h/t Andrew Sullivan
From the Catholic Reporter:
President Barack Obama’s support among Catholic voters has surged since June, according to a new poll, despite a summer that included the Catholic bishops’ religious freedom campaign and the naming of Rep. Paul Ryan, a Catholic, as the GOP’s vice-presidential candidate.
Please share widely!
Rather, I think the quote could accurately be amended to read “because of a summer…”
The players in this game (the USCCB, Paul Ryan, segments of the GOP leadership, etc) seem to have forgotten that they are, well, Catholic — you know, as in “Christian“.
I’m not sure how anyone can pay more than superficial attention to the Gospels, the Epistles (especially James!), and significant parts of the Hebrew Scriptures/OT without asking themselves serious questions about how to reconcile all this with this summer’s posturing by those who claim to speak for Catholics and Catholicism.
on Apostolic Succession.
The Protestant project of trying to derive useful advice from ancient documents bristling with textual variants and written for societies long gone has always struck me as, well, difficult. There’s a reason there are so many species of Protestants.
I’m not sure what the Apostolic Succession has with anything I wrote.
In addition, Catholics (at least ordained Catholics) look to the Bible as much as Protestants (for better or for worse). There are a host of reasons why there are so many species of Protestants — I’m not sure what any of those reasons have to do with my comment.
What seems obvious to you isn’t obvious to some other Protestant. Voltaire points out that 1 Samuels 15 advocates genocide in no uncertain terms.
So I get a bit worried when people talk about what Scripture “obviously” recommends. Please, please make them only choose the “right” verses.
I’m not sure why you stay focused on “Protestant”. All Christian traditions use the same Bible. Substantial portions of the Old Testament (in different translations, of course) are shared with the Jewish tradition. So why do you focus on the Protestant tradition?
When I write “the Gospels, the Epistles (especially James!), and significant parts of the Hebrew Scriptures/OT”, I mean the implications of all of it — taken as a whole, and especially the Gospels and the Epistles. These are the writings of a sect or a collection of sects that were revolutionary in their day, and were specifically agitating against the ruling classes and the wealthy of their day. I’m not talking about the supernatural stuff or their cultic beliefs. I’m instead talking about their posture towards wealth, the wealthy, power, and the powerful.
I encourage you to try reading these as literature and as insight into a culture, rather than as “holy” and “sacred” texts.
Also, what’s with your reference to the Apostolic Succession? I’m not trying to be argumentative or oppositional, I just literally don’t understand how it relates to any of this.
but I think the point is that the Catholic Church relies heavily on the concept of Apostolic Succession for the sacramental and ecclesiastical authority of the Pope and bishops. Indeed, even the Second Vatican Counsel, though somewhat liberalizing with respect to the official Church position on “pagan babies,” referred to Apostolic Succession as an essential element of the Church and declined to characterize most, if not all, Protestant denominations as “churches” because they didn’t have proper “Apostolic Succession” in the Catholic Church’s view.
This is in contrast to most Protestant denominations, who are much more likely to reject the concept of Apostolic Succession and look to Scripture for guidance. Many Protestant denominations, in fact, define “Apostolic Succession” as abiding by the teachings of Scripture. In the Boston of the 1850s, this was a basis for criticizing Catholicism as incompatible with democratic citizenship. Protestants, it was argued, were better adapted to critical thinking precisely because their tradition called for reflection on the Bible.
So it’s Protestants, much more than Catholics, whose behavior is guided by the Bible. And not always for the best. At least I think that was the point. As concerns the discussion of Catholic voters and Obama/Romney, I’m not sure which way it cuts, but I think the point was that contradicting the Bible is of more concern to a Protestant than a Catholic. That said, I agree with your point that today’s professional “political Catholics” are incompatible with basic Christian values, and also agree with kbusch’s point, as I understand it, that basing propriety on what’s in the Bible is a double-edged sword.
The Catholic church declares “the Word of God” to be a fundamental pillar. I suggest that most theologians outside the extremist fundamentalist sects assert that it is not individual words of the Bible that matter, but instead how those words speak to us in the context of day-to-day life (this is one problem with proof-texting). More assertive theologians assert that to slavishly worship individual passages and assert their inerrancy is to, in fact, practice idolatory — the words are different from the message they contain (philosophically, the symbol/meaning distinction).
I therefore argue, on this Sunday morning, that ordained Catholics are as bound by scripture as ordained members of any other Christian tradition, and that the question of Apostolic Succession is irrelevant to the point I make in my comment.
EVERY Christian is exhorted to be sensitive to “the Word of God” as manifested in their day-to-day life. Catholic Churches observe the same lectionary as Episcopal (the tradition I’m familiar with). The Catholic Mass includes an Old Testament, Epistle, and Gospel reading as well as a Psalm.
Every observant Catholic hears the same scripture as every Episcopalian.
Catholics hear scripture on Sundays, but do not believe that the scriptures are necessarily historical records describing events in a literal way. The Old Testament, Revelation, etc. are regarded as allegory, or at least understood in the context in which they are believed to have been written. To the Scripture is therefore an important thing, but not the only important thing. To the scripture is added the ecclesiastical authority of the Church itself– both the institutional Church, though councils, encyclicals, etc. and believers, through theologians and philosophers, and those who are considered to have been exemplary in some way (i.e., saints).
This is among the most significant points of departure in the Reformation: Luther rejected everything that was not scripture (thus, sola scriptura) .
The significance of works was the other major theological point of departure for the Reformation, and these things remain the major theological (rather than bureaucratic) roadblocks to ecumenicalism.
Which is why its sad the Vatican uses botched interpretations of Second Timothy to justify a male priesthood and celibacy (which wasn’t even the official practice of the Church during its first millenium) and that old fundy standby Leviticus on sexual questions.
What is great with the Church, particularly the Patristic Fathers and the Doctors of the Church is that there is a great engagement with Scripture from the get go as allegory-not as a literal text, and the engagement with the morality and philosophy at its core. Luther and Calvin were the fundamentalists of their day insisting on sola scriptura while also asserting that salvation was through faith alone. The Catholic church in this regard has a theology regarding sin and salvation that is arguably more universalist and lenient than Protestants. Those that do not know Christ through faith can still encounter him through good works since anyone anywhere who does good works is honoring Christ, even if unknowingly. It is because of this that purgatory also makes sense within this framework.
Whereas Protestantism, Calvinism in particular, is a more individualized faith that depends less on how one treats his neighbor. In this regard its easy to see how the Prosperity Gospel and Gospel of Wealth (and the GOP) find easy bedfellows with evangelical Protestants. I highly recommend the works of Evelyn Waugh to STom and others who are alienated from the Catholic church, Brideshead Revisited in particular, since it shows that at its core the Church recognizes that we are all flawed sinners and its only through profound undeserved grace that we find forgiveness and inner peace-and any ‘sin’ the Church rails against be it homosexuality or abortion or even disbelief is ultimately not grave enough to prevent that grace from being received. I recommend it not as a conversion tool but because it shows that at its core the faith stands for something beautiful and transcendent that cant be reduced to a talking point or subverted for a political agenda.
Back when anti-Catholic sentiment existed in large portions of the country, it made sense of Catholic voters to band together to combat discriminatory laws regarding immigration, schools, alcohol, etc. Nowadays, while there is still some religious prejudice, no mainstream politicians ever voice it, so voters’ Catholic identity becomes less important than other issues, which Catholicism being a diverse faith, it’s not surprising that what those other issues are and what side voters fall on them is equally diverse.
when some bishop next says something stupid.
… of Catholics as a block doesn’t really mitigate stupid bishops. When stupidity rears it’s ugly head, its still virtuous to point it out. If offense is taken by practicioners when bishops or the church is called out, it is only taken by a proxy that they themsleves grant by yeilding athority of identity to such a church or bishop. A bishop’s or church’s function within one’s tribal identity is granted, not taken. Harping on the stupid bishops or the stupid church is only a slur on churchgoers to the extent that they want to identify with the stupid bishops or the stupid church. To the extent that they are disconnect from stupid bishops or stupid churches, they have nothing to worry about.
Bishop Dolan says something stupid, the criticism isn’t of Bishop Dolan, it is of “the Church” or “the Catholics.”
I don’t “choose” to be Catholic; I am Catholic, in the same way that I am American. I have no issue with your criticizing bishops; that was indeed the point of the comment. I doubt many Catholics would disagree: it certainly appears from the chart above that most American Catholics don’t.
And yet, when people here speak of “the Catholics” or “the Church” it is like they are talking about the Borg, mindlessly trudging along in fulfillment of a hive objective set by Locutus, played today by whatever Catholic person did something to offend you today. Here we come, like crocodiles, to devour your liberal Eden.
Then follows a friendly invitations to separate myself from community, family, tradition, and culture because the inviter finds Catholics to be, as a rule, noxious.
I’ll pass.
By very intentional design, when Bishop Dolan (or for that matter the Pope) speaks, he speaks for the church — the same church that you and every other Catholic are part of. This view of church authority is very different from, for example, the Episcopal/Anglican tradition where authority is decreased as one goes up the hierarchy.
You and I have certainly had our wrestling matches regarding this question. I suggest that the assertion of authority that you implicitly accept by continuing your affiliation with the institutional church carries with it a burden of speaking out when the leaders that you empower take public postures that many find offensive.
I’m not suggesting that you should necessarily separate yourself from your church. I am suggesting that you continue to speak forcefully — to us and to your church — when the officials who act on your behalf so flagrantly align themselves with the worst elements of our current culture.
In a similarly authoritarian culture such as the military, there are strong and important constraints that stop high-ranking officers from publicly embracing specific political policies are candidates. In my view, similar constraints are needed for the USCCB and individual church officials.
Why is it that when Bishop Dolan engages in his antics of these past few months, to widespread media coverage, he speaks for all Catholics, worldwide “by very intentional design,”, but when other bishops disagree with Dolan, to widespread media disinterest, they don’t?
Why is it that when Dolan leads 13 diocese to oppose Obamacare, they speak for the Church, but when 92 diocese decline to join that opposition, they don’t?
How is it that when clergy express opposition to Democratic positions on social issues, they speak for the entire Church, but when they speak against the treatment of the sick and the poor that would be a principle policy of the present GOP and the Ryan budget, they do not?
The reality is that the bishops have ecclesiastical authority to teach. Catholics have a responsibility to listen, to consider with the humility to acknowledge that we might be wrong ourselves, and to form our own informed conscience. It appears to me, looking at the chart above, that that is precisely what most Catholics actually do.
You assume a universal ecclesiastical authority to tell Catholics what to think; to the extent such authority exists, it is quite rare and has not been exercised in my lifetime, and certainly not with respect to any of the matters that interest you. In any event, the existence of moral power of that scope exists not only with the Pope, but with the Church itself– meaning all of those people represented by the chart above.
As for the invitation to provide ritual denunciations upon demand, I decline. My own struggles with the challenges people like Cardinal Dolan pose to my faith are not something I would choose to share in the environment of this board.
The “very intentional design” I referenced is the explicitly hierarchical structure of the institution. You asked why the media pay more attention to the statements of Mr. Dolan than to the other other bishops. I suggest that it does so for the same reason that statements from a CEO are considered more newsworthy than those of a middle manager. When an entity makes itself so strongly hierarchical, then statements of those at the top of the hierarchy are more newsworthy.
I explicitly did NOT suggest that Mr. Dolan has “ecclesiastical authority to tell Catholics what to think.” I, instead, suggest that he has ecclesiastical authority to speak on behalf of the institution. The rest of us have every right to respond to those statements, and we do. I am perfectly capable of separating my reactions to the institution from my reactions to individuals within it — I encourage you to do the same.
Regarding “denunciations”, in my view you already do just fine — hence my use of the phrase “continue to speak forcefully”. I certainly do not ask you to share any aspect of your faith here.
1. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is an episcopal conference. As such, it generally has virtually no ecclesiastical authority AT ALL. It has certain authority to take positions when approved by 2/3 of ALL of the Bishops in the conference.
2. The fact that Dolan is off on his own without the support of 2/3 of the bishops that was one of the issues drawing complaint from the other bishops. Yet, Dolan is covered as the voice of all, and the others are disregarded. It is as if John Boehner took a position, and this position is accepted as the position of the Congress of the United States.
3. There is no such thing as “speaking as a Cardinal.” There are Cardinals, and they speak. But in order for their speaking to carry the force you are thinking of, they must speak formally as a group, which is quite rare.
4. I will note, for the record, that a matter that did actually receive the support of the USCCB–A Message on Work, Poverty, and a Broken Economy– received rather scant media attention. Again, as if a statement made by Eric Cantor at a rally taken as the position of the Congress and more important than, say, legislation.
5. I will not criticize your right to criticize “the institution” to the extent that you are referring to “the institutional church” i.e., the bureaucratic organization of clergy, bishops, diocese, and sees. I will criticize when you refuse any distinction between this organization and The Church, which Catholics mostly believe to be the assembly of believers– the people, not the bureaucracy.
n/m
…. overly applied. When bishops say dumb things, one can assess the types of reactions and their applicability. Reactions against the bishop are obviously fair game. Reactions against the church are fair game usually based on the authority the church gives the bishop on such things. If what the bishop says is out of line with regard to official church opinion, a case can be made that the church isn’t fully culpable for their association with the bishop. Even in that case though, if we hear many bishops asserting similar or the same baloney, even if it the church doesn’t agree, lack of admonition can and should be taken as tacit approval.
Now under these conditions I think it’s fairly obvious that criticism of bishops and/or churches can be warranted and fair game. Often, however, when a catholic church member comes upon such criticism, they oftentimes hear ‘catholics’ where what was actually said was ‘bishop x’ or ‘the church’. In this way umbrage is often overly applied. While I’d admit that lumping the laity in with specific nonsense might be overly applied (although I try to avoid it, I think successfully), I’d say this over-application of umbrage probably happens much more often, on the account of the natural defensiveness that comes with the identity aspect of religion. That is, its more likely that individual catholics take criticism of their church or specific bishops personally than criticisms of the church or specific bishops overshoot those targets to target catholic people in general.
All of the above is separate to the issue of criticizing catholic ideas – which is always fair game (criticizing any idea is fair – just do it well with good reasoning and backup). To the extent that such an idea is within the sets of ideas that define catholocism, such a criticism might be said to apply to ‘catholics’. But such an application implicitly exempts those who call themselves catholic but disagree with the official dogma in question. If I criticize, say, NFL refs in general for getting calls wrong – it’s implied that I’m not criticizing refs that get calls right. In this way, when addressing the ideas and dogmas, one can criticize catholocism legitimately, the umbrage of large swaths of catholics notwithstanding. The machinery in the marketplace of ideas demands that such ground be fair game.
This has been a more useful discussion than has been the case in the past, and I thank you.
I do not think that I have ever bristled at the criticism of a bishop, or cardinal, or pope, as such. To the extent such criticism happens here, I am more than likely to agree with the substance, if not the tone. I bristle when this leaps into condemnation of huge swaths of people, as if those people have no individuality.
Likewise I bristle at the notion that, well, they “choose” this. This is an utterly alien concept to me; I didn’t choose to be Catholic any more than I chose to have big feet. I just am. Catholicism is as much a cultural and ethnic identification as it is a purely theological one, as well-described by fenway below.
One should not ordinarily discuss large, diverse groups of people as a “block”– ambiguous or otherwise– because they are not a block. I cannot think of another group that could be so described without offending the liberal way of thinking.
There has been an intense struggle within the Church for many decades, as most recently exemplified by Dolan and Sr. Pat Farrell. The struggle has been vehement, though generally not venomous. It has therefore been of little interest to the media, except on the occasions where tempers flare. Then, people with no connection at all to the Church arrive on scene to denounce ALL Catholics, universally, because why haven’t I been made aware of any internal opposition to a conservative hierarchy?! as if one side of the struggle simply does not exist.
Perhaps I’m more sensitive to this than I would be at another time, because I’ve been reading about Al Smith in 1928. But you have to remember that, for a very long time in this country and in the Boston area specifically, a large segment of Protestant America believed that all Catholics were obedient little sheep following their swarthy foreign dictator’s every word. Catholicism was deemed by many wholly incompatible with American democracy and civil liberty, much the way some people characterize Islam today.
Protestants were held out, in this view, as exemplars of free thinking, rational beings whose religious piety derived only from their individual consciences. Never mind that American Protestantism produced a hundred mob rule Klansmen for every Emerson or Theodore Parker.
These views led Massachusetts into the Know-Nothing column in 1854 and continued to hold sway relatively recently. In 1884, it was “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.” That backfired as New York Catholics delivered the state, and the Presidency, to the Democrat Cleveland. In 1927, as it appeared Catholic New York Governor Al Smith, an exceptional politician, was the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for President in 1928, the Atlantic Monthly published an “open letter” by prominent attorney Charles C. Marshall openly questioned whether Catholicism could be reconciled with American democratic principles. He demanded an answer to this question from a man who had governed the nation’s largest state, with great success, for nearly a decade. The answer was unequivocal…and still not good enough for Marshall and those who agreed with him. As Smith ran, crosses were burned across the rural South…and North. Thirty-two years later, as JFK ran for President, he faced the same questions and many voters still refused to vote for a “Romanist.” By then they were not enough to carry the day.
The irony was that Al Smith knew nothing about ecclesiastical canon. He had to ask a couple of priests to help write his “response.” I find it amusing that the same people who criticized John Fitzgerald as immoral for his affair with a nightclub cigarette girl would suggest that all Catholic politicians blindly followed all the rules of their Church. One hardly needs to go past page 5 of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to realize that, even in 1890s Ireland, many “Catholics” disagreed with Church hierarchy on matters of politics. Senator Paul Simon made this point quite emphatically to his own Lutheran church in 1960, and CMD is still explaining the diversity of viewpoints within Catholicism today.
With this context it is not surprising that, for many years, Catholics in the United States settled in tight-knit ethnic enclaves and were ready to defend their very right to be here, and to participate fully in American public life, against attacks from the outside. Old memories and attitudes, passed through the generations, die hard, and such defensive rallying to the flag persists today. Not surprising that the “exemption” referenced by mr-lynne is not self-evident to many who identify as Catholics. Having been branded as an unthinking monolith for so long, Catholics are quite likely to perceive the opposite.
That said, and I cannot speak for anyone else, when I hear criticism of a bishop’s comment with which I don’t agree, I don’t take it as a indictment of Catholics in general. I generally agree with the criticism. In my view this argument that “anti-Catholic prejudice” is “the last acceptable prejudice” is flawed and of a piece with right-wing victimology generally. Historic “anti-Catholic” prejudice was that Catholics, being mindless sheep bound to follow Rome, would hand the keys to American government to the Pope if put in power. Today we have criticism of individual members of the Catholic hierarchy whose positions on specific issues we reject, the same way we criticize evangelical Protestants who express the same views. It’s no accident that this week Bill Donahue protested “Piss Christ” by putting an Obama bobblehead in a jar of pretend feces. Why Obama? Because the fight today is not against Protestant discrimination, it’s against secular liberalism. And to me people who oppose Bill Donahue in that fight are not engaging in “anti-Catholicism” as traditionally understood. It’s just “anti-social conservatism.”
Indeed the “Catholicism” being referenced in these whines is not a “Catholicism” that speaks for me. I deplore the hypocrisy of some of these leaders. The Church officially opposes war, capital punishment and poverty as well, so I have a hard time with those bishops who will take a hard line against abortion rights or gay marriage, and thus actively support candidates who violate Church teachings on these other issues.
Thank you.
Co workers were just shocked I was actually Catholic yesterday and were surprised I believed in evolution, gay rights, reproductive rights and semi universalist salvation when there are long theological justifications for those positions (some outside of the official dogma notwithstanding). Or that believing in a resurrected God does not conflict with science or my desire for a fairer and more just economy. Also I like the TNG references. Its partly the media’s fault for making ‘the bishops’ seem like ‘the church’ when it wasn’t historically and isn’t now.
I have read quite a bit about anti-Catholic sentiment in the old days in Massachusetts and across America. I am working through a book about Al Smith’s 1928 run right now. I would point out that, even then, many Italian, German and French Catholics in Massachusetts supported the Republican Party in opposition to their Irish Democratic co-religionists.
In my view anti-Catholic sentiment diminished significantly after 1960 because (1) the Kennedy Presidency showed a Catholic could reach the White House without handing the keys to the U.S. Government over to the Vatican (this was a major fear in earlier days); (2) socially conservative Protestants came to see socially conservative practicing Catholics as allies, rather than adversaries, in a shared fight against a secular liberalism that flourished after the 1960s; (3) new and more “exotic” immigrant groups after 1965 made Irish, Italian, etc., Catholics seem “normal” by comparison to those who traditionally had viewed Catholics as a foreign “other” corrupting the purity of Protestant, Anglo-Saxon America; (4) starting in the 1970s and very much continuing today, Islam became a much more prominent “bogeyman” religion than Catholicism.
There has been much written about practicing Catholics favoring the GOP by a large margin on social issues, with non-practicing “cultural” Catholics like me tending Democratic. I was raised Catholic and, like my parents, went to Catholic schools K-12. Personally, I still identify as Catholic though I don’t really practice and strongly disagree with the Church on many issues.
For example, as a student of history, I bristle at anti-Catholic sentiment in the old days. I recently read with growing anger a plaque on New Haven’s Center Church on the Green (Congregational) praising Cromwell. Cromwell is anathema to Irish Catholics for very good reasons. So even though I agree more with the UCC and UUA on most issues, and my (non-Catholic) wife and I chose to marry in a Unitarian church that better reflected our values, the identification remains.
If I were asked by a pollster I would probably identify myself as Catholic and I’m voting Dem down the line. Personally, I have never seen a Republican candidate in my lifetime I could vote for, possibly excepting Lowell Weicker vs. Lieberman in 1988 and Weld over John Silber (I know, tough day to say it, R.I.P.) in 1990. In my view the GOP, or its “bi-partisan” enablers, are only helping destroy all progress made for average Americans from the Progressive Era to today. And I don’t want to live in 1890.
Other Catholics, both practicing and lapsed, even in my own family, see it the other way. Catholic identity is not a driving factor in our politics, although I see my passion for social and economic justice deriving from my Irish Catholic background. It’s fair and Christian, and I have a particular dislike for oppression and discrimination and a traditionally Irish sense of family and community over extreme individualism. But I don’t, like some other Irish Catholics in this area, define “community” restrictively.
In broad strokes:
* They’re socially liberal with respect to spending. Spending money and exerting policy on the poor, the sick, labor, and the environment are all supported.
* They’re socially conservative with respect to sexuality. This applies to homosexuality, marriage, and abortion. This has also seemingly lessened among Catholic voters in the Northeast, though I think that it’s still significantly more important to the Catholic “bloc” than Northeastern voters at large.
* They’re liberal with respect to war. Maybe not as anti war as the dirty f’ing hippies, but certainly not worshipers at the alter of the F-18.
I’ve always been surprised that a third party didn’t evolve in the Northeast and Rust Belt of a “Catholic Vote.” It would pull from Dems and GOPs. It might also crop up in some parts of the Southwest and Florida, with Hispanic Americans instead of Irish/Italian/etc. Americans.
only to say socially moderate with respect to sexuality. This is because views on homosexuality and marriage have been liberalizing very quickly. The last survey I saw showed support for SSM by a slight majority of Catholics, and in the same proportion as the rest of the population. I would not be surprised if the ratio exceeds that of the general population, at least in the NE, within a few years, because this fits most comfortable with your first and last asterisk.
I would agree that abortion is an exception to this trend.
I suspect, though I cannot show, that this exception results from the hyper-simplified, hyper-polarized manner in which the question is generally presented by the political arena: for, or against? I think that a great many Catholics respond “against” because the “for” position now brings a connotation of no regard for the natal “life” and therefore seems morally uncomfortable. My personal view is that this connotation isn’t fair, but it is a real product of the polarizing nature of the arguments.
At the same time, when the same issue is thought about in a different way– that is, OK, you have your ban, now what?– I am not so sure that the position of most Catholics stays static. Charging a teenage girl for capital murder doesn’t show much respect for life, either.
I suspect that the actual position of most Catholics on the issue is best captured by Hillary Clinton: safe, legal, rare, and I suspect that is why she enjoyed such strong support among Catholics in the 2008 primaries.
This question is NEVER asked of any prominent pro-lifers and it really has to be both to divide their monolithic unity against Roe (when they actually differ significantly on the post-Roe policy) and because I think once we ask this question most people would see why a ban is a terrible idea. I am still and always will be personally against abortion, but the reality is the political choice is between safe and legal abortion that government can try and make rarer through better preventative education and alternatives or unsafe and illegal abortion. Its not between abortion and no abortion since we live in the real world-and that is what the right to life movement is willfully ignorant of.
Frankly a ‘Dorothy Day party’ that was conservative on sexuality, isolationist on foreign policy and socialistic economically would be quite close to Christian Democrats/Old Labour parties in Europe and fairly close to the New Deal coalition. Those are the politics of Joe Kennedy, Robert Wagner, Al Smith, our former Senator David Ignatius Walsh, and James Farley who Joe and Joe Jr backed against FDR in 1940. Rod Drieher and John Mueller are reviving that tradition on the right, and to a lesser extent Ross Douthat. Phillip Blond and Maurice Glasman are trying to revive it in England and there is a growing movement within the US to revive it. I’d welcome it, at least as a counter to the growing emphasis on social issues to the exclusion of economics and even the willful ignorance of conservative economic policies expressed by Dolan and others who admire Ryan and give him a free pass for desecrating Catholic Social Teaching.
seriously overlapped in my small community of Granby. The old Yankees ran and thought they owned the town. In the 1950s, the town clerk–a nasty lady who I only remember as an old, bald lady– refused to file the papers necessary for the formation of a Democratic Town Committee.
I’m sure there were some Granby Congregationalists that were Democrats, but the numbers came from mainly from the French Canadians who moved out of Holyoke into Granby.
Most of the practicing Catholics I know were liberal including my grandmother, God rest her soul. They stopped listening to the hierarchy in the 1960s. My parents love the nuns and scorn the bishops. There are conservative Catholics in my parish, but most are driven by conservative politics, not the Church’s influence.
We may see significant changes, it is interesting that the most theologically patristic and liturigically traditionalist Divinity school professors I had or attended lectures from were all from the Catholic left. As are the vast majority even of Notre Dame and CUA theologians. An unspoken truth about Benedict is that he comes from this tradition, still great friends with Hans Kung and they both studied under Hans Balthazar who was a leading intellectual light of Vatican II. I really want to see this strand of Catholic liberalism come through to the forefront again, as opposed to the new age/unitarian/pantheistic bs of the “Womenpriests”* and Matthew Fox variety.
I want a faith like the one Garry Wills and Margaret Mitchell want-one that combines faith and reason and maintains the light of the Catholic intellectual tradition. We can be Christian and progressive and uniquely Catholic in our understanding of important issues like the Eucharist, Marian theology, the communion of saints, the combination of Scripture and theological works into a broader dogma, etc. As much as I respect and occasionally envy the Anglicans they still have a Protestant understanding on some of the theological points in theory (even if in practice they are far more Catholic than even in the Catholics when it comes to liturgy).
*I am not against women priests, I am against women priests that call themselves Catholic whose religious beliefs are decidedly non-Christian let alone non-Catholic
If only James Martin was head of the USCCB instead of Dolan.
or something? I’ve never heard of it, and my googling hasn’t turned up anything damning. I’m pro-nun and wouldn’t mind seeing nuns as priests, but it seems like you’re talking about something other than that.
There is romancatholicwomenpriests.org which was profiled by the New York times this last Sunday which wants to have women priests and uses Anglican or Old Catholc bishops to ordain them and maintain some illicit but bald apostolic succession. The other womenpriests.org seems to have no structure and openly cops to pagan and pantheistic views-nothing wrong with that but nothing Catholic about that either. I am leery of both just because if I was a woman who wanted to be a priest I’d just join the Anglicans which have actual seminaries and a similar liturgical tradition and they are just as schismatic in the eyes of the Vatican as these renegade groups. What is also hypocritical is how welcoming the Vatican is towards married priests coming in from other denominations and women that used to be priests in other denominations. I see those nuts cracking especially as vocations dwindle.
n/t