Posted on 08/13/2016 8:43:50 PM PDT by Arthur McGowan
My column this week is a collection of personal comments. Read it as thoughts from a brother in the faith, not as teachings from an archbishop.
Presidential campaigns typically hit full stride after Labor Day in an election year. But 2016 is a year in which two prominent Catholics – a sitting vice president, and the next vice presidential nominee of his party — both seem to publicly ignore or invent the content of their Catholic faith as they go along. And meanwhile, both candidates for the nation’s top residence, the White House, have astonishing flaws.
This is depressing and liberating at the same time. Depressing, because it’s proof of how polarized the nation has become. Liberating, because for the honest voter, it’s much easier this year to ignore the routine tribal loyalty chants of both the Democratic and Republican camps. I’ve been a registered independent for a long time and never more happily so than in this election season. Both major candidates are – what’s the right word? so problematic – that NEITHER IS CLEARLY BETTER THAN THE OTHER. [Emphasis added.]
As Forbes magazine pointed out some months ago, the Republican candidate is worth roughly $4.5 billion. The Democratic candidate is worth roughly $45 million. Compare that with the average American household, which is worth about $144,000. The median U.S. income is about $56,000. Neither major candidate lives anywhere near the solar system where most Americans live, work and raise families. Nonetheless, we’re asked to trust them.
That’s a big ask. One candidate — in the view of a lot of people — is an eccentric businessman of defective ethics whose bombast and buffoonery make him inconceivable as president. And the other – in the view of a lot of people – should be under criminal indictment. The fact that she’s not – again, in the view of a lot of people — proves Orwell’s Animal Farm principle that “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
So what are we to do this election cycle as Catholic voters? Note that by “Catholic,” I mean people who take their faith seriously; people who actually believe what the Catholic faith holds to be true; people who place it first in their loyalty, thoughts and actions; people who submit their lives to Jesus Christ, to Scripture and to the guidance of the community of belief we know as the Church.
Anyone else who claims the Catholic label is simply fooling himself or herself — and even more importantly, misleading others.
The American bishops offer valuable counsel in their document Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship (available from the USCCB), and this year especially, they ask us to pray before we vote. This is hardly new “news.” Prayer is always important. In a year when each Catholic voter must choose between deeply flawed options, prayer is essential. And prayer involves more than mumbling a Hail Mary before we pull the voting booth lever for someone we see as the lesser of two evils. Prayer is a conversation, an engagement of the soul with God. It involves listening for God’s voice and educating our consciences.
It’s absurd – in fact, it’s blasphemous – to assume that God prefers any political party in any election year. But God, by his nature, is always concerned with good and evil and the choices we make between the two. For Catholics, no political or social issue stands in isolation. But neither are all pressing issues equal in foundational importance or gravity. The right to life undergirds all other rights and all genuine social progress. It cannot be set aside or contextualized in the name of other “rights” or priorities without prostituting the whole idea of human dignity.
God created us with good brains. It follows that he will hold us accountable to think deeply and clearly, rightly ordering the factors that guide us, before we act politically. And yet modern American life, from its pervasive social media that too often resemble a mobocracy, to the relentless catechesis of consumption on our TVs, seems designed to do the opposite. It seems bent on turning us into opinionated and distracted cattle unable to gain mastery over our own appetites and thoughts. Thinking and praying require silence, and the only way we can get silence is by deciding to step back and unplug.
This year, a lot of good people will skip voting for president but vote for the “down ticket” names on their party’s ballot; or vote for a third party presidential candidate; or not vote at all; or find some mysterious calculus that will allow them to vote for one or the other of the major candidates. I don’t yet know which course I’ll personally choose. It’s a matter properly reserved for every citizen’s informed conscience.
But I do know a few of the things I’ll be reading between now and November. The list is not exclusive or comprehensive. But this year these particular titles seem especially urgent:
Living the Gospel of Life. This 1998 pastoral letter of the U.S. bishops remains the best brief guide to American Catholic political reflection yet produced. Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society by R.R. Reno (Regnery) and It’s Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies by Mary Eberstadt (HarperCollins). Both of these books are new, important, a key to understanding the current moment in our national life, and deeply engaging. They need to be discussed and shared widely.
And finally two essays by the late, great Czech writer, Václav Havel, “Politics and Conscience” and “The Power of the Powerless.” Both are collected in Open Letters: Selected Writings, 1965-1990 (Vintage Books). Havel was not (to my knowledge) a religious believer, and he wrote as a dissident during an era of Soviet Bloc repression. But his commitment to what he called “living in the truth,” and his understanding and critique of the weaknesses in Western societies like our own – not just Marxist ones – were remarkable. They remain relevant right now, today.
The next few months will determine the next decade and more of our nation’s life. We need to be awake, we need to clear our heads of media noise, and we need to think quietly and carefully before we vote. None of us can afford to live the coming weeks on autopilot.
Several years ago, Chaput wrote an article about who was to blame for the fact that the Democrat party became pro-abortion.
Did he assign any blame to the bishops, who for forty years have treated pro-abortion katholyk politicians as “Catholics in good standing,” giving them medals, various honors, Communion, etc.? Not on your life. He never mentioned the bishops at all.
Chaput put 100% of the blame on the laity—because, as the Democrats became pro-abortion, the Catholic laity left the party and became Republicans!
I have seen other articles by Chaput in which he wrote about some problems in the Church, and it was as if the bishops didn’t even exist!
I agree—IF what they are going to say is that Catholics have no obligation to vote for pro-life candidates in order to keep pro-abortion fanatics (who are also persecutors of the Church) out of office.
Because that is what Chaput is saying.
However, in the last 50 years, the Democratic Party platform has drifted into open hostility toward Catholicism on nearly every point of doctrine, yet, the kissy-face relationship is possibly stronger than ever. Why?
Is it money? Does the Catholic Church depend on government largess to operate? Is it purely the open borders policy of the Democrats the ensures there will be church going Catholics to replace those who have drifted away probably never to return?
I wonder if there's a more practical, or cynical, reason. Perhaps the bishops realize the party most likely to march them off to death camps is the Democrat Party so it's (excuse the mixed metaphor) better to feed the crocodile hoping it will eat you last than to poke the bear.
The bishops get $80 million/year for resettling “refugees.” But I don’t think that’s the whole reason for the bishops’ No Borders position.
Catholic Charities gets 90% of its money FROM GOVERNMENT.
Also, I don’t think it’s primarily about replacing Anglos who have departed. Hispanics are leaving the Church, too, and are even less generous to the Church than other Catholics. Hispanics get married at an even lower rate than whites. Baptism, Confirmation, and especially marriage in the Church, are collapsing.
I think it’s more deeply ideological. The last several Popes have deliberately appointed leftists. Also, bishops in America CHOOSE THEIR SUCCESSORS! This is NOT the case elsewhere. What this means is that the cowards who caved on contraception picked their successors, who picked their successors, etc., and each generation since 1968 has become more cowardly, more homosexual, more pro-abortion, more socialist—more Democrat.
Cupich is a perfect example of this trend—hand-picked by the Pope at the urging of the most notorious homosexual in the American hierarchy, Donna Wuerl.
The Catholic Church today, most emphatically including the Pope, is in the grip of the one-world, globalist, collectivist, totalitarian, eco-extremist, carbon-taxing freaks.
And who appointed these legions of Marxist stinkers? Saint John Paul II!
If you read Chaput’s article—and previous articles—what you pick up is that he fully realizes how evil the Democrat platform is. AMONG BISHOPS, Chaput is considered a rabid pro-lifer.
BUT, like most bishops, Chaput IS a Democrat. (No matter how much he trumpets that he’s a registered Independent.) He sees voting for a Republican as such a monstrous evil that it isn’t justified, no matter how evil the Democrats are.
Thus, Chaput counsels doing nothing to prevent Hillary’s election. This is known as “remaining pure.”
This is a good article.
Donald Trump and The Pharisees
http://www.jamespatrickriley.com/index.php/religious-spirit/
The Archbishop should instead be spending his time reminding Catholics that it is a serious wrong to vote for a candidate who vocally favors things like abortion and homosexual and transgender issues.
Wait til Hillary appoints Cecil Richards as Secretary of HSS.
“A nation that kills its own children is a nation without hope.”
Saint John Paul II
I mispoke. I is not class envy when I think about it and I was wrong to say it.
Rather he is probably clerical. And he is not gracious to lay people who disagree with him.
This Catholic is going to VOTE for Mr. Trump because at least keeping the best interests of the USA in mind.
Chaput is one of those bishops who love to be thought of as “pro-life,” provided that doesn’t imply voting for a REPUBLICAN!!!
Chaput is VERY clerical. The bishops can do no wrong. In situations where the Church is in heap big trouble—collapsing marriage stats, horrible catechesis, pro-abortion politicians—the bishops simply do not exist.
I left a comment. It’s either still in Limbo, or has been sent to that place where Chaput sends all comments that don’t sound as if they were written by his chancellor.
This Riley guy has more intelligence, integrity, and Christianity in his pinkie fingernail than Chaput has in ten generations of his family tree.
This Riley guy has more intelligence, integrity, and Christianity in his pinkie fingernail than Chaput has in ten generations of his family tree.
The hierarchy in this country is clearly demoralized. In fact, I would guess they were demoralized even earlier through the successful effort by the Soviets to infiltrate then run our seminaries.
Throw them all out.
There are only 10-20 actual pro-life bishops in the U.S. All the rest give Communion to pro-abortion katholyk politicians.
There are many bishops like Chaput who write articles that please pro-lifers, but when push comes to shove, bishops—like Chaput—who give Communion to pro-aborts always stab pro-lifers in the back.
If Hillary wins, the katholyk bishops-like Chaput—will have victory in their 45-year war to destroy the pro-life movement.
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