By Charles D. Beard
It’s that time of year. The Feast of Sts. Thomas More and
John Fisher is upon us, and the Bishops are once again asking us to pray and
fast during the so-called Fortnight for Freedom — from June 21 to July 4.
Once again, my liberal Catholic reaction ranges somewhere between
an eyeroll and a heavy sigh.
And once again, I’d like to call upon my fellow liberal
Catholics to ignore that gut reaction and participate in the Fortnight anyway.
In this post, I hope to explain why it’s important that we do so.
Before I get into why we should participate in the
Fortnight, I want to explain — in a way I didn’t in my
post
last year — why I think the Bishops are going about this in the wrong way. Hopefully
in doing so, I will both give voice to liberal concerns from a Catholic
perspective and reassure traditionalists that it’s possible to disagree with
the Bishops on this without leaving the bounds of orthodoxy.
Those of us who are liberal-but-orthodox haven’t really had
a platform in which to express our concerns. I reject the borderline
anti-intellectualism of post-1990s liberal Catholicism, but that doesn’t make
the reasoning behind the Fortnight for Freedom any better. Here are a couple of
reasons why:
Opposition to the
mandate relies on specious moral reasoning. The HHS contraception mandate
rests on the assumption that Catholic employers and hospitals are directly
participating in evil, and direct participation in evil in never permissible. I
agree that direct participation in evil is wrong, but the Bishops have not done
a good job of delineating what does and does not qualify as “direct.”
For example, the Bishops have in the past lobbied to preserve the Hyde
Amendment, which limits federal funding for abortion. But it does something
else as well: it maintains federal
funding for abortion. When I pay my Medicaid taxes, my money goes into a
Great Big Pile of Money, some of which pays for abortion. The Bishops consider
this only indirect participation with evil, partly because I don’t intend the
evil and partly because most of what Medicaid does is good.
I fail to see how that structure is different from the contraception mandate. The
idea goes that an employer pays for an insurance policy, which means his or her
money goes into a Great Big Pile, some of which is used to pay for
contraceptives. If the employer doesn’t intend the evil (and given the
protests, who could say that the evil is intended?) and most of what the
insurance policy pays for is good, why is participating in that system
different from participating in the Hyde Amendment?
It seems that either both systems are permissible or both are prohibited. If
both are prohibited, should I not refuse to pay my Medicaid taxes? (If so, I’ll
ask my employer to stop my withholding tomorrow!) If both are permissible, why
all this hullaballoo about the Fortnight for Freedom?
It’s possible I’m wrong in my reasoning. But the Bishops are asking us to take
spiritual and political action because of this mandate. At minimum, before the
Bishops ask us to do that, they owe us theological resources explaining why the
HHS mandate and the Hyde Amendment are morally distinct. They have not done so.
Opposition to the
mandate makes too much of the concept of “intrinsic evil.” Most of the
argumentation surrounding the mandate has relied on the term intrinsic evil,
which means something that is never good and is always evil. Murder, for
example, is an intrinsic evil. So is, we are told, the use of contraceptives — at
least when they are used as contraceptives and not for another medical purpose.
So far, so good.
But because the evil is “intrinsic” does not mean that it is automatically
worse than other evils. For example, theft of property is an intrinsic evil
while war is not. But surely an unjust war is a worse evil than skipping out on
the check at a restaurant. The strong opponents of the mandate argue that
because contraception is an intrinsic evil, we must spend more time and
resources praying and working to end the mandate than, say, working and praying
to improve the lives of the poor.
The counterargument is that it’s not necessary for Catholics to agree that this
or that program is the best way to help the poor. I agree. But the twin evils
of defrauding the laborer of his wages and oppressing widows and orphans are
both sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance. If I see a structure that I believe
does those things, I believe I have a moral obligation to oppose it. Moreover,
I believe that those are worse evils than contraception and thus are more
deserving of my resources to stop them.
In other words, I don’t disagree with the goals of the Fortnight for Freedom.
But to have this evil picked out of all the evils in our society for a special
time of prayer and fasting is extremely disappointing. There are worse evils
that the Bishops should be asking us to fast for.
But — thank God! — I am
not a Bishop, and they didn’t ask my opinion.
I think what the Bishops are doing doesn’t help and may harm
the spread of the Gospel in America. I think their actions are playing into the
hands of those — not a few — who confuse Catholicism with conservative
politics.
But they are the Bishops and we are not. Unless they’re
commanding us to sin, we should probably obey them. Asking us to pray and fast
is no sin. Far from it.
We liberal Catholics like to remind our more traditional
brothers and sisters that Catholic means universal. Part of that means finding
God in all things — as St. Ignatius said — even in people we disagree with.
Yes, conservatives need to do a better job of finding God in
Catholics who disagree with them, but so do liberals. We need to remember that Bishops
and traditionally minded Catholics are not the enemy. We are all on the same
side.
I wrote last year: “Maintaining the
unity of the ark of salvation that subsists in the Catholic Church is of
paramount, almost overwhelming, importance.” Before we criticize the
Bishops for divisiveness — even if we have good reasons for doing so — we need to
look to our own lives to make sure that we’re not fomenting divisiveness at our
end. Participating in the Fortnight is one way to avoid that pitfall.
When we participate in the Fortnight, we need to
do a number of things. One of the
primary ones is to do what the Bishops ask: pray for religious freedom in this country.
If you’re like me, you may not think it’s all that much under attack. But the
Second Vatican Council teaches that we should “submit our mind and will to the
Church,” even if the Church isn’t speaking infallibly. Conservatives and
traditionalists seem to have a tendency to interpret that to mean that we
should agree with the Church even against our better judgment. I think that’s a
simplistic interpretation.
Instead, I think it means we should give the Church the benefit of the doubt. I
really don’t see how this mandate is “an unprecedented attack on religious
liberty,” as the USCCB keeps telling us. But in submitting my mind and will to
the Church I should acknowledge that I might be wrong. I want to emphasize: I
don’t think I am and I don’t mind telling that to any Bishop who asks me. If I
am wrong, though, I don’t want to be someone who didn’t pray that God’s will be
done.
So we should pray with the Bishops during the
Fortnight, but we must do a number of other things as well, things that we as
liberal Catholics can offer to the Church. Here are a few:
Pray for religious liberty where it really is threatened. Back in April, two Orthodox bishops were kidnapped in Syria and they
have not been returned. We don’t know much past that, but it’s only the most
sensational reminder that there are places where it is dangerous to be a
Christian. We must do what we can to assist them, even if that just means
praying and fasting for a couple of weeks.
Pray for the Bishops. They have a tough job. They
have to deal with people like me who carp that they’re going too far, as well
as people like Michael Voris, who carp that they don’t go nearly far enough.
Even if we don’t agree with them or support them on this, they deserve our
prayers.
Hug a traditionalist. Matt Malone, the new
editor-in-chief at America, wrote last month
that Catholics must fight the tendency to break down into conservative and
liberal tribes. Specifically, he said: “America understands
the church as the body of Christ, not as the body politic. Liberal,
conservative, moderate are words that describe factions in a polis, not members of a communion.” During the Fortnight
for Freedom, when partisan bickering is likely to be high in the Church, go up
to a conservative Catholic and tell her that you appreciate her contribution to
the body of Christ. (Just don’t hug her during the sign of peace at
Mass. Conservatives don’t like that!)
Tell our secular friends what we’re doing. Yes, the Lord did warn against telling people when we pray and fast,
but I think He would understand if we bend that rule here. (After all, we’re
liberal Catholics; we love bending rules!)
If conservatives have a tendency to think their
Catholicism supports their politics, then we liberals tend to compartmentalize
our spiritual life away from our secular life. That’s not a healthy impulse.
The Fortnight for Freedom provides an opportunity to remind secular liberals
(and ourselves!) that we are not Christians despite our liberalism: we are
liberals because of our Christianity.
This is my challenge to liberal Catholics, both
those more and less liberal than I am. That goes for orthodox Catholics who
happen to like the welfare state, birth-control-using Catholics, pro-choice
Catholics, Spirit of Vatican II Catholics, gay-rights-supporting Catholics, and
even Catholics who miss singing Marty Haugen songs at Mass. During the
Fortnight for Freedom, bite the bullet and participate. Remind yourself that
the Church is bigger than your own view of it — and so is the action of God in
the world. You may experience God in a new way.
In doing this, remember that the goal of any
regimen of prayer and fasting isn’t to achieve a political end — whether ours
or the Bishops’. The goal is to realize by grace the self-revelation of God in
Jesus Christ. Any liberalism not rooted in that self-revelation isn’t a
liberalism worth having.
There is a Pepsi machine that is located at our apartment pool. It is the source of a great deal of frustration and, I imagine, bruised toes.