Posted on 10/06/2009 6:17:53 AM PDT by marshmallow
Vatican City, Oct 6, 2009 / 03:16 am (CNA).- The Italian daily Il Foglio published today an article entitled "L'ascia del vescovo pellerossa - Charles j. Chaput contro Notre Dame e l'illustre cardinale sedotto dall'abortista Obama" ("The ax of the Red Skin Bishop - Charles J. Chaput against Notre Dame and the illustrious cardinal seduced by the pro abortion Obama") in which the Archbishop of Denver contests some of the strongly pro-Obama assertions made by Cardinal Georges Cottier last July in the International Catholic Magazine “30 Days”.
Il Foglio is one of the most influential intellectual dailies in Italy, dedicated more at analyzing than covering the news. Its director is one of the most famous Italian contemporary thinkers, Giuliano Ferrara.
Despite being an agnostic, Ferrara is a long time admirer of the though of Joseph Ratzinger.
On its Tuesday edition, Il Foglio publishes a front page interview to Cardinal Francis George, and devotes the full third page to Archbishop Chaput’s comments to the original Cottier’s essay.
The Archbishop’ article, originally submitted under the more modest title of “Politics, Morality and a President: an American View,” focuses on what it meant to the Church in the US President’s Obama speech at the University of Notre Dame, which Cardinal Cottier, Theologian Emeritus of the Pontifical Household, described in 30 Days in a very positive light.
Here is the full text in English of Archbishop Chaput’s article published today in “Il Foglio”, exclusive from Catholic News Agency.
Politics, Morality and a President: an American View
One of the strengths of the Church is her global perspective. In that light, Cardinal Georges Cottier’s recent essay on President Barack Obama (“Politics, morality and original sin,” 30 Days, No. 5), made a valuable contribution to Catholic discussion of the new American president. Our faith connects us across borders. What happens in one nation may have an impact on many others. World opinion about America’s leaders is not only appropriate; it should be welcomed.
And yet, the world does not live and vote in the United States. Americans do. The pastoral realities of any country are best known by the local bishops who shepherd their people. Thus, on the subject of America’s leaders, the thoughts of an American bishop may have some value. They may augment the Cardinal’s good views by offering a different perspective.
Note that I speak here only for myself. I do not speak for the bishops of the United States as a body, nor for any other individual bishop. Nor will I address President Obama’s speech to the Islamic world, which Cardinal Cottier mentions in his own essay. That would require a separate discussion.
I will focus instead on the President’s graduation appearance at the University of Notre Dame, and Cardinal Cottier’s comments on the President’s thinking. I have two motives in doing so.
First, men and women from my own diocese belong to the national Notre Dame community as students, graduates and parents. Every bishop has a stake in the faith of the people in his care, and Notre Dame has never merely been a local Catholic university. It is an icon of the American Catholic experience. Second, when Notre Dame’s local bishop vigorously disagrees with the appearance of any speaker, and some 80 other bishops and 300,000 laypeople around the country publicly support the local bishop, then reasonable people must infer that a real problem exists with the speaker – or at least with his appearance at the disputed event. Reasonable people might further choose to defer to the judgment of those Catholic pastors closest to the controversy.
Regrettably and unintentionally, Cardinal Cottier’s articulate essay undervalues the gravity of what happened at Notre Dame. It also overvalues the consonance of President Obama’s thinking with Catholic teaching.
There are several key points to remember here.
First, resistance to President Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame had nothing to do with whether he is a good or bad man. He is obviously a gifted man. He has many good moral and political instincts, and an admirable devotion to his family. These things matter. But unfortunately, so does this: The President’s views on vital bioethical issues, including but not limited to abortion, differ sharply from Catholic teaching. This is why he has enjoyed the strong support of major “abortion rights” groups for many years. Much is made, in some religious circles, of the President’s sympathy for Catholic social teaching. But defense of the unborn child is a demand of social justice. There is no “social justice” if the youngest and weakest among us can be legally killed. Good programs for the poor are vital, but they can never excuse this fundamental violation of human rights.
Second, at a different moment and under different circumstances, the conflict at Notre Dame might have faded away if the university had simply asked the President to give a lecture or public address. But at a time when the American bishops as a body had already voiced strong concern about the new administration’s abortion policies, Notre Dame not only made the President the centerpiece of its graduation events, but also granted him an honorary doctorate of laws – this, despite his deeply troubling views on abortion law and related social issues.
The real source of Catholic frustration with President Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame was his overt, negative public voting and speaking record on abortion and other problematic issues. By its actions, Notre Dame ignored and violated the guidance of America’s bishops in their 2004 document, “Catholics in Political Life.” In that text, the bishops urged Catholic institutions to refrain from honoring public officials who disagreed with Church teaching on grave matters.
Thus, the fierce debate in American Catholic circles this spring over the Notre Dame honor for Mr. Obama was not finally about partisan politics. It was about serious issues of Catholic belief, identity and witness – triggered by Mr. Obama’s views -- which Cardinal Cottier, writing from outside the American context, may have misunderstood.
Third, the Cardinal wisely notes points of contact between President Obama’s frequently stated search for political “common ground” and the Catholic emphasis on pursing the “common good.” These goals – seeking common ground and pursuing the common good – can often coincide. But they are not the same thing. They can sharply diverge in practice. So-called “common ground” abortion policies may actually attack the common good because they imply a false unity; they create a ledge of shared public agreement too narrow and too weak to sustain the weight of a real moral consensus. The common good is never served by tolerance for killing the weak – beginning with the unborn.
Fourth, Cardinal Cottier rightly reminds his readers of the mutual respect and cooperative spirit required by citizenship in a pluralist democracy. But pluralism is never an end in itself. It is never an excuse for inaction. As President Obama himself acknowledged at Notre Dame, democracy depends for its health on people of conviction fighting hard in the public square for what they believe – peacefully, legally but vigorously and without apologies.
Unfortunately, the President also added the curious remark that “. . . the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt . . . This doubt should not push us away from our faith. But it should humble us.” In a sense, of course, this is true: On this side of eternity, doubt is part of the human predicament. But doubt is the absence of something; it is not a positive value. Insofar as it inoculates believers from acting on the demands of faith, doubt is a fatal weakness.
The habit of doubt fits much too comfortably with a kind of “baptized unbelief;” a Christianity that is little more than a vague tribal loyalty and a convenient spiritual vocabulary. Too often in recent American experience, pluralism and doubt have become alibis for Catholic moral and political lethargy. Perhaps Europe is different. But I would suggest that our current historical moment -- which both European and American Catholics share -- is very far from the social circumstances facing the early Christian legislators mentioned by the Cardinal. They had faith, and they also had the zeal – tempered by patience and intelligence – to incarnate the moral content of their faith explicitly in culture. In other words, they were building a civilization shaped by Christian belief. Something very different is happening now.
Cardinal Cottier’s essay gives witness to his own generous spirit. I was struck in particular by his praise for President Obama’s “humble realism.” I hope he’s right. American Catholics want him to be right. Humility and realism are the soil where a commonsense, modest, human-scaled and moral politics can grow. Whether President Obama can provide this kind of leadership remains to be seen. We have a duty to pray for him -- so that he can, and does.
Rather than “hijacked”, I’d say the pro life movement was a political orphan till it was adopted by the right. I am not about to kid myself that the segment of the political establishment self-identifying as right wing gives a flip about abortion as a matter of natural law or civil rights: for them it’s boob bait for the bubbas.
The GOP has historically had a very substantial pro-abortion membership (let’s not forget who appointed Justice Blackmun to the SCOTUS, and whose National Security Advisor produced a National Security Memorandum declaring abortion to be “vital” to US interests).
There is no political home for right-wingers in this country, perhaps because there’s almost no true right wing. Catholics are natural right-wingers, but in America their political perception is clouded by centuries of cohabitation with protestants.
It is perfectly fine for politically active lay Catholics to proclaim themselves as such; indeed, it’s an evangelical duty. We lay people are the ones who have to live in the world and promote its sanctification. The clergy serve in a different sphere. Yes, there’s no lack of Catholic clergy in the March for Life (probably plenty of Orthodox as well). Is this hypocritical or un-american? I don’t think so. Taking it to the streets is an extraordinary expedient, to meet an extraordinary need. It’s not at all the same as having priests running for office or accepting secular positions in business.
I’ve no idea of Archbishop Chaput’s credentials as a theologian. Given the unserious formation and environment now prevailing, not to mention the process by which non-clubbable men are culled from the lists of priest marked for early promotion, I don’t expect anyone in the American hierarchy to resemble an Old Testament prophet, much as I’d enjoy the prospect. As for Chaputs’s politics, he’s a citizen and entitled to his views. I’ve never heard him accused of partisanship, and I hope he’s shrewd enough to avoid being co-opted by those interested in the Church only as a flag of convenience.
Before I sign off here, it's worth noting that there is no area of human endeavor or activity which does not fall within the Church's purview. That includes political and civic affairs. It especially includes political affairs. It applies in spades to the defense of human life. In so far as there is a moral aspect to all human activity, the Church is perfectly within its rights to measure these against the Christian Gospel and provide moral guidance just as John the Baptist told the secular leader of his own time that it was not right for him to sleep with his brother's wife.
You have it half right. Politics should not infect the Church. The Church should infect politics. There is no area of human life where there is no room for the Gospel. To say otherwise is to lay the foundations for the terrible secularism, otherwise known as the "separation" of Church and state which has wrought such havoc to this country.
“Someone who has voted for Duckass because of family and ethic reasons, thinks defending infants from infanticide is not worth doing because others are involved, and feels a reunified Church would mean giving up control of their little part of a fractured Body of Christ is not an opinion that matters.”
Well, you see, your hierarchs and indeed your Pope care very much what the Orthodox attitude is, even mine, but you of course are free to work to create your own version of The Church, no matter what your non American politician hierarchs think. Better yet, like I said, tell everyone what awful people we are and then perhaps the reunion nonsense will stop. Why not go chasing after your own disobedient kids, the Protestants?
“Rome doesn’t “need” you at all.”
Of course it does. Rome is quite frank about that.
“What both Rome and Constantinople “need” is to obey the Lord’s clear command in John 17:20-23.”
Surely you are not suggesting that Orthodoxy succumb to the World and jump on the political bandwagon of the likes of Burke or Chaput or Martino? Is God now endorsing American politics so long as it is spouted from a Latin rite bishop?
“No. The sad fact is that we love you, despite your flaws.”
No you don’t; you are infatuated, not in love. If you want to be one with us, let Rome put aside its innovations, reject the World and become Orthodox.
“It is perfectly fine for politically active lay Catholics to proclaim themselves as such; indeed, it’s an evangelical duty.”
Absolutely
“We lay people are the ones who have to live in the world and promote its sanctification.”
Agreed; and I will add that the political activity of the laity should be informed by The Faith.
“As for Chaputs’s politics, he’s a citizen and entitled to his views.”
Fine; but his political views are not a measure of Christian orthodoxy and through his simplistic theology they should not be presented as such. The laity, as we see here, is all too ready to measure theology and The Faith exactly that way!
“I hope he’s shrewd enough to avoid being co-opted by those interested in the Church only as a flag of convenience.”
We’ll see. Neither Burke nor Martino were and now we see Chaput going after a highly respected Vatican theologian and Cardinal. Sometimes I wonder if some of your bishops aren’t preparing to “go it alone”.
Thanks, but I don't really need you to interpret "Rome" for me.
Surely you are not suggesting
I meant exactly what I said. Christian unity is commanded by Christ himself; schism is the result of sin.
Orthodoxy has "succumbed to the world" over and over again. Usually it was the Pope of Rome who pulled your chestnuts out of the fire. cf Iconoclasm, Monophysitism, Arianism, etc.
I never saw Burke or Martino as having been co-opted. They were being bishops: teaching and laying down the law. The fact that their doing so was politically inconvenient to one side doesn't make them tools or partisans. Are you suggesting their enforcement of discipline was selective? I'd need to see some evidence of that.
“Usually it was the Pope of Rome who pulled your chestnuts out of the fire.”
Up to the 8th century you are absolutely right...and you have seen me say exactly that on multiple occasions. Since the 8th century, and especially since the 11th century, having broken with the Patriarchates of the East, Rome has lived another life altogether.
“Only one of the ancient patriarchal sees still thrives in our time. Sometimes, the Holy Spirit makes things crystal clear for those with eyes to see.”
Agreed. The last thing any of us want is to be joined at the hip with a dead or dying denomination, more involved with the World than the theosis of the People of God.
Reagan put it this way:since we don’t know, why not give the baby the benefit of the doubt?
Dead and getting deader. All the Christians are being driven out of of Muslim lands as they make plain that their supposed respect for the People of the Book is a lie. Those European Christians who so scorn the Israelis, sip tea with Muslims who conceal daggers in their robes.
Well, if the theosis is identified with the likes of the Assyrians, then truly the questions arises: when the Lord returns will he find faith on the earth?
Stay off of this thread.
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