In the 1970s, Foy Valentine ,
a crusader for traditional Christian morality and the longtime head of the
Southern Baptist Convention’s Christian Life Commission, griped that public
campaigns against abortion were a strictly Roman Catholic
preoccupation; other evangelicals were also wary of participating in
anti-abortion politics for fear of associating too closely with a cause
presumed to be thoroughly Catholic, and at times they developed their own
parallel anti-abortion groups just to avoid cooperating with the Romish.
But a new
generation of rightward activists, intellectuals and politicians mobilized
during the culture wars, attracting Catholics and evangelicals to their ranks.
Eventually, thanks to the work of groups like ECT and the pressure of ongoing
polarization, relations between Catholics and evangelicals grew so warm that it
now seems hard to recall these struggles. But the political pact between
evangelicals and Catholics also came with significant hazards. It has,
especially recently, become a source of anxiety for the Catholic leaders who
helped convene the alliance in the first place. For all their success building
a new coalition on the right, evangelical and Catholic doctrines are still
distinct. Working together meant that one party would have to make concessions
to the other. And so far, Catholic teaching has given the most ground.
Catholics have
had trouble fitting into U.S. politics since the beginning. America’s founders
were suspicious of the faith. John Adams
mocked the “nonsense and delusion” of “absolutions, indelible
characters, uninterrupted successions, and the rest of those fantastical ideas,
derived from the canon law.” Immigration from predominantly Catholic countries
throughout the 19th century sparked anti-Catholic parties such as the Know-Nothings ;
roughly 100 years later, echoes of those sentiments sounded in response to John
F. Kennedy’s historic presidential run.
So the
evangelicals and Catholics who wanted to join forces had their work cut out for
them. Catholics had generally
leaned Democratic, with a few exceptions: They liked Ike, for
example, but turned out in droves for Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Yet, just as
evangelicals began cleaving ever closer to the Republican Party in the late 1970s and early 1980s based
on issues such as divorce, abortion and public morality, Catholics shifted from
voting generally blue to a more even split ;
they remain resolutely bifurcated between the two parties. Today, working with
evangelicals, a group that identifies
overwhelmingly with the Republican Party , means that Catholics
must operate within the political agenda of the GOP.
The close
quarters produced a new breed of politically evangelicalized Catholic
candidates and officeholders who have little use for the church’s social
teaching (which includes support for organized
labor , immigrants and the poor) but adhere vehemently to its
teaching on issues related to sexuality. Evangelicals have greater theological
latitude when it comes to matters of the economy, with much less in the way of
binding, traditional doctrine on the right use of wealth and property than
Catholicism has accrued over the years. In supporting typically lean Republican
policies on social programs and the economy, these Catholic politicians adopt a
moral approach to politics reminiscent of their evangelical compatriots.
Among these new
Catholics, seemingly custom-made for the GOP, are House Speaker Paul
Ryan, a onetime fan of
the intensely anti-religious, free-market thinker Ayn Rand; former Louisiana
governor Bobby Jindal, who radically shrank his state’s nutritional assistance
program and rebuffed Louisiana bishops’ attempt to halt an
execution scheduled for Ash Wednesday ;
and Rep. Dave Brat, a Virginian who describes himself, dizzyingly, as Catholic, Calvinist
and libertarian . This brand of Catholic, a perfect fit with
America’s conservative movement, would supposedly “remake” the
GOP.
But instead of
carrying Catholicism’s compassionate
approach to social programs into the party, the Catholics
who’ve joined the Republican ranks seem to have adjusted their faith to the
party’s interests, at least where economic matters are concerned. Church
authorities have taken notice. Though Ryan has enjoyed some support from more
conservative church leaders, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
has repeatedly issued letters of correction to Ryan’s austere budget proposals,
urging Congress in a 2012 letter to
remember that “a just spending bill cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in
essential services to poor and vulnerable persons.” Ryan replied that
he and the bishops “just respectfully disagree,” a statesmanlike rebuff from an
evangelical politician, but a more puzzling riposte from a Catholic speaking to
the ordained leaders.
Similar
statements have increasingly come from Republican politicians seeking to
distance themselves from Pope Francis’s teachings in order to remain closer to
GOP orthodoxy. During the 2016 presidential primaries, disavowing the pope
became a kind of ritual for Catholic candidates. Jeb Bush rejected his
characterization of climate care as a religious
obligation, on the grounds that “he’s not a scientist.”
Marco Rubio remarked that
“on economic issues, the pope is a person.” Chris Christie was blunt: “I just think the pope is wrong,”
he said, referring to the pontiff’s desire that the United States renew
diplomatic relations with Cuba, a predominantly Catholic
country . Rick Santorum openly
rejected the USCCB’s position on immigration in 2011, saying, “If
we develop the program like the Catholic bishops suggested, we would be
creating a huge magnet for people to come in and break the law.” Their
repudiations of church hierarchy have the same ring as Kennedy’s 1960 speech on his Catholicism —
“I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak
for me” — but they come much more readily, often on TV, and with showy
indifference to the church that calls itself the one, the holy and the
apostolic. It’s one thing to insist, as Kennedy did, that church and state are
simply separate; it’s another to add that the church is in fact wrong and the
state right.
With statements
like these accumulating, could the bond between the faiths hold out? In July,
the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a close confidant of Pope Francis and a top Vatican
official, indicted such
evangelical-Catholic collaboration in an article published with a Protestant
co-author in La Civilta Cattolica, a Jesuit journal reviewed by the Vatican
before publication. The essay, “Evangelical
Fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism: A Surprising Ecumenism ,”
offered this thesis: “Some who profess themselves to be Catholic express
themselves in ways that until recently were unknown in their tradition and
using tones much closer to Evangelicals,” Spadaro wrote. “They are defined
as value voters as far as attracting electoral mass support is
concerned.” His article was widely read to mean that the church hierarchy had
become disillusioned with the 24-year-old political cooperation pact, and
Vatican-watchers saw the hand of the pope.
Shortly after
its publication, Catholic writer P.J. Smith pointed out that, in calling for a
more stern separation between religion and politics, Spadaro’s essay
contradicted the very vision of political activity that Pope Francis often
advocates. Perhaps the omission resulted from Spadaro’s focus being
overly trained on partisanship, an artifact of frustration from those early
days of Catholic-evangelical cooperation under the auspices of the New Right.
Spadaro and other like-minded Catholics might be irritated by Catholic
cooperation with evangelicals on conservative issues, but the same challenges
certainly face Catholics working within the Democratic establishment, where the
situation is similar in kind but reversed on the issues.
The impasse
comes down not to the specific nature of either party but to the very
foundations of America. Spadaro was right about the difficulties of Catholic
participation in U.S. politics, but he didn’t seem to see how deep the trouble
goes. This country was founded around Protestant principles. Catholics
involving themselves in American politics — especially the machinations of the
two parties — are always likely to find that the closer they come to
Washington, the further they stray from Rome. It may simply be the price of
doing business in a country like ours, but it makes authenticity and efficacy
very difficult to square.
Twitter:
@ebruenig
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Elizabeth Bruenig is
an assistant editor for Outlook and PostEverything at the The Washington Post.
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