Evading Obedience

Jeff Sessions, facing religious criticism to the Zero Tolerance immigration, responded by invoking Romans 13, the relevant portion being:

(This Scripture cannot be applied in a way that puts the state above the Church)

Of course, this rips Scripture out of context. It is true that, as Christians, we must obey just laws. But it does not mean we blindly follow whatever a state decrees. Otherwise, we would have to obey a pagan state and sacrifice to idols. We would have to obey a National Socialist state in the persecution of Jews. We would have to obey unjust laws on slavery, abortion, same sex “marriage,” the contraception mandate, or violating the seal of confession.

(Anti-Catholic headlines concerning Australian attempts to violate the seal of the confessional)

The tragedy is: some Catholics who opposed all of these examples of injustice by the state and denounced other Catholics who supported those evils are now supporting the state and rejecting the bishops who called this policy morally wrong.

However, lest anyone think only one faction is guilty, it should be noted that other Catholics are using this incident to attack the Church focusing on moral issues that they downplay. I have seen some Catholics argue that if only the Church had taught on immigration instead of abortion, we would not have seen this happening. I find this ludicrous. In my younger days, when I struggled with Church teaching on immigrants, I was quite clear that the teaching on immigration was taught as forcefully as other teachings. I might have wished that the Church focused on different issues rather than jar my conscience on this one, but I knew that the teaching existed. What we’re seeing here is no different. It’s an attempt to get rid of the Church speaking out on issue X by saying that they should be speaking out on issue Y instead... as if the Church can only speak on one evil at a time.

What this all boils down to is evading obedience. When the bishops speak out on a moral issue, they are not being “political.” They are telling us of our moral obligations. We, with our political biases, resent the teachings we find telling us we are wrong. So, when we excuse ourselves and treat this teaching as an uninformed opinion, we are evading the obedience we must give:

When we argue that a teaching is not authentic magisterium and therefore something we are free to write off as an opinion, we are quite literally endangering our souls because of our selective obedience on real moral issues.

This doesn’t mean that to be faithful Catholics, we must all support a specific political platform. We can all have different views on how to best carry out Church teaching. But once we fall into the trap of whether we will obey a Church teaching, we are cafeteria Catholics and our profession of obedience is a sham.