They are at it again. Instead of striving toward Catholic unity, a small but determined minority of Catholics on the American right veer toward Protestant dichotomies. Real Catholics vs. fake Catholics. Orthodox vs. heterodox. Faithful vs. dissidents. But when you delve deeper, you will find the real concern is less with core aspects of faith and morals, and more with differences in political beliefs. You will find a high tolerance for “dissent” on certain issues, but not on others.
Let me provide two examples. One of the most obnoxious is Thomas Peters. In quiet aggressive terms, he castigates people he regards as “fake Catholics”. In his parlance, “fake Catholics” can be characterized by their penchant for deceiving Catholics, taking money from George Soros (the Koch brothers are OK, I suppose?), caring about “liberal pet projects”, and frequenting “Democrat” [sic] conventions. In other words, young Peters doesn’t like their politics, so he challenges their Catholicism. Anne Hendershott of Inside Catholic is not much better. Again, the focus is on “fake Catholic” groups. And again, instead of an argument of why these groups are not sincere Catholics, we get vapid political slogans – they conspired to elect “the most pro-abortion president we have ever had”. What irks her in particular is that these Catholic groups do not see eye to eye with her on what it means to be “pro-life”.
Where’s the consistency, people? What of those Catholics who ignore core moral teachings in other areas? How about George Weigel, who still defends the wicked war in Iraq, even after hundreds of thousands have been killed or displaced? How about Michael Novak, who thinks Catholic social teaching is centered around a preferential option for the rich and what Pope Pius XI called the “evil individualistic spirit”? How about Robbie George, who thinks that the faith is underpinned by the principles of the liberal Enlightenment as interpreted by America’s founders, and who regularly pays court to Glenn Beck, a man who distorts traditional teaching on social justice and collective salvation? How about Raymond Arroyo on EWTN who invites and supports pro-torture guests, even when they distort just war teaching? How about Newt Gingrich, who not only drinks from the “poisoned spring” of individualism, but adopts an antagonistic approach to Islam (even comparing Muslims to Nazis) that is far from Church teaching? How about Thomas Peters himself, who claims that there is no right to universal healthcare, that social safety nets should weakened, and that efforts to curb global warming should be opposed vigorously? Indeed, how about all those “Catholic” groups who use the unborn to hide their real opposition to healthcare reform – a wicked individualist mentality that forsakes solidarity in favor of illusive “freedom”?
Let’s talk about this. There are at least two levels here – the underlying moral principles that must guide action, and the concrete application of these moral principles to messy and uncertain facts and circumstances. In a word, prudential judgments. As moralist Richard Gaillardetz puts it:
“..particulars, unlike the principles themselves, are fluid and changing, and one’s grasp of them is necessarily more tentative than one’s knowledge of a principle. This means that one’s certitude about the rightness or wrongness of one’s judgments diminishes the more the judgments depend on contingent empirical data. And to the degree that contingency limits our certitude, there should be a greater willingness to tolerate disagreement.”
Except that these people will often elevate their own particular prudential judgment – no matter how flawed – to the level of principle, while simultaneously giving themselves a “prudential judgment” free pass on other areas.
Let’s apply this to healthcare reform, which ended up in a very complicated piece of legislation. The principles, laid down firmly by Catholic social teaching, were that the right to life was paramount and that everybody has the right to healthcare, regardless of income or status. People applied these principles to the underlying legislation and came up with different conclusions. I happen to believe that the USCCB ultimately made the wrong call, being overly influenced by their allies in the National Right to Life movement. I believe that this messy legislative compromise was wholly worthwhile as a way to provide healthcare to millions of excluded people and prevent insurance companies from dropping or refusing coverage. At the same time, it was far more pro-life than many thought possible – prohibiting the use of federal funds to purchase plans with abortion, insisting on a strict accounting separation even for those not receiving subsidies, and making sure that every state exchange had at least one pro-life option. Indeed, the barriers were higher than even the USCCB itself had insisted on in the past – for example, the bishops supported the federal subsidization of COBRA extension in the stimulus bill, with no pro-life protections whatsoever. Others feel differently. I think they are wrong, and I think they are applying inconsistent standards, but their reasoning is still guided by noble principles.
But not always. There is a dark side to this. As I’ve noted many times – and this was a real eye-opener for me – the lay Catholic opponents of healthcare reform were not merely focused on abortion, or even primarily focused on abortion. They mixed moral issues with arguments from American liberalism in ways that were often impossible to distinguish. For too many, abortion was a smokescreen to gloss over the real objection, an objection with no real grounding in Catholic teaching. They particularly opposed the individual mandate, based on an ideology that Pius XI would deem the “poisoned spring” of the “evil individualistic spirit” – a spirit that saw health as personal responsibility and opposed all notions that the fortunate must be compelled to subsidize the unfortunate. In its blatant rejection of solidarity, it resembles Calvinism more than Catholicism.
I believe this is an unacceptable rejection of a core moral principle, rather than a practical prudential judgment. Of course, the likes of Peters would not see it that way. As noted before, Peters makes the following, extremely sophisticated (!) argument: “I believe, prudentially speaking, that this bill will result in worse care for more people. This is a prudential conclusion that, as you would, say, I am entitled to.” Of course, Peters offers no evidence of this, beyond his entitlement to believe it. As the saying goes, he is entitled to his opinions, but not his facts. What is Peters doing here? He is basically rejecting the idea of a collective right to healthcare, and pretending this is an empirically-driven conclusion. In other words, he rejects the principle, and pretends it is a prudential judgment he is entitled to make. It’s bait and switch. And it has nothing to do with abortion.
We see this elsewhere. Many who claim to uphold the just war teaching stretched it so far to defend what happened in Iraq that one really question their accpetance of the underlying principles at all. Just looking at the circumstances and “contingent empirical data”, it seems far more likely that the Iraq war was unjust than that the healthcare reform law led to an increase in abortion. And yet the self-appointed guardians of orthodoxy do not seem very active in sniffing out fake Catholics in this corner.
At the end of the way, I’ll stick with Catholic unity. Even if I believe these people are fundamentally misguided on fundamental principles, it is not for me to issue pissy personal decrees of excommunication. There is room in the Church for George Weigel and Michael Novak, and for Thomas Peters and Anne Hendershott. Living with a messy and argumentative family is part of what being Catholic is all about. If only they could feel the same way.
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