Wednesday, October 1, 2008

On "Ardent Catholics"...

FROM THE PASTOR
By Father George W. Rutler
September 7, 2008

The Roman consul Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (519-430 B.C.) was a model for our nation's Founding Fathers, who had no concept of a "career politician." Cincinnatus left his plough to serve his people and returned to his farm when his work was done. Today there are many politicians who have had no career except public office. This can tempt them to think that power trumps truth. Recently, Archbishop Chaput said: "Catholic public leaders inconvenienced by the abortion debate tend to take a hard line in talking about the 'separation of Church and state.' But their idea of separation often seems to work one way. In fact, some officials also seem comfortable in the role of theologian. And that warrants some interest, not as a 'political' issue, but as a matter of accuracy and justice."

Politicians who pick and choose the bits of Catholicism useful to their agenda are picturesquely called "Cafeteria Catholics." There are of course moral principles that permit prudential disagreement, as with economic policy, war strategies, and capital punishment. Abortion is different, because its evil is intrinsic. Like Typhoid Mary early in the 20th century, moral cafeterias can spread grave moral danger. It is safer to go with Blessed Mary than Typhoid Mary. But the latter, who infected 47 people, only three of whom died, acted unwittingly. There are public figures who willfully misrepresent Christ, and so they have His rebuke: "You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men" (Matt. 16:23). Ignorance is willful when it suppres ses information. At the recent convention of one of our political parties in Denver, Archbishop Chaput was not invited to give an invocation even though he is by far the most prominent religious leader in that area.

The Fourteenth Amendment remarks the difference between a citizen and a person in its refutation of the Dred Scott decision which, like Roe v. Wade, denied the human integrity of a person not vouchsafed the rights of a citizen. The former denied the right to liberty and the latter denied the right to life itself. The Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was killed in the Flossenburg Concentration Camp, wrote: "Destruction of the embryo in the mother's womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed on this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is mere ly to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder."

If politicians want to campaign as "ardent Catholics" they should believe and act as ardent Catholics. As Archbishop Chaput has said from a pulpit better than any denied to him in the public forum: "If you're Catholic and you disagree with your Church, what do you do? You change your mind."

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