Catholic Politics
What we understand to be "politics"...presidential elections, Supreme Court decisions, congressional battles, ideology, policy about border-war-tax-etc....is, for the Catholic, secondary, subordinate, derivative. It is not nothing; is not without significance; but it's lasting importance is modest, provisional, not monumental, and certainly not eternal.
Our primary, foundational, "real" politics is our shared life in Christ, surrendered to the Holy Spirit, within the maternal, spousal Church, the body-politic of Christ. By baptism and within the sacramental economy we have been drawn into a new life, the Kingdom of God here on earth, the City of God. This politics is:
- Abiding peace and rest in the love of Christ; which expresses itself in urgent, passionate action to serve the suffering and announce the Gospel.
- Engagement, here on earth, with the Eternal Event of the love of the Trinity, which finds serendipitous expression in the worshipping community of mutual delight, reverence, tenderness, gratitude, sacrifice, contrition, forgiveness and generosity.
- The local, concrete, immediate, personal, intimate as the arena of the Drama of Heavenly Love here on earth.
- Personal prayer, the liturgical life as it flowers from the Act and Abiding Presence of the Eucharist, and the abiding mystical union with Christ as it flowers, flagrances, and fructifies in unending splendors.
- Action, but not hyper-activism, flowing from Abiding in Christ, in cultural creativity, political participation, education, cultivation, spousal romance, familial fecundity, entrepreneurship, agriculture, the cultivation and celebration of Truth-Beauty-Goodness in all dimensions of life.
- Intense attention to: solidarity with the suffering-poor-marginalized; care for the non-competent, especially the unborn-elderly-disabled; sacredness of sexuality, marriage and family; reverence for the priesthood and religious life; defense of the freedoms, especially religious; the common good; cultivation of virtue and holiness; our shared and personal life of prayer and worship.
Current Context: Marriage of "Benedict Option" and "A Christian Strategy"
In this era of Trump-Biden, Putin-Xi, Hamas-Jihad...we see secular politics, the "City of Man," as vicious, vile decadence. It is a time for Catholics to detach from and clearly renounce participation in the politics of contempt, hatred, and violence. A vote for Trump is endorsement of contempt for the human person; support of Biden is participation in genocide of the unborn, moral chaos, betrayal of our faith. A widely heralded moral imperative is the "duty to vote." At the moment, support for a Trump or Biden is (in my view) direct participation in clear, structural, moral evil (however well intended; a error of the intellect, not the will. Obviously, the Trump and Biden voter both would logically judge my intellect to be misguided in my abstaining.)
A promising path forward for Catholic participation in macro-politics is a marriage of the "Benedict Option" of Rod Dreher and the "Christian Strategy" of Adrian Vermeule. By the former we distance ourselves from the pathologies of our fragmented national politics, but not absolutely, to direct our energies, in a wholesome subsidiarity, to the local, immediate, concrete of family, Church, school, neighborhood and network of societies that flow into and out of these core communities. By the second, we withhold total allegiance to any specific ideology or party but participate, prudentially, with a variety of actors in initiatives that represent our interests and concerns. So, for example, we might work with the Left on child care credits but the Right on religious freedom.
There are many benefits from this combination. We marshal and focus our energies on what is most important: our immediate families and communities. We detach from the rancor, rage and resentment of the polarized politics. We are free to be critical of all and yet cooperative with many. We neither idealize any specific system, nor do we demonize our political adversaries. We maintain bridges to all sides of the dividing gulf, and maintain our inner serenity as well as positive relationships.
Conclusion
Above all, we inflame, purify, deepen the workings of the Holy Spirit in each of us personally and us corporately as the Body of Christ, a true body politic; we encourage, inspire and emulate each other within the Communion of Saints; and we prudently allow the light and energy so created to radiate out beyond our own boundaries, to the broader society and the entire world.
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