By Daniel B. Gallagher.
But first a note from Robert Royal: Friends, e made a good start towards our end-of-year funding goals yesterday, and I'm deeply grateful to all of you for your support. It's a great encouragement to all of us at TCT to see donations coming in from every state in the Union, and in countries from New Zealand to Switzerland. But we're only at the beginning and still have a distance to go. And in the meantime, the work needed is essential. As Professor Gallagher makes clear today, it's not just that the Catholic Faith can't be identified with any political party or project. The Faith gives us a quite different perspective on what our ultimate and relative commitments should be. It's a distinction as old and always relevant as Christ's admonitions about Caesar's coin and Augustine's explanation of the City of God.
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Now for today's column...
Amidst all the turmoil surrounding Cardinal Blase Cupich's decision to honor Senator Dick Durbin last month, objections raised by the faithful (including Cupich's brother bishops), and Pope Leo's unscripted comments, almost no attention has been given to a fundamental theological problem underlying the entire fiasco. "The tragedy of our current situation in the United States," Cupich wrote in a statement after Senator Durbin declined the award, "is that Catholics find themselves politically homeless."
At the November 3rd Keep Hope Alive Fundraiser, Cupich doubled down on his assessment of "our current situation" as a "tragedy," this time pointing to the dearth of politicians who embrace the entire gamut of Catholic social teaching: "Let's be true and honest," he said. "The tragic reality in our nation today is that there are essentially no Catholic public officials who consistently pursue the essential elements of Catholic social teaching."
But is that really a "tragedy?" If we want to be "true and honest," shouldn't we acknowledge that Catholics are not supposed to find themselves at home in this world, politically or otherwise? Doesn't Holy Scripture, along with a host of saints, remind us that the Gospel entails placing our hope in the home of a world yet to come?
"Put no trust in princes, in children of Adam powerless to save." (Psalm 146:3)
"Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God." (Matthew 22:21)
"My kingdom does not belong to this world." (John 18:36)
Another Archbishop of Chicago by the name Cardinal Joseph Bernardin created controversy in 1983 when he introduced the concept of a "consistent ethic of life" connecting the issues of poverty, war, capital punishment, and euthanasia to abortion in a "seamless garment."
Whatever one makes of this concept, I would propose that what we really need is a "seamless garment" connecting theology to the Church's teaching and preaching priorities. If we really expect this world to offer a political party that we could call "home," if we really expect politicians to embrace all of Catholic social teaching without exception, then we should probably call ourselves something other than "Christian."
I am not, of course, arguing at all that Christians should detach themselves from social responsibility. Neither am I suggesting that Catholics remain apolitical.
What I am suggesting is that Catholics engage the polis with their eyes set on the Kingdom of God, their mouths on the call to conversion, and their hearts on the hope of everlasting ...
