Prelates Preaching on Prudential, Pragmatic Policy

This week the American bishops criticized proposed federal budget cuts as unfairly targeting the poor. Good point! One wonders, however, where they would cut: Social Security, Medicare, or defense. Over the years the bishops, the Vatican and even our popes have spoken clearly on any number of prudential, pragmatic policy issues: the Iraq invasion, the death penalty, immigration policy, the value of the United Nations, abolition of nuclear arms and the list goes on.

The problem is that these policy issues are prudential, pragmatic, and sometimes technical judgments which do not fall within their apostolic authority to preach faith and morals. They do certainly involve moral principles but such principles as applied and intermingled with empirical, practical judgments, estimates, and anticipations which are always tentative, multivalent, uncertain, and positional.

Such teachings, for the loyal Catholic, are advisory but not binding. A good Catholic can in conscience dissent from the Pope’s view on the Iraq invasion or the bishops’ policy on immigration.

The role of the clergy is to proclaim the Gospel and teach morality. The application of these truths to complex, actual policy situations is very involved. Competency in these areas is not conferred by ordination, seminary training or the clerical culture but involves multiple areas (politics, diplomacy, economics, etc.) which are properly the “worldly” concern of the (non-ordained, non-consecrated) laity.

There are a number of problems when the hierarchy and clergy instruct us on social policy:

1. They usually do not clarify that the teaching is prudential and tentative and not morally binding. So, for example, people are aware that John Paul II and the bishops oppose the death penalty but they do not realize that this involves an empirical calculus and is entirely different from Church teaching on essential evils like infanticide or military targeting of civilians. Thank God for Cardinal Avery Dulles who clarified for us the nature of this teaching!

2. Such teaching involves an unrecognized clericalism: a conviction that society needs clerical guidance on policy issues because the laity is not competent without rather specific direction.

3. By teaching on such a range of issues, our prelates dilute and diminish their influence on the really important issues as well as on the moral and spiritual truths of the Deposit of Faith which they truly do protect and articulate infallibly.

4. Such specific, concrete policy positions inevitably align the hierarchy with certain partisan, ideological positions. The American bishops usually line up with the Democrats on issues in which the later do not directly contradict Church teaching. Even the Vatican sometimes seems to be echoing the sentiments of sophisticated European elites. The transcendence of the Church is compromised, then, by overly specific identification with concrete policies and causes.

5. This temptation to identify with particular ideological visions is rooted in a diminished sense of the power of the sacraments and apostolic teaching. The passionately ideological priest, prelate, or bishops’ conference is probably suffering from a loss of faith in the cult of worship, sacramental efficacy, the kerygma, and catechesis.

Does this mean that priest, bishop and Pope need to be completely silent on policy issues? I think such an absolute “wall of separation” is not necessary. Some policy issues involve clear and direct moral evil (e.g. racial discrimination) and many others have important moral consequences even if they are more complex and ambiguous (e.g. budget cuts.) Moreover, as citizens, a clergyman has the same right as anyone else to speak his mind on these matters. They must be careful, however, lest they invest such political opinion with ecclesial authority. In doing so, they would be more helpful to us if they:
- Clarify the advisory, prudential, non-binding nature of such teaching.
- Avoid over-extension into so many policy areas, trusting in the competence of the laity in “worldly” matters.
- Focus with fierce intensity upon the really crucial, really clear issues: protection of innocent, powerless human life; concern for children, women and the poor; and the dignity of sexuality.
- Recognize the indirect but immense influence upon social situations of inspired worship and teaching.
As in so many things, we are blessed to have among us an extraordinary exemplar for such teaching: Pope Benedict XVI.

The Prosperity Gospel

The prosperity gospel is not preached by the Catholic Church. It is very American, very Protestant (Calvinist), and very capitalist. It is often proclaimed by a wealthy televangelist who presents himself as an example for a life of material abundance based upon an active faith in God. The basic premise is: an active faith in God is a path to material abundance as God will bless the believing heart with riches. The preacher testifies about his own journey from impoverishment to affluence through an active faith in God's providence. The emphasis upon trust, activism, and positive expectations all combine to release positive energies. The problem is a concern with material abundance that is hardly evangelical.

Jesus himself was poor and not affluent and therefore following him clearly draws us to poverty.

Jesus proclaimed: "Blessed are the poor." He did not say "Blessed are the affluent and the successful."

Jesus told the rich young man: "Sell all you have and give to the poor and come follow me."

Jesus said it is harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle.

He called love of money "a root of evil."

Jesus associated with and valued the poor. He associated with the rich and called them to repent and to share their wealth with the poor.

Catholic imitation of Christ always involves the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience...strikingly so in the consecrated life (e.g. the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal) but also in married, lay life in the preference to "live simply so that others may simply live." (Mother Theresa)

The saints all find in the poor a privileged presence of Christ.

The Prosperity Gospel is a flight away from poverty and the poor Christ into material surplus, hyper-security and status. It reflects a longing for economic safety and abundance. It arose in a non-Catholic, Calvinst enviroment that had discarded the efficacious sacraments as infallible signs of God's love, had abolished the evangelical/consecrated life of the vows, demoted the role of Mary as our mother and queen, and replaced ecclesial authority with "sola scriptura" ("only scripture.") A Christianity without her mother and queen, without the objective assurances of salvation (e.g. confession), without authority and without the witness of the consecrated life is impoverished and searches for signs of salvation, primarily in subjective consciousness such as the experience of "being saved." But subjectivity is always volatile and the Calvinist doctrine of double-predestination (some are saved, others are damned) added urgency to the need for external assurances. And so the emergent bourgeois class found assurance in their material prosperity which they interpreted as God's validation of their interior righteousness. This is a novel and perverse gospel.

The affluent assure themselves of their righteousness by a logic that sees material abundance as a blessing given to reward faith and righteousness. The inverse implication of this principle is a curse upon the poor: your poverty is the result of your disbelief. And so, "Blessed are the poor" is transformed into "Cursed are you poor because of your unbelief and you will remain cursed by poverty unless you believe."

We are left to wonder: What would these affluent preachers have to say to the impoverished people of Haiti who are utterly bereft of any path to abundance? Or to people in boarding homes who are disabled and without the abilities or resources to rise above their $705 monthly SSI check? Or to the saints who have given away all they own to be with and serve the poor? Or to the poor Jesus himself and his mendicant (beggar) disciples?

And so the Catholic Christian loves the Poverty Gospel:
- Receiving from God every voluntary and involuntary deprivation as a grace.
- Cultivating contentment and gratitude rather than restless ambition.
- Fierce aggressiveness on behalf of the Kingdom of the Father, rather than one's own portfolio.
- Eagerness to dispossess and give generously to the needy.
- Tender and intense love for the most deprived.
- Affectionate, intense devotion to Christ in the poverty of the Eucharist.