How Catholics Think . . .

Charles Chaput, a great thinker on church and politics, talks about things Roman Catholic, because he is a priest, but he offers great advice for religious people and politics generally:

Catholic leadership in the secular world belongs to laypeople, not to clergy or religious. The visible role of the priest in public affairs—if by public affairs we mean political affairs—should normally be pretty small.

It’s very dangerous for the Church to identify with one political party. It’s not my business to tell people to vote for John McCain or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. And while I worked for Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign as a volunteer when I was a young, I don’t think any Catholic should feel comfortable today in either major political party—Democrat or Republican.

But that doesn’t really get us off the hook, does it? The problem is that the Church teaches moral truth, and truth has obligations for human behavior—including the social, economic, and political kind. The Church is never mainly a political organism, but her witness for justice always has political consequences.

[…]

It is the job of Catholic laypeople to change the thinking of their political party and their political leaders with the tools of their Catholic faith. But it is the job of priests to give people those tools—to form Catholic laypeople to think and act as disciples of Jesus Christ, in a manner guided by the teaching of the Church. Just as Catholic laypeople should be the leaven of Jesus Christ in the public square, so we priests need to be the leaven of Jesus Christ in lives of our people. [Emphasis added.]

Read the whole thing.

Trying To Change The Subject…

James Taranto takes to task a blogger that wishes Romney was still in the race because The Question would provide cover for the Obama/Wright fiasco.

Were Romney the nominee, his foes might well try to suggest that his LDS membership somehow puts him in league with the FLDS. But they would be arguing in bad faith.

Yep, one big difference between The Question and this current mess is that many of the accusations around Romney were misconceptions, but Jeremiah Wright said for all the world to hear that he thinks the US government might be behind AIDS! I may not believe what Mormons believe, but I know they live on this actual planet.

It Won’t Go Away

The National Day of Prayer mess continues to resonate through sects everywhere.

The National Day of Prayer “has been hijacked,” says Jane Hunter, codirector of Jews on First. “Only Christian clergy are invited to participate…. And they encourage their coordinators to enlist elected officials or stage their observances on public property.” This undermines the First Amendment’s prohibition against any establishment of religion, she says.

On the National Day of Prayer Official Website, the task force requires that volunteer coordinators agree to a lengthy belief statement that begins: “I believe that the Holy Bible is the inerrant Word of the Living God. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the only One by which I can obtain salvation….” The coordinators are to ensure that only Christians conduct the events, although anyone may attend them.

Congress is going to HAVE to take its imprint off this, or else they are going to have a huge problem on their hands.

Diversity…

It is an issue in church governance too. But, unlike the US, churches have to be defined by something ideological, although not necessarily racial. But then regional differences in church membership can be extraordinary. Consider the Anglican Convention. The US church ordains homosexuals, but the Nigerian church would have walked had the US church not been put in the penalty box. It gets tricky, doesn’t it?
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