took and mixed in with three measures of flour until
all of it was leavened." Matthew 13:33
The Catholic Church and Obama:
Relevant, or Who Cares?
Originally published in E-Leaven, February 25, 2009, Issue
4
by
Dennis Kennedy
Kennedy is a longtime Leaven contributor and former member of its board of advisors.
I thought this would be an interesting topic to think and write about, but when I began it, I couldn't think of anything interesting to me, or you, dear reader. I remembered how it felt to wear my "Catholic Democrats" T-shirt downtown during the Democratic Convention. I remembered how I felt, and the tears, on Election and Inauguration Days. I registered that some bishops and cardinals shouted down the National Mall at the President because he believes in choice, and birth control for poor nations. Oh, well.
It registers that the Pope has graciously let back into communion some Latinist yahoos of the Pius X Society who deny the Nazis used gas ovens or chambers. You'd think that would get you kicked out, not welcomed back. It registers that the founder of the conservative Legionnaires of Christ has a kiddo or two in his closet, that the Vatican's seminary study finds much less homosexuality in seminaries, and that now they will examine U.S. women's religious communities, which I'm sure they think will be helpful and that the sisters will absolutely dread. Oh, well.
It struck me I was unable to write anything of much import about the Church and Obama, because nothing of import passed between them. There are great issues that the nation and the world must address. Instead the church celebrates "significant" anniversaries of "Humane Vitae" and the Birth of St. Paul, for Pete's sake, and I wouldn't be surprised if they announce the canonization of Blessed Lisa, the Barrel Lady-don't bother Googling it; I made her up.
Children and veterans can't get adequate health care, because we let corporations have the power to decide such things. We're at war with/in 1 to 4 countries, depending on how you count Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Israel and Palestine continue slaughter in the supposed Holy Land, and practically everybody's laid off, broke, or knows someone who is. But I'm supposed to care where the kiss of peace goes, if the liturgy stinks, why homilies purposely defy logic and vapidly offend intelligence, what priests are wildly overworked or well stuffed, and honor the fact that bishops think abortion is the only problem.
Children in our own state suffer from and even die of violent assault or unconscionable neglect, suffer PTSD and ADD in HD if they survive, the media provides puppy stories and fixates on somebody 1,000 miles away who's nuts on baby-making-and I'm supposed to care about the return of the Latin Mass? Nuns are martyred for the environment over land in the Amazon; HIV/AIDS kills a continent, but don't for God's sake use rubbers? There are caring couples who'd make loving and stable parents, kids desperate for a safe, intact family, and it can't happen because the couple is lesbian or gay? This is godly? This is wisdom? This is witnessing the love of Christ to the culture?
Call me again when the church stops brushing its birettas and gazing at its shiny cassock buttons, when it starts getting serious again as the nation and the world deserve and desperately need. Call me when its leaders confront, disrupt and erupt before the evil, clubby, unbudging powers. Until then I'll root for the President to get people health care and back to work.
The Church and Obama 2: A Response
John F. Kane
Kane remains Leaven's co-editor and can rarely resist the temptation to add his two cents.
I first want to thank Dennis Kennedy for again gracing Leaven with his wonderful and in this case caustic flair for words and phrases. I suspect he catches almost pitch-perfectly the distressed anger of many readers and many Catholics.
On substance, I generally don't disagree with Dennis, and even in this case I hardly do. For I, too, find so much of what the hierarchy cares about pretty irrelevant. I'd add the recent restoration of indulgences to Dennis' list. And I'd also add a note being sounded these days by NCR's Vatican correspondent John Allen: even when the Church does tackle important matters (such as its careful criticisms of Israel or its cautions about human genetic "developments"), the noise created by all the media flaps and petty policing effectively trivializes its voice on the important things.
That said, I'd add two thoughts.
The first is that many of the "churchy" things that are pretty irrelevant to folks like Dennis and myself (and probably to millions of others who are like Leaven's readers), are nonetheless important to millions of others - probably hundreds of millions. Religions have always taken real root in human lives via popular practices that over time become sacralized and sacramentalized. And it is the responsibility of the priests (not the prophets or politicians) to attend to the viability of such practices.
One of the mistakes after Vatican II was that many of us who "got it" rushed ahead (for very good reasons) trying to transform religious practices and develop new ones more appropriate to the times. As I see it, we were nowhere as creative as we thought, and not particularly attentive to the ordinary Catholic people we thought we were speaking for. So the practices (from Mass to sacraments to devotions to you name it) became a mess - a battleground, without much consolation or challenge for most. Then "we" increasingly found the battle irrelevant, correctly blamed the caretakers for their ineptitude, and left them doing what they now do to try to rescue things. With Dennis, I suspect that the things they're trying won't help many. I'd go further, I actually hope they don't help many since I think they represent a kind of theology and thinking that still does need to either be transformed or jettisoned. And yet....the caretakers are not just hanging onto their own petty power (though many are indeed doing that); they (at least a good many of them) are also trying to reach out to the millions who need sacred practices deeper than those provided by Hollywood and the advertisers. That they find answers primarily in the past is not surprising since most of the creative voices have jumped ship.
So while I hate to agree with Andrew Greeley, on this one I think he's been largely right. Just google and read. (And say a prayer for that good man's health.)
My second thought: if Dennis is right that "nothing of import" has passed between the Church and Obama, then that's not something to celebrate -- though I sense Dennis is less celebrating than mourning in an acerbic "Irish wake" way.
If the Church needs change, Obama needs and will continue to need both help and some pushing. I applaud the man's centrist and mediating instincts. I think it's a good part of what got him elected. Yet it's a tricky path - one that needs defending from extremist attacks, both left and right, and one that does need regular pushing (towards the left, as I see it; though somewhat towards the right on abortion). Thus it is terribly sad that the Church (which in this case, for both Dennis and myself, means the hierarchy) is squandering its moral and political capital.
It's not just that Obama admits to having learned much from Catholics and Catholic teaching in the past. More, that mediating style, moving cautiously to the left on matters of peace and justice, should be home turf for the Bishops. That style - cautious of extremism and trying to move towards justice within the hard and messy realities of the social/political realm - has in the past represented the best of Catholic sensibility. It's a "both-and" style which resisted the human and religious seductions of "either-or" extremism - even if, at times (such as Pius XII's relations with the Nazis), it led to real mistakes and to much often quite deliberate misunderstanding (as is the case with recent, mainly Jewish "histories" of that period).
Sadly, though, that Catholic style has not been much in evidence these days. Post-Vatican II enthusiasms and oppositions mimicked culturally "protestant" absolutisms (either with or against us, absolutely right and totally wrong). And the papacy of John Paul II (schooled as it had been by the man's years of fierce opposition to Nazi and then Stalinist absolutism), brought such polarization center stage in Catholic affairs. You were either with him or against him - not just on really important things, but on many of the petty or partisan things Dennis mentions.
So I agree with Dennis that so far not much of import seems to be happening between the Church and Obama. It's a tragic missed opportunity, especially if this presidency and this moment of crisis turns out to be, as I fervently hope, a major moment and opportunity for humanizing our national and global politics. Yet the Bishops' failure presents a great opportunity - for the laity who voted for Obama and whose proper task it is to provide leadership in the political realm. It was we, who are church, who in fact did lead by blunting hierarchical opposition, shaping the Catholic debate, getting out the vote. And it must be we, who are church, who now fill the gap left by the Bishops. It must be we who see to it that much of import does pass between the church and Obama.
I sense that Bill Ritter is doing his proper part. Dennis, what about you and me? And what about you, dear reader?