We pick Rick? Santorum’s caucus wins on Tuesday might not lead to the nomination, but they are not insignificant. They came against the backdrop of a strong Catholic response to the proposed HHS regulations coming out of Obamacare. The Bishops confronted Catholics with a real public policy issue that would impact their faith and daily lives. While it is too early to say what percentage of Catholics have responded to that call, it is clear that for conservative Catholics caucusing yesterday, it was top of mind. They picked the candidate most likely to defend conscience protections.
But this is not a single issue movement, this is not even about Rick Santorum, it is about something larger than that. A Catholic renewal means an American renewal. That is what I want to start to spell out today. There have been a flood of “news” stories the past few days from the liberal media on the requirement that insurance plans cover contraception. They all start the same way, the frame up the issue, note the “teaching” of the Catholic Church, and then work in that many Catholics use birth control. It is irrelevant (basing public policy actions on what many people think is okay is a dangerous place to go), but not untrue.
The fact is many Catholics do not follow the teaching of the church. Many who attend mass each week and go to confession may still use birth control, advocate for women Priests, take issue with the church’s teaching on homosexuality, etc. We have all encountered these Catholics. I will never forget the Sunday I stood in mass and heard a man behind me audibly change male pronouns to female pronouns during the recitation of the Nicene Creed. Was he asserting that Jesus Christ was actually a woman? Did he know you cannot unilaterally change the creed of an entire people and have it mean anything? Bizarre, but these people exist.
The magisterial response, the response of the church for the past few decades has been to ignore them. The church stood its ground in official teaching, but backed too far off in terms of reminding Catholics about those teachings. There are two problems with that. First, the problem does not go away, it only festers. Second, the Catholics who do believe in the church’s teaching lack the education to defend it.
John Paul the Great recognized this. It is part of why he called for a “new evangelization” within the Catholic Church. Yes, we are facing what has been called a re-paganization of society, but we also need to evangelize within the 4 walls of the Catholic Church. Catholic Radio (particularly Relevant Radio if you are in a market with a station or can listen online), Lighthouse Catholic Media, Ignatius Press, and others have been instrumental in putting quality materials in the hands of Catholics to help them understand and defend their faith.
This new evangelization is so important because we need a renewal of Catholicism and we need it now. But to be clear, we should never expect, nor do we need 100% of Catholics adhering to 100% of the church’s teachings. Let’s pray for that, it should always be the goal, but keep in mind Jesus Christ was Lord God in the flesh and he could not persuade 100% of the people he came in contact with, not even close.
What this is about is driving an American renewal. Catholic Church teaching is crystal clear on issues of life, sexual morality, marriage, and many of the other key social issues that are tearing us apart as a society. On many of these issues, protest-ant churches have acquiesced or gone silent. The only consistent, intelligent presentation of an opposing viewpoint to the left wing culture is coming from the Catholic Church.
Do not think that has gone unnoticed. As several others have written this week, it is likely the Obama administration hoped to leverage the very fact that many Catholics do use birth control in ramming through the HHS regulations. They have no issues with dividing the Catholic laity from their leadership, because if they do that, it weakens the authority of the Bishops. The Bishops no longer speak for a large block of Americans, but merely for themselves.
Step back for a minute and picture an America where there is no organized, vocal opposition to abortion. Where rules eliminating conscience protections can be put forward and there is no group actively teaching about the dangerous of contraception. Throughout human history, the only reliable (and sometimes not all that reliable) opposition to these things has been the Catholic Church.
We need to strengthen that opposition. A new generation of Catholics has grown up in the shadow of Roe v. Wade. Their loyalties more naturally lie with a Republican party. This is a marked shift from the WWII generation and Baby Boomers who, based on Catholic concern for the poor and working classes typically aligned with the Democratic Party.
The Catholic vote has gone to the winner in 9 of the last 10 Presidential elections. It makes a difference. That vote has generally been split 55-45% for the winner. It does not take a huge shift to make a difference. If you can get 10% of Catholics consistently voting based on issues like conscience protection, abortion, voting for pro-family policies, it will start to push this nation’s politicians in that direction. We could end abortion overnight because no politician would be able to win an election with unabashed support for abortion. We could literally save 1 million unborn children a year.
This is the only possibility I see for turning America around, and I do not say that lightly. But the reality is, over the past few decades, protest-ant churches that have long since drifted from their Catholic moorings, have found it too easy to drift further. There are still good allies to be found there, but we cannot count on them to lead the charge. The magisterium of the Catholic Church still commands the most authority because it has never ceded that authority. After all, we are built on a rock. The renewal of Catholicism, a new evangelization within the church, can spur forward a nation.
No comments:
Post a Comment