What Are We Really Trying to Do?

¹⁵ “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You traverse sea and land to make one convert, and when that happens you make him a child of Gehenna twice as much as yourselves. (Matthew 23:15).

 

Such words are “liberality,” “progress,” “light,” “civilization;” such are “justification by faith only,” “vital religion,” “private judgment,” “the Bible and nothing but the Bible.” Such again are “Rationalism,” “Gallicanism,” “Jesuitism,” “Ultramontanism”—all of which, in the mouths of conscientious thinkers, have a definite meaning, but are used by the multitude as war-cries, nicknames, and shibboleths, with scarcely enough of the scantiest grammatical apprehension of them to allow of their being considered really more than assertions.

 

 John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (London: Burns, Oates, & Co., 1870), 41–42.

We must do all by love, and nothing by force.

We must love obedience rather than fear disobedience.

[Written to St. Jane Frances de Chantal]

 

Francis de Sales, Letters to Persons in the World, trans. Henry Benedict Mackey and John Cuthbert Hedley, Second Edition, Library of Francis de Sales (London; New York; Cincinnatti; Chicago: Burns and Oates; Benziger Brothers, 1894), 160.

Some people I know quit Facebook, disgusted over the tone. I can understand the disgust. It seems that most of what crosses my feed involves people who are posting stories giving the worst interpretations possible to the actions of those they dislike, politics and religion alike. The problem I have with this is: giving the worst possible interpretations to an action is not seeking the truth. Instead, the critic has tried the target in abstentia and declared them guilty of openly supporting what the critic fears from him.

It leads me to ask, what are we really trying to do here? Are we trying to inform people about the truth of the matter? Or are we trying to vilify the person, encouraging others to hate the person like we do? I admit this can be a fine line. If we think a person or an idea is dangerous, we want to warn others about the danger. But when we reach the point of repeating whatever makes a person sound evil, often showing no interest in understanding what a person is actually trying to do, I think we’ve stopped warning and started propagandizing.

For example, politically, supporters of the President are called “Fascist.” His enemies are called “Communist.” Both labels assume that the other side is not only wrong but actively trying to overthrow the good. But when pressed, the reasons I’m given for the opposition can be summed up as only their political position is right and there can be no good reason for opposing it.

The same thing happens in terms of religion, people who defend the authority of the Pope are called “ultramontane,” “modernist,” or “liberal.” Again, when one delves into the accusations and rhetoric, the basic assumption is that only the accuser’s interpretation on the application of Church teaching is correct, and there can be no good reason for taking a different view.

If we were serious about warning people about the truth of the matter, we’d start by learning the truth about what a thing is supposed to be and how the person we warn against is violating it. But instead of showing this knowledge, people use these labels aimed at demonizing the person opposed and conditioning the target audience to believe the attack.

Words do have proper meaning, and words can be misused or abused. When we abuse words to invoke a certain emotion, we’re not trying to get to the truth. We’re trying to get others to irrationally accept what we say. For those of us who profess to be Christian, this attempt to replace truth with emotional appeals to buzzwords goes against the great commission, where we are told to teach people. We need to teach people what we must do and why we must do it so they understand. We must submit our opinions to the teaching authority of the Church to be sure we have not deceived ourselves and do not mislead others.

When we’re tempted to use the labels instead of the teaching the truth, we need to ask what we are really trying to do. Are we really trying to help people do right? Or are we looking for recruits to bolster the size of our faction? If we’re trying to help people do right, we’ll stop with the propaganda, the labels, and the ad hominem attacks. Instead we’ll seek to lovingly show what the truth is so they accept it freely. But if we’re focussing on recruiting for a faction, Our Lord warned us harshly against it.

Do We Actually Seek to Know? Thoughts on Overcoming Partisanship

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Dissent is Dissent, Regardless of Faction

The reasoning goes that Republicans oppose the keeping abortion legal. These bishops oppose keeping abortion legal. Republicans oppose “pro-choice” politicians. These bishops oppose “pro-choice” politicians. Therefore, these bishops are partisan Republicans. (Arnobius of Sicca blog, from the “lost years” [Ω], 5/7/2009)

As I see it, it's not wrong to want security from attackers, but in finding the best way to get it, we can't neglect our obligation to the suffering. I think that is the reason the bishops believe they must oppose this policy. (Comment I made on my blog’s Facebook page, 1/30/17)

Back in the lost Xanga years of this blog, I spent time writing about Catholics who supported the Obama administration and attacked the American bishops for opposing some of his positions. The bishops defended the right to life and opposed policies incompatible with Church teaching. They were attacked as “the Republican Party at prayer.” I spent a good deal of time defending the Church from accusations of partisanship. So, moving forward eight years, I find it tragic that the same attacks on bishops exist—just the actors have changed.

In both cases, the assumption is the bishops must either support the other party or are grossly ignorant about what is really going on. Otherwise, they wouldn’t hold that position. But this assumption overlooks the fact that the bishops are speaking out about our moral obligations as Christians—those obligations that bound us before the Democratic and Republican parties existed—and will continue to bind us after these parties go the way of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines and our descendants need to do research to discover what these parties even were. Whether the conflict is about the right to life, or the treatment of refugees, our faith teaches us that we are bound to do certain things and oppose other things. These obligations override our political preferences because we are rendering to God what is God’s (Mark 12:17).

Perhaps we should reflect when we feel tempted to accuse the bishops of “partisanship.” Are they the ones who are “partisan,” or are we the ones who are guilty? Yes, it is possible that a “Fr. Harry Tik” or a “Sr. Mary Moonbeam” can abuse their position and put political values in place of teaching the Catholic faith. But so can a “Fr. H. Ardliner” or a Sr. Mary Mantilla.” If someone says, “People from this party can’t be truly Catholic,” that’s an abuse. But if a bishop teaches, “Catholics must not go against our obligation to defend the unborn or the suffering refugee,” he is not abusing his position, even if he teaches against a politician that an individual Catholic might like.

Throughout history, the Church has had to oppose governments when those governments went against God’s law. Sometimes these governments were dictatorial. At other times, they were democratic in nature. Either way, these governments often accused the bishops of being unpatriotic, or enemies of the state when they stood up and said, “No.” In such cases, people had to decide whether to follow the state or follow the Church.

But Church history has never praised those Catholics who chose to obey the state over the Church when the Church said, “This cannot be done.” Individual regions can fall into error, and the local churches with it (case in point, England in the Reformation), but the churches remaining obedient to the Church in Rome and refusing to accept the error of the state have not done so.

The fact is, when the bishops took Obama to task over abortion, “Same-sex marriage,” and the contraception mandate, they were acting on their Catholic faith, not partisan politics. When the bishops take Trump to task over his policy on refugees, they are acting on their Catholic faith, not partisan politics. If we reject the bishops because what they say is not what we prefer politically, we are rendering unto Caesar what is God’s.

 

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[Ω] From 2007 to late 2009, this blog, under the name Arnobius of Sicca, was on Xanga. While I have the HTML files from those years, these posts are no longer available online.

On Partisanship and Moral Obligation

can. 747 §1.† The Church, to which Christ the Lord has entrusted the deposit of faith so that with the assistance of the Holy Spirit it might protect the revealed truth reverently, examine it more closely, and proclaim and expound it faithfully, has the duty and innate right, independent of any human power whatsoever, to preach the gospel to all peoples, also using the means of social communication proper to it.

§2.† It belongs to the Church always and everywhere to announce moral principles, even about the social order, and to render judgment concerning any human affairs insofar as the fundamental rights of the human person or the salvation of souls requires it.

 

 Code of Canon Law: New English Translation (Washington, DC: Canon Law Society of America, 1998), 245.

President Trump signed an executive order on blocking refugees from seven nations for a period of 120 days. Not surprisingly, this has set off a lot of political quarrels. The nations he blocked all have a Muslim majority population and Americans are concerned with refugees being brought here and performing terrorist acts. People argue over whether he has the right to do this (if I read US Code 1182 correctly, I suppose it is legal) and over the fact that other Presidents (Carter and Obama) have used the US Code to exclude certain nationalities from entering this country. Unsurprisingly, we see a case where each side justifies their own “tribe” and condemns their enemies even when it means they condemn what they once praised and vice versa.

At the same time, there is a religious debate going on over Trump’s action and whether it is moral. While the American bishops have generally condemned this action, other Catholics point to the fact that the Church recognizes the right of the state to regulate immigration policies, and the need for prudence to avoid causing real harm by overwhelming the system or letting in people with a hostile intent.

This is just one of the issues being fought. Catholics have concerns on how their nation is run, and belong to different political parties based on what they think is the best way to handle it. Since both those Catholics who favor a government action and those who oppose it point to words from the shepherds of the Church, how to we reconcile these claims?

The first thing we have to remember is, regardless of what the government can legally do, Catholics must not support an immoral action. If a government action goes against the dignity of the human person or the natural law of God’s design, then the Catholic must oppose it. For example, abortion is legal in America. But no Catholic can support it. If a President supports the use of torture, we must oppose him. If a Supreme Court ruling legalizes “same sex marriage,” we cannot accept such unions as a valid marriage.

So, Christians who are citizens of a nation must witness to the nation by living out and explaining their beliefs. We can’t just cite the convenient passages that seem to mirror our views. We must strive to know how to know, love and serve God with all our heart and love our neighbor as ourselves. With each action we do, we have to ask whether we act out of love or out of self interest.

That means asking honestly. It’s easy to lie to ourselves and make excuses for what we wanted to do in the first place. But actually asking what Our Lord’s words mean and how the Church calls us to apply them? That’s hard. It can mean we have to set aside a comfortable ideology in order to do right. It’s hard, but it’s not an unreasonable command. If we love Our Lord, we will seek to do His will (John 14:15).

That means when the president does something we dislike, we have to ask ourselves whether we dislike it because it is morally wrong or because it goes against our political preferences. When the president does something we like, we have to ask whether we are in danger of liking something that is incompatible with our Catholic faith. In either case, we must set aside partisan preferences when they clash with the Catholic faith.

Yet, that’s what many people are not doing. Instead they’re bashing the bishops when they speak on the morality of Trump’s actions. They reduce moral concerns to political issues and get angry when the Church teaches in a certain way, as if they invented a teaching in response to Trump, rather than apply a long existing teaching to judge his actions.

When one reduces moral teaching to politics, they lose sight of the reason the Church criticizes the state. It’s not because the Pope or the bishops are left wing or right wing (they’re often accused of both). It’s because they’re concerned with the salvation of souls and warn the faithful that they must do something or must avoid another. If we write these warnings off as “partisan,” we’re ignoring danger to our salvation.

It’s not the purpose of the article to justify or condemn support of Trump. I just ask the reader to consider strongly who to listen to when the Pope and bishops say one thing, and the partisans say another.

Avoiding the Apostolate of the Outraged

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Hypocrisy: Thoughts on the Rise of Disrespectful Behavior

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Reflections on how Papal Critics can go Wrong

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