A Threat Catholics Should Have Seen Coming

Let's be candid here: Most people have about as much ability to project future developments, including even the nearest-future developments, as I have to levitate a skyscraper. (Yes, yes, I'm working on it. Be patient.) Yet some things that have come upon the Church in recent years have been as easy to foresee as a raw egg's breaking when hurled against a wall. More poignant still, they arose from the same incentives and dynamic processes that have corrupted our politics.

To set the stage: What sort of person is most likely to want to stand at the head of a Catholic flock? Will he be the humble, unassuming sort who truly desires only to serve the New Covenant of Christ? Or is he more likely to view himself as a leader who deserves the deference and obedience of others? If the latter sort of person enters the priesthood and rises through the Church’s hierarchy, to what sort of temptations will he be exposed, and how will he respond to them?

Regardless of their overt purpose, hierarchies, and the respect that flows from ordinary persons to those who attain altitude within them, are always the targets of those who:

• Want power;
• Think themselves worthy of it.

There are no exceptions, not even for the holiest of institutions.

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After that intro, perhaps you're ready for this:

Writing in the liberal Jesuit outlet America Magazine, Auxiliary Bishop of San Francisco Robert McElroy claims that the Church in the United States “must elevate the issue of poverty to the very top of its political agenda, establishing poverty alongside abortion as the pre-eminent moral issues the Catholic community pursues at this moment in our nation’s history.”

Taking his cue from Pope Francis, whom he says has “unswervingly pointed to the scandal of poverty in a world of plenty as a piercing moral challenge for the church and the whole human community,” McElroy writes that the pontiff’s “teachings on the rights of the poor have enormous implications for the culture and politics of the United States and for the church in this country.”

McElroy argues that “both abortion and poverty countenance the deaths of millions of children in a world where government action could end the slaughter.” He asks why, if the sanctity of the unborn human life is a doctrinal issue of the Church and, therefore, requires faithful Catholics to defend it in the public square, Catholics do not feel equally compelled to demand that their government fund social justice programs in the United States and abroad.

That very same prelate goes on to argue that abortion-supporting politicians should not be denied communion.

The Vatican has issued some unfortunate pronouncements in recent decades. The notion of "economic justice" is one such. There's no such thing, of course, any more than there's such a thing as "social justice." Attaching a qualifier to the word justice automatically creates an absurdity, for justice is concerned solely with the recognition and protection of individuals' rights. "Economies" and "societies" have no rights, being fictions of the mind assembled from wholly conceptual components.

But that's tangential to the larger point. What is a Catholic bishop doing promulgating a political position? In case you're unaware, the rank of Bishop is the highest to which a Catholic priest can rise; cardinals and popes are merely bishops with additional responsibilities. Therefore, McElroy's pronouncement that the Church in America must take this nakedly political position is being proclaimed from the very spires of the Church!

No, he's not the first. That doesn't make his betrayal of his responsibilities, nor his utter lack of humility before his proper role as an ordained priest of Christ, any less.

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I was at first minded to put McElroy's nonsense down to confusion and lack of comprehension, especially given this snippet from his article:

Taking his cue from Pope Francis, whom he says has “unswervingly pointed to the scandal of poverty in a world of plenty as a piercing moral challenge for the church and the whole human community..." [Emphasis added]

We do not live in "a world of plenty." We live in a world whose reliable natural laws -- perhaps God's greatest gift to Man -- provides every man with opportunity to prosper, if he has the understanding, the willingness to work, the required degree of perseverance, and is free from coercion or constraint. In those places and times where Man's mind and heart have been free to seek prosperity, those who have exerted themselves have invariably prospered. Just as invariably, those who lack understanding, will-to-work, and perseverance have sought to blame everything under the Sun for their failure to rise -- including the comparative success of others.

Such envy has been the would-be dictator's foremost tool for centuries, as C. S. Lewis pointed out in The Screwtape Letters:

What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence – moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how “democracy” (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods? You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them “tyrants” then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of grain, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level: all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, “democracy.” But now “democracy” can do the same work without any tyranny other than her own. No one need now go through the field with a cane. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones. The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to Be Like Stalks.

If the Church should abjure Christ's perfectly clear separation of politics from faith, thus allying itself with the Tyrants, where, then, can we turn for moral guidance?

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This transformation of Christian moral-ethical teaching into political posturing may be the greatest threat to Christianity since the Crucifixion. The Church narrowly escaped this trap when it emerged from the Renaissance stripped of its previous, jealously guarded political powers and privileges. A number of forces converged on it to perform that saving excision, not the least of them the treaties that constituted the Peace of Westphalia. To plunge back into darkness at this time, given the implacable hostility to real Christianity that inheres in every government on Earth, could be the fall that dooms the Church for all time.

Yet the lure of power -- over men's bodies and minds as well as their souls -- has attracted an unholy number of American clerics to the path Robert McElroy has chosen. Political prominence carries with it a promise of prestige and influence that the lowly service of Christ and the succor of His people cannot equal...as if it were ever intended to do so.

Does your parish have any "political priests?"
Do you challenge them on their notions when they orate about politics?
Do your fellow parishioners listen more intently to such secular preachments, or to the Gospels of Christ?
We cannot afford to stand mute before this threat to the future of Man.
Be outspoken, in service to your faith in Christ.

Pray.