The Catholic World Report
_“Social Justice” and the New Politics_
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e-new-politics&catid=53:cwr2010&Itemid=71)
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Editorial
The ground shifts beneath the Catholic left.
By George Neumayr | December 2010
The phrase “social justice,” when invoked by members of the Catholic
left, is a euphemism for the agenda of the Democratic Party. “Social justice”
refers not to objective principles of justice but to specific policies of
Democrats on health care, labor, welfare, and other matters.
This is why the historic November defeat of Democrats was treated as such
troubling news in many chanceries and Catholic university faculty lounges.
Worried headlines, of the kind that were nowhere to be found in the
Catholic left’s publications after the election of Barack Obama, suddenly
appeared, such as Catholic San Francisco’s headline, “Social Justice Agenda in
Jeopardy in US.”
America magazine also sounded an alarm. Steve Schneck, director of the
Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at the Catholic University of
America, wrote in a piece on its website that the Church’s “years of
efforts in America to support public policies that reflect its moral vision
were dealt a blow Tuesday evening.”
The panic was understandable. After all, the Catholic left had invested a
great deal in the success of the Democrats and in particular Barack Obama.
Many nuns and priests voted for him, with some even openly serving on his “
Catholic” campaign advisory committee; Catholic college presidents and
faculties generously donated to his campaign (Georgetown, out of all college
faculties, ranked second in donations); and Catholic public figures such as
Doug Kmiec portrayed him as the very embodiment of the Church’s vision of “
change.”
After he won the election, the Catholic left’s excitement grew still more.
Notre Dame conferred upon him an honorary degree, and bishops such as
Archbishop Michael Sheehan of New Mexico, afraid that criticism of Obama’s
policies might make Catholics look like the “Amish,” made rationalizations for
him. Kmiec, before departing for his ambassadorship to Malta, burbled
victoriously that “President Obama has far more in common with our great faith
tradition than any political administration in recent memory.”
Always late to an awareness that its trendy enthusiasms are no longer
trendy, the Catholic left simply hadn’t anticipated the wave of anti-Obama
feeling that swept over the country in 2010. Particularly galling to members
of
the Catholic left is that the Catholic vote contributed to the backlash
and appears to be slipping away from the Democrats. In 2008, 55 percent of
Catholics voted for the Democratic ticket. In 2010, 54 percent of Catholics
voted for Republicans.
Steven Schneck suggested to the US bishops that they discuss at their next
meeting the “worrisome implications of excessive partisanship and
ideological polarization from a Catholic vantage point.” But all this pouting
means
is that Democratic partisans can no longer count on the Catholic vote.
A truly Catholic view of “social justice” focuses on the non-negotiable
issues of the natural law, without which a justly ordered society is
impossible, and from that “vantage point,” the election results contain some
hope
(though the Republicans should certainly be held accountable in light of
it). The US House of Representatives has passed from a pro-abortion Catholic
speaker in Nancy Pelosi to a pro-life Catholic speaker in John Boehner.
The House added many new pro-lifers and supporters of traditional marriage to
its ranks while dropping numerous supporters of abortion rights and the “
gay” agenda.
“Pro-choice” Catholic Democrats suffered heavy losses, as did many of the
self-styled “pro-life” Democrats who compromised on Obama’s morally
dubious health care bill.
The so-called Stupak Democrats didn’t even gain a single election, let
alone the world, from their compromise. By choosing party power over
principle, they put themselves into a position to lose both.
“Pro-choice” Democrats tried hard to retain the Catholic vote through the
usual claim that the Democratic Party, despite its support for abortion
rights and other violations of the natural law, is “better” on the Church’s “
social justice concerns” than the Republicans. But this year that “
seamless garment” unraveled. Voters were in no mood to hear about “social
justice
” from Catholic Democrats whose party during its time in power has
presided over increasing poverty and unemployment. (Economic woes also made it
difficult for Democrats to use the sophistical argument, which Kmiec dusted
off in 2008, that Democratic policies reduce the number of abortions by
reducing poverty.)
Archbishop Sheehan feared that his fellow bishops could “isolate” the
Church by loudly objecting to Obama’s libertine agenda. But it is the Catholic
left that looks increasingly isolated in the new politics. The Catholic
left’s monopolistic claims about the “common good” and “social justice” now
meet with appropriate skepticism, and its equation of “Catholic concerns”
with amnesty, carbon taxes, government-run health care, and so on, is seen
as insultingly specious.
True, most of the issues that the new Tea Party-driven politics has raised
are prudential matters on which Catholics can disagree. But those are the
very issues that the Catholic left seeks to dogmatize even as it
relativizes the Church’s teachings on the natural law. The irony of this
inversion of
priorities is that it has made the Catholic left more irrelevant in
American politics than ever. Normally so worried about the “voice of the
people,”
the Catholic left stands exposed by this election year as woefully out of
touch with it.
--
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