Sort of political Monday

Two people making the same mistake from opposite ends of the Catholic political spectrum

Joe Carter put up a piece at First Things about his experiences with poverty and what he feels the poor really need most as a consequence of his having had that experience. The piece is worth reading. But there is a howler in it and it is a howler that is so predictable from Christians. Here it is:

The fact that the government needs a safety net to catch those who would slip between the cracks of our economic system is evidence that I have failed to do God’s work. 

Huh? How exactly do you make that out? And that howler opens the door for the first comment from someone named Brian that comes in like the old joke about the definition of a split second:

Persistent poverty in a society is not a sign of failure of the government, but of failure of the Church, failure of Christians. Amen.

This sort of thing comes up so often that it is pointless to try and correct it. Short version: Jesus isn't stupid and that is why he never told us to deal with poverty or to make it go away. He told us in blunt, direct language that persistent poverty is a fact in this world and that it always will be. The poor will always be with us and Christians are not and never have been charged with doing something about poverty.

As I say, there is little reason arguing with this sort of thing but I do wonder why it keeps happening. As I've said before, when smart people keep making the same stupid mistake over and over again it is worth looking into why they do it. Not to convince them—nothing will ever convince them—but rather so we can better understand how we ourselves are prone to the same sort of mistake.

As luck would have it, the very next day Father Z made a similar mistake from the other end of the Catholic political spectrum. He is quoting Louis Verrecchio but he is in agreement with him. The gist of the thing is that liturgical reforms from the 1960s led to Catholics' increasing disregard for Catholic teachings about sexual morality.

 Before I begin I should say that I am very much looking forward to the improved translation, that I hate it when priests who improvise and cheapen the mass and I crave elevated language. I'm with Father Z completely on that end.

Anyway, the first step in the argument is that when Catholics get the idea that something as important as the liturgy is optional, then they get the idea that everything else is optional too. That's a very good point. But then it gets carried over to the question of sexual morality. Well, maybe but with any argument like this you want to step back first and look for the longer trend.

As it turns out, there is evidence going some ways back that even the most conservative Catholics have been progressively moving further and further away from the church's teachings on sexuality and I can turn to a traditionalist Catholic of impeccable credentials to back me up on this one:

Magister began his piece by stating that a “divergence” has existed between the teachings of the Church and individual Catholic practice long before contraceptives were even on the market. The Vatican analyst then discussed how the book cites a case study involving a model Catholic area in Italy during the first half of the 1900s.

“Rural Veneto was at the time the most Catholic region in Italy, with an extremely solid, grassroots presence of the Church,” Magister explained. “But even in Veneto in the first half of the twentieth century – where almost everyone went to Mass on Sundays and to confession at least once a year – the birth rate was cut in half in the span of one generation.

“It went from 5 children per woman in 1921 to 2.5 children per woman in 1951 because of generalized recourse to contraceptive practices, the most widespread of which was coitus interruptus.”

So much for that.

But why do we keep makings connections where there are none. Why do we think that a commandment to care for the poor widow and orphan in our midst or to show kindness to aliens among us must translate into a socialist agenda? Why do we get onto a good cause, as Father Z has done, and then connect it to everything that seems wrong with the world? What we are doing is assuming a simple causal relationship between doing good and a better world. It's as if we believe that if Christians generally, or Catholic Christians specifically, behave the way we are supposed to then all the evil in the world will dissolve.

There is nothing in the Bible or church teaching or in plain logic or common sense that would justify this naive faith. But I know that I get into moods where I make just that connection and I bet you do too.