An accusation that we see thrown around a lot, especially around election time, is the charge that Father So-and-So is “being too political,” and that he should “stay out of politics.” The charge is made from either side of the aisle, sometimes directed toward priests who speak out strongly against war, or sometimes against priests and bishops who refuse communion to “pro-choice” politicians. The latest target of this charge, of course, is Fr. Michael Pfleger, whose ministry has been criticized for being “too political” for a variety of reasons, from his specific comments about the current presidential campaign to his supposed “hatred” for America and his fiery comments about racial privilege.
The Pfleger incidents — and the uproar that accompanies it — give Catholics a good opportunity to pause and to clear up some sloppy thinking on the whole notion of priests “being too political.” Frankly, Catholics usually accuse priests of “being too political” simply when they disagree with the priest’s politics. And in giving voice to this disagreement they typically insist that the Catholic position “transcends” politics.
But we know this is cannot really be the case. Among the many things liberation theologians have taught us, they have shown us that there is no “neutral” or “transcendent” position with regard to faith and politics. We all take sides because an incarnate faith must take sides. “Staying neutral” (as priests are supposedly supposed to do) is in fact taking a side: the side of the status quo. And if we stop long enough to reflect on our own tendencies, we know this is true on an immediate level: as much as we say that priests should “stay out of politics,” we all end up praising priests who take our side on a political issue, whether he is joining us in protesting at an abortion clinic or at the School of the Americas; whether he implies in a homily that we must vote Republican or whether he implies that it’s okay to vote Democrat as long as we are not doing so because we agree with a candidate’s “pro-choice” stance. As much as we object in theory, in practice we want our priests to “be political” because we know as Catholics that we cannot be Christian without being political, i.e. without being intimately concerned with the way in which we organize our lives together.
Of course, the idea that Christians, and in particular priests, should “transcend” politics delights the powers. The flip-side of the invention of the modern nation-state is the invention of religion as a realm of private spiritual preferences having no impact on the “real world.” The powers are delighted to hear Catholics demand that their priests “transcend” politics and “stay neutral” because this inevitably results in the reinforcement of private religion and the disintegration of the Body of Christ as “a public in its own right,” in the words of Catholic theologian Reinhard Hütter. The state demands that the Church’s authority be relegated to some private realm: the Church can have the Christian’s soul while the state retains control of the Christian’s body. These dynamics struck me as I read a comment posted regarding the Pfleger incident:
You know what… there is something very interesting about this incident in the sense that people are appalled that it is a CATHOLIC priest that is doing this… I’ve heard morning shows talking about it not being able to believe it. In a sense, there is so much that is expected from the clergy even by those who are not Catholics or do not consider themselves as believers.
I actually look at this in a completely different way. Talk show hosts are appalled that a Catholic priest is doing this because Catholics have been so good at accommodating themselves to the American project, emphasizing an artificial separation between politics and faith, a separation that our non-Catholic friends have been, amazingly, breaking down for a while now albeit often in dangerous ways. The secular media, and the modern nation state, expect Catholics to stay in their place with their otherworldly faith. They are pleased that the only kind of politics we seem to engage in is passing out abortion voting record fliers in the church parking lot after Mass. They are pleased that we are talking incessantly of turning our altars around, away from the world and toward a god that is, thankfully in their view, seemingly somewhere else.
Obviously, Pfleger’s comments on the presidential campaign were inappropriate. But they were not inappropriate because they represented a “dabbling” in politics. Priests must be political, as all Christians must be political. And as ministers of the Word, priests have a special role of being truth-tellers, and this often means “being political,” but not reducing politics to American electoral mudslinging as Pfleger did.
Of course, the kind of “politics” to which priests (and all Christians) are called will mean scandal for some and will appear divisive, precisely because they are called, as preachers of the Word, to “name the plague” directly, as Canadian Catholic theologian Gregory Baum says:
Preachers and teachers know very well that they do not make enemies when they lament the suffering in the world and demand greater justice in general. People want to be seen as favoring justice. It is only when preachers and teachers name the plague that people get angry. In North America and Europe, academic theology tended to shy away from such outright political judgments because they transcend the discipline. Instead, it advocated love, justice, and peace in general terms, sometimes so general that they could be used by speech writers for the government intent on defending its policies. Calls for justice and peace cannot be used in this ideological way when they name the social evil. If Archbishop Oscar Romero had not named the plague, if he had only demanded greater peace and justice in general, he would not have been shot” [1].
When church leaders “name the plague” as Romero did they will, predictably, be called “divisive” and they will be reminded that their role is to “transcend” politics in order to foster “unity.” But there is a difference between being divisive and shining a light on where our communities are already divided. And our communities are divided even though we focus our Catholic ecclesial rhetoric on images of “communion” and “unity.” Such rhetoric, while it has its place, often masks the divisions that already exist, making them invisible. Even the Eucharist, which we sometimes idealize as that liturgical space in which “all are one” around the altar in a foretaste of the Kingdom, is ambiguous insofar as it expresses — and must express, I think — both unity and division. Take, for example, William Cavanaugh’s recounting of Archbishop Romero’s decision, after the assassination of Fr. Rutilio Grande at the hands of Salvadoran death squads, to make Grande’s funeral the only Mass celebrated in the archdiocese of San Salvador that Sunday, forcing the oppressors and the oppressed of that divided local Church to come together at Eucharist:
The oligarchy reacted with alarm. The day after Romero announced the single mass, representatives of ANEP, the national businessmen’s association, met with Romero and demanded that the idea be dropped. The church, they said, was stirring up conflict. Besides, the wealthy Catholics of the plantations were complaining that they would be deprived of the opportunity to receive the eucharist and fulfill their Sunday obligation…. But that, of course, was the whole point. Romero intended the one eucharist to be an anticipation of the kingdom, of the day when rich and poor would feast together, of the day when the body of Christ would not be wounded by divisions…. [T]he single mass also served to illumine and to judge the ongoing divisions between rich and poor. The single mass, just like the martyrs, did not create conflict, but rather shone a light on it and revealed the truth about it [2].
Cardinal George’s statement on the Pfleger case is perfect in that he clearly implies that priests must “name the plague,” speaking to political issues, including the “divisive” topic of race, but that they must be non-partisan in the sense of not reducing politics to politics “American style”: endorsing candidates, slinging mud, etc. But they must also be “partisan” in that they must speak on behalf of the poor and the marginalized, shining a light on injustice and division where it exists. Cardinal George seems to be able to see these important distinctions that escape so many of us when we demand that our politicians “stay out of politics.”
Michael Pfleger was not in the wrong because he shined a light on the problem America has with racial privilege. In that sense, he was prophetic, fulfilling his role as a Catholic pastor. Pfleger was in the wrong because he participated in politics “American style,” endorsing a candidate and speaking violently and personally against another candidate. So let us not demand that priests like Pfleger “stay out of politics” — most especially by asking them to stay silent on the issue of race in America — lest we participate in our own marginalization as members of the Body of Christ. Priests are called by the Body to speak the Word, shining a light on injustice and division in a radical way that should make people in the pews uncomfortable. This is the kind of radical politics in which our clerics should be engaged, no matter now much FOX News and ABC’s Jake Tapper want the Church to stay in its place. The modern liberal nation-state wants priests to stay out of politics because, ultimately, it wants the Church, as a Body, to stay out of politics. We need priests who are more, not less, political, but they need to be political in the right way, as pastors of the Body of Christ whose allegiance is to Christ — to the his radical and uncomfortable truth of his Gospel of peace and justice and to his Church whose task is to continue proclaiming that radical Gospel in a hostile world — instead of partisan concerns.
______________________________
[1] Gregory Baum, “The Creed That Liberates,” Horizons 13, No. 1 (Spring 1986).
[2] William T. Cavanaugh, “Dying for the Eucharist or Being Killed by It?: Romero’s Challenge to First-World Christians,” Theology Today 58, no. 2 (July 2001): 185–6.5–6. [read the article here]
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In