Putting principles over politics
At RNS news, Jacob Lupfer writes:
Americans of all stripes bemoan political polarization. For people who claim to derive their political values from their religious traditions, polarization raises vexing questions. More than perhaps any other group, faithful Catholics struggle to reconcile their church’s teachings with the platforms of the two major parties.
Do all Americans bemoan polarization? I thought only liberal politicians did that as a backhanded form of attack? They want a uni-party.
And what is so difficult about reconciling Catholic teaching with politics? That’s only hard if you’re unfaithful. There’s no liberal policy that a good Catholic can endorse without enabling stealing, cheating, oppressing, killing, immorality, or hatred of God.
Last week at the University of Notre Dame, an ideologically diverse group of Catholic leaders gathered to discuss how political polarization affects Catholic life in the United States. Under the theme “Naming the Wounds, Beginning to Heal,” the conference sought to change the tone of political engagement by priests, lay people and the hierarchy.
Ideologically diverse? If you took part that meeting you were either an actor or an enabler.
Conservative evangelicals can be faithful Republicans because their churches affirm the GOP’s social conservatism and sexual traditionalism but they speak only timidly on matters of economics, deferring to and accepting (if not outright sanctifying) market forces. Mainline Protestant denominations’ political teachings align neatly with the Democratic Party’s platform. This includes robust support for abortion rights and, increasingly, same-sex marriage.
Free markets are not something Southern Baptists ‘sanctify’ as if they were animists. A free market is just people giving their time and property to each other. If you don’t think that’s moral, then you must believe stealing and oppression is.
People have a God-given right to give and exchange what’s theirs. They are obligated to use their gifts in a Christian way, but it is not your place to force them. True charity (love) requires freedom. Liberals don’t value love so they don’t understand freedom. They want control, ‘equality,’ and materialist results. The truths behind a free market are natural rights, not un-Catholic idols.
Moderate evangelicals, black Protestants, and Eastern Orthodox traditions cut across the two major parties. But since the Catholic Church spans the breadth and depth of America’s political landscape, it is important for Catholics to model Christian political engagement in a context of partisan and ideological polarization.
What?!
Robert McElroy, the newly installed Catholic bishop of San Diego, gave a brilliant speech last year about the moral dilemmas of partisanship. While acknowledging the parties’ role in nurturing mass participation in politics, he cautioned against the ways both parties can be hostile to human dignity and the common good.
No polarizing ‘partisan’ there, McElroy.
For the Christian citizen, parties pose a paradox. It is a good thing that we have ideologically distinct parties that will, when in power, pursue different policy goals. But when partisans — whether elected officials or ordinary voters — abandon their religious principles in order to fall in line with their party, Christian political engagement ceases to exist.
Nothing serves the interests of political parties more than interest groups that use religious rhetoric to promote secular ideologies and add, “Thus saith the Lord.” And Washington is full of them.
So is the American hierarchy. Mr. Lupfer closes:
Polarization challenges Catholics more acutely than it challenges many other religious adherents. They should seek ways to promote fuller expressions of their church’s humane teachings in both parties. In elevating principles above party loyalty, they can witness to their faith and model authentically Christian political engagement.
But you must have principles in the first place.
