A Catholic Theologian Not Enamored of Obama

While left-leaning “Catholic” theologians have signed on to support the Obama reelection campaign, other voices in the profession are not so taken with our incumbent president.

One of those is Marquette theologian Mark Johnson, who has posted a detailed deconstruction of Obama’s Democratic Convention speech.

One particularly cogent passage:

Charity, in the Catholic context in particular, is the love we have directly for God first and foremost, and for his Images (i.e., us humans) precisely in our likeness, our family resemblance, to him. It is this devotion towards God’s human creatures that commands us care for their basic needs: whatsoever you do...

But this vocabulary and these virtues I learned in church and through the myriad ​rivulets of my Catholic religion. It is not the task of government to instruct me on the proper love of God, or of God’s people. My priest does that, your rabbi or imam does that.

The President is not my pastor.​

My ultimate concern is that, in President Obama’s take on things, nothing seems to lay outside the scope and possible command of the federal government​. The federal government is in charge of protecting the American personality, of protecting “who we are” (the President’s trump card when he is at a loss in arguing for why we should not allow something: “it’s not who we are”). The federal government is the protector of charity and love. What’s left for those of us who aren’t in the government?

As Johnson is aware, Obama is guilty of the same misbegotten notion that the leftist theologians now getting signatures for a letter attacking Paul Ryan are: the notion that charity is the purview solely of the Federal government, and not other levels of government, nor the Church, nor families, nor neighborhoods nor friendship groups.

It’s a notion that embodies the “one-sided centralization” that Catholic Social Thought has always condemned.

It’s a misbegotten notion typical of secular leftists, which is what the anti-Ryan theologians are, notwithstanding any religious rhetoric they may spout.

Leftist “Catholic” Academics Plan Another Attack on Paul Ryan

The following is from an e-mail sent out to Marquette Theology Faculty:

From: Theological Studies Editor

Sent: Sunday, October 07, 2012 6:48 PM

To: Theo-Faculty Subject: FW: statement in advance of the Ryan/Biden debate--please sign if you can

From: Charles Camosy [mailto:ccamosy@gmail.com]

Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2012 12:16 PM

To: Charles Camosy

Subject: statement in advance of the Ryan/Biden debate--please sign if you can

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Please consider signing the following statement (via the link below) that Vince Miller, Jana Bennett, David Cloutier, Meghan Clark, and I put together this week. We worked hard to give this document the best chance we could to be signed by a diverse group of Catholics. It is not an attack on Paul Ryan, and we are careful not to make judgments about his personal character or honesty, but we do believe that this coming week presents an important teachable moment when it comes to Catholic Social Doctrine.

We’d like to get it out (in a signed form) a couple of days before the Vice Presidential debate, so please sign soon if you are able--and please also pass it onto others who fit the description below and you think might be interested.

Thanks so much,

Charlie

This statement is intended primarily for theologians and other Catholic academics knowledgeable and concerned about Catholic social thought and doctrine.

If you would like to sign, please click on this link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?fromEmail=true&formkey=dEtjY0dleWhRVFU3NGJFLTFCZWxpdmc6MQ

***

We write as Catholic theologians, academics and ministers concerned for our nation and for the integrity of the teachings of the Catholic Church. We write to hold up aspects of the Church’s social doctrine that are profoundly relevant to the challenges our nation faces at this moment in history, yet are in danger of being ignored.

A Tipping Point:

America is at a tipping point where the traditional commitment of our government to protecting and advancing the common good is in very real danger of being dismantled for generations. Members of the “Tea Party,” libertarians, Ayn Rand followers and other proponents of small government have brought libertarian views of government into the mainstream; legitimating forms of social indifference. After decades of anti-government rhetoric and “starve the beast” tax cuts, some even appear to exploit predictable fiscal problems to establish a privatized, libertarian order that reduces society to a collection of individuals and shrinks the common good to fit the outcomes achievable by private, for profit firms.

And it goes on from there.

The point, quite clearly, is to put up some flack that can be used against Paul Ryan in advance of his debate with Joe Biden. It has apparently been sent out to academics all over the country in the hope of gaining a lot of signatures.

The letter invokes Catholic Social Teaching to attack Ryan, accusing him of having too little concern for the poor.

Of course, Catholic Social Teaching does insist on concern for the poor, but whether the trillion dollars the U.S. now spends on means-tested programs for the poor is too little, about the right amount, or too much is not something that Catholic Social Teaching can specify. It’s a matter of prudential judgment.

Paul Ryan’s judgment is not that the amount should be cut, but that increases should be limited. In the eyes of these leftist academics, that makes him a bad Catholic.

But as we have pointed out, the people who sign these kinds of letters (and most certainly the people who signed the previous anti-Ryan letter) seem to have a commitment to Catholic Social Teaching only when it can be used to attack Republicans. If the issue is abortion, or gay marriage, it’s a very different matter.

Interestingly, the e-mail was sent out to Theology faculty by the journal Theological Studies. Is it appropriate for that journal to endorse a partisan polemic? That’s something we’ll follow up on tomorrow.

[Update]

David G. Schultenover, S.J., editor of Theological Studies, has e-mailed us saying “I don’t know how this solicitation got sent out with my return address. Theological Studies is not endorsing this solicitation.”

It would be grossly inappropriate for the journal to do so, and they did not.

The Convention for the Common Good : Catholic, or Just Liberal?

Catholic social teaching ought to get a fair amount of attention at a Catholic university, which is why it’s good to see Professor Mark Johnson in Theology giving some attention to something called the Platform for the Common Good propagated by The Convention for the Common Good, which describes itself as “Over 800 Catholics and faith leaders [from] across the country.”

The group’s position on abortion is rather anemic. It wants to . . .

Promote policies that prevent and reduce abortions by supporting women and families. Ensure robust alternatives to abortion, including adoption.

But then what does it say about the death penalty?

Abolish the death penalty.

Johnson notes:

Now, I have no bone to pick with the moral truth-value of either of these demands; I support both. But why is it that, in comparison to the pithy demand on the death penalty, the demand on abortion appears to be a serpentine and supine wish, with which no one in contemporary politics disagrees? It was the Clinton administration of the 1990’s, after all, that gave us the desire that abortions should be “safe, legal, and rare.” Was the Platform, by addressing abortion in a verbiage ratio of almost 4-to-1 compared to its treatment of the death penalty, really saying nothing much?

There is a bit more rhetoric about abortion in the statement, all of it equally mealy-mouthed.

Johnson then concludes:

Policy-promotion and ensuring alternatives rarely attain to what abolition accomplishes. If the death penalty can only be abolished by laws—would the Platform be satisfied with “policies that reduce” the death penalty?—then it stands to reason that the same will be true of abortion. If the angel Gabriel were to appear to me today with the offer that abortion would be steadily reduced to the point of complete extinction, but would still remain legal, would I take the offer? Yes, in a heart-beat. But since law exists both to restrain and to instruct, I would ask Gabriel to take back to the Lord my prayer that the law would soon reflect and perpetuate the community’s conviction that citizenship and civil rights exist from conception forward.

Johnson, in fact, understates the leftist bias of the document, which endorses every leftist policy one might think of.

This is all too typical of the things that happen when the more established types of Catholic political activists tackle an issue. They pay lip-service to the Catholic position on abortion, but in their hearts of hearts they are liberals. They feel uncomforatble taking positions like those of the Christian Coalition or the Republican party, and they’re happy taking positions consistent with voting for Barack Obama.

Christianity, of course, has a 2,000 year history of struggling with a worldly culture sharply at odds with Christian culture, and with some frequency it has lost. This appears to be the latest example.