Just Say You're Catholic

Specifically, how is it possible to be a practicing Catholic and an avowed Democrat? How can these liberal politicians remain a part of a 2,000-year-old institution, one that labels homosexuality an "intrinsic disorder," defines marriage as a "covenant between a man and a woman," refuses to ordain women as priests and calls abortion a "moral evil," even in the case of rape or incest?

I reached out to Jim Fitzgerald, executive director of Call to Action, a national Catholic justice organization that has long advocated for change in the church. "We would simply ask that political leaders follow their conscience," Fitzgerald said. "Church Catechism says that the conscience takes precedence over everything."

Fitzgerald, whose group advocates for such changes as the ordination of women as priests, believes political leaders including Biden, Pelosi and Cuomo, "take their faith seriously, even though their voting records seem contrary."

So now, when I look at prominent Catholic politicians with liberal social agendas and wonder how they attend Mass on Sunday and legislate something very different on Monday, I have my answer. Catholicism, a club with magisterial rituals, good deeds, arcane teachings and more than 1 billion adherents, is far from monolithic. The house rules that apply are those set by believers themselves.

There are times when I read something and therafter feel compelled to bang my head repeatedly on my desk.  This is one of those times.

How simple life must be for Julian Guthrie.  It reminds me of a joke a friend once told me.  Describing the various denominations, if you will, of Judaism and their level of adherence to religious law, he described them as "Orthodox, Conservative, Reform . . . and just say you're Jewish!"

Same too with this approach to Catholicism.  What Ms. Guthrie fails to acknowledge is that the self-identifying "practicing" Catholics are - in their minds - Catholic "enough."  What she admires about them is not that they are practicing Catholics - rather, she likes the fact that they have placed their Catholicism in second place to their political views.  In essence, they've "backed in" to Catholicism. 

But then, when you take a cursory view of the faith that is Catholicism, this is easy to do.  Perhaps Ms. Guthrie might go further than accepting as Gospel - pun intended - Mr. Fitzgerald's statement that the individual conscience "takes precedence over everything" and thus cnclude, as she does, that we Catholics can just make it up as we go along.  Catholicism as an ad lib faith.

Except we can't. 

Catechism of the Catholic Church 1776:  Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment. . . . For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God. . . . His conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.

Please note - a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey . . . a law inscribed by God.  Saying the conscience takes precedenve over everything is not the same as saying "so whatever it decides is right for that individual" which is the viewpoint espoused like those in Call to Action.  In contrst, however, to many of that group and others of like mind, a Catholic hospital refusing an abortion to a woman is "evil", "narrow minded", "medieval" - regardless of what the hospital adminsitrators' consciences might have led them to conclude what is right.  These people would never say, my conscience right or wrong, simply because in their viewpoint, one's conscience can never be wrong, so long as it adheres to their ideological viewpoint.

Look further in the Catechism:

Catechism of the Catholic Church 1778:  Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right.

Ah, Ms. Guthrie would grasp that and say, see, see, the believers themselves set the house rules!  For them, once Man judges by virtue of his reason that something is "moral", why, it must be so!

Except the Catechism continues . . .

It is by the judgment of his conscience that man perceives and recognizes the prescriptions of the divine law.

And sometimes, Ms. Guthrie, a man's conscience may be wrong.  That is why we have the Sacrament of Reconciliation, because if we could be practicing Catholics whistling Cole Porter's "Anything Goes," we would not have need of that Sacrament.  It becomes superflorous, a Sacrament established by Christ.  But she does not stop to question or reconcile (so why does the Church have confession?)and so she makes the inane comment regarding the "house rules."

Cuomo, Pelosi, Biden et. al. are Catholics; the mark of Baptism cannot be undone.  In fact, I will even concede that they are "practicing" Catholics in that they hold to certain tenets of the faith, even if only in an inchoate form. 

We who declare ourselves to be "practicing" Catholics are indeed that - practicing, because we haven't gotten it right.  We try, we fail, we seek absolution.  But to Ms. Guthrie, there is no try.  There is only say.