SOME AMERICAN CATHOLIC BISHOPS TURN BACKS ON PEACE AND JUSTICE

One of the greatest achievements of the United States government was the creation of the American welfare state. This accomplishment would not have been possible without strong Catholic support, rooted in the social encyclicals, and the work of Catholic thinkers like Msgr. John J. Ryan, and the efforts of numerous Catholic organizations. Their work and efforts reflected the best of the so-called Catholic Renaissance.

Now the welfare state is under siege, being slowly dismantled by funding cuts and out of control medical expenses which those in power refuse to address. Unfortunately, a substantial portion of the Catholic hierarchy has aided and abetted in attacks on the social net by supporting political candidates who want to reduce taxes and trim the social safety net. After his reelection, George W. Bush told Archbishop Myers of Newark, New Jersey that the activities of conservative John Paul II bishops had decided the election.

The bishops efforts to undermine John Kerry’s candidacy lent vital support to the belief that the market should be sovereign and that the US is entitled to global dominance. Through their efforts, the courts will be packed for decades with judges who are skeptical of the right of the community to regulate economic activity, protect the environment, assure the rights of workers to organize and redress their grievances, or provide fair venues where those harmed by great and powerful interests can seek relief.

Claiming that opposing gay marriage, abortion, and stem cell research are far more important than upholding the church’s teachings on peace and justice, solidarity with the community, and the preferential option for the poor, these bishops opted to embrace political religion and support a party that opposes a great portion of the Catholic agenda. It was not that long ago that this party was a bastion of anti-Catholicism. If abortion were not a matter of settled law–if something could actually be done about it, one could almost understand if the bishops temporarily abandoned peace and justice to address the matter. Their failure to attack pro-choice Catholic Republicans like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rudolph Giuliani raises serious questions about their sincerity.

During the 2004 election, high personages in the Vatican issued oblique statements that could be interpreted as telling American Catholics that they should not vote for John Kerry. For example, a leaked letter of Cardinal Joseph Ratinger said that "Not all moral issues have the same weight as abortion and euthanasia." The future Benedict XVI said people who disagreed on those matters should not receive communion, but that they were free to disagree with the church on war, the death penalty, or capital punishment. American priests who took up this line usually said something like, "I cannot see how a good Catholic could consider voting for John Kerry." The comments of Vatican officials and American clergy broke tradition and confirmed the worst fears of many about American Catholics. We heard little about this because those who had most distrusted Catholics were also deploying religion to elect George W. Bush.

It is interesting to contemplate how the Vatican might weigh policy choices. In September, 2004, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger--now Pope Benedict XVI- was quoted in the Tablet of London that the United States had sent evangelical and Pentecostal missionaries to Latin America to bring political stability to the continent. In translation, that means to combat the liberation theology then being advanced by many Latin American bishops and priests. All this began in the 1980s, when the Vatican was allied with the US in trying to end Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. Some prominent American churchmen, including Joseph Cardinal Bernardin were actually smuggling US funds into Poland for Solidarity's use. In the last US election the Vatican favored George W. bush despite John Paul II's condemnation of the Second gulf War.

In biblical history, we noted that the prophets remodelled Judaeism from a cultish religion attached to a warlike deity to a religion built around a God who challenges our prejudices and promotes compassion, mercy, and opposition to unjust social systems. Scholars have seen this expressed in a Catholic ethic with core values centering on sharing and the community and special concern for the poor and disadvantages.

The media coverage of John Paul II' death left the impression that his version of Catholicism was an exact match for the policies of George H.W. Bush. Of course, this was anything but the case. JPII strongly supported full employment, national health care, security in retirement, and environmental protection. All this flows from traditional teachings about the dignity of man and God's creation. He was suspicious of so-called market economics, saying that "the inalienable value of the human person must always be an end and not a means, a subject, not an object, not a commodity of trade." He reminded listeners that "the state has the duty to prevent people from abusing their private property to the detriment of the common good...."--hardly a pean to deregulation and privatization. Commenting on globalization and market economics, he complained that the world is "witnessing the resurgence of a certain capitalist neoliberalism which subordinates the human person to blind market forces." In criticizing abortion, he did advocate a "culture of life," which included opposition to the death penalty and upholding the dignity of all human beings. Benedict XVI, his successor, shares the same moral fundamentalism and is even more skeptical of market-based policies and globalization. Unfortunately, Benedict and some others in Rome sometimes seemed to let Republican rhetoric on reproductive matters blind them to the fact the present administration is not attune to the church's positions on war, diplomacy, or economic justice.

The behavior of the American clergy who are tilting to the Right suggests they do not take seriously the church's traditional teachings on war, diplomacy, or economic justice. However, they have stepped up to the plate on the death penalty. They claimed to opposed John Kerry because a matter of doctrine was involved, even though Kerry repeatedly said that he personally opposed abortion. On the other hand, they assigned less importance to John Paul's opposition to war or advocacy of economic justice. These were merely "prudential" matters--questions of judgment. That means Catholics can disagree on how Gospel values are applied to life. However, Kerry and others have not denied or criticized Catholic doctrine. They have simply said they oppose using the law to force others to acccept it-- a prudential matter. It is also a judgment call as to whether anything can be done about abortion now that is is a matter of settled law. This is a simple fact--one that Catholic leaders should consider before they scuttle the bulk of what Cardinal Joseph Bernardin called the "seamless garment" of Catholic social judgment in order to punish those who disagree with them over what realistically can or should be done about abortion.

By allying with the Christian Right, these conservative Catholic leaders risk regressing in history to some sort of tribal religion that creates idols like "Family Values," accepts militarism and imperialism, and condones belligerent righteousness. The usually optimistic scholar, Fr. Andrew Greeley has writen recently that he was not sure the Catholic ethic would survive in the United States. Perhaps one reason for this is that Catholics have moved into the middle class and cultural mainstream. There are now Catholic neoconservatives who seek to reconcile Catholicism with the spirit of capitalism, and one of them even went to Rome to instruct the prelates on how to see the invasion of Iraq as a just war. They seem to be moving toward a cultic religion that underpins the status quo and refuses to speak truth to power. This strategem would probably shore up membership at least in the short run. In the process though, the church would run the risk of losing its very soul.