I took an unusual path to serving as a Catholic lay leader, a path that will have helped me understand the importance of Catholic leadership at this difficult moment in our history. As a youthful act of insurrection, I didn’t go to a Catholic university. In spite of everything, I had already received a Jesuit education from birth. My mother is a Jesuit-educated theologian and my father had been a Jesuit priest for 17 years before he left to have a family. Possibly I needed to see the world in a different way.
I went to a secular university near home, then off to law school at Harvard (or, as my mentor, Congresswoman Lindy Boggs, called it, “that Yankee Protestant school”). There I discovered myself barely embarrassed to wear a crucifix but due to that, I made myself do it. I fearful that religion was seen as ignorant, but to me, religion was mental. The partitions of my house had been lined with books of biblical scholarship, and when my parents didn’t need to be overheard by the kids, they spoke in ancient Greek. The thought of being lumped in with those whose religion rejects reason felt unfair to me.
From the church’s teachings on abortion to the death penalty, concern for the poor and look after the earth—none of it neatly corresponds to our current political chasms.
I also discovered the stereotype that religious persons are politically conservative, something that made me dig deeper into the ways our church actually straddles the American political divide. From the church’s teachings on abortion to the death penalty, concern for the poor and look after the earth—none of it neatly corresponds to our current political chasms. Not only that, however the very roots of our teachings have begun to look countercultural. As Catholics, we imagine in making sacrifices for a typical good. We imagine in caring for our neighbors as brothers and sisters and in welcoming the stranger. It could seem that libertarianism has begun to triumph, however the church’s teachings stand firmly against it.
There have all the time been two competing instincts in American political values. Individualism drives the seek for opportunity and human freedom. Just as powerfully, communitarianism defines a typical good and teaches us civic virtue. A healthy balance between the 2 has served us well. Without delay, nevertheless, unchecked individualism is trouncing our communitarian norms, poisoning our political discourse with unfettered selfishness. Even within the midst of a pandemic, when our very breath can infect others, we struggle to acknowledge that our freedoms almost all the time affect others. Increasingly of us refuse to see our neighbors as one human family, deserving of respect and dignity. We’re losing the common values we want to thrust back against growing movements of hatred and political violence.
It could seem that libertarianism has begun to triumph, however the church’s teachings stand firmly against it.
So what does it mean to be a Catholic lay leader at this apocalyptic moment in our history, when all the pieces appears to be falling apart? I feel it’s an infinite opportunity. If we are able to call American Catholics back to the church’s teachings, if we are able to speak a language of common values that reminds all Americans of our founding principles, we’d provide a spark of hope.
The language of religion is a strong tool, often abused. But it might probably serve because the one beacon able to shining through the fog of rationalization and self-interest. The leaders of the civil rights movement within the Fifties and ’60s, for instance, did not only cite political values or objectives; they summoned a nation to its conscience by reminding us of the facility of God’s love over hate. As Catholic leaders, we should always speak ever more loudly about our own core principles—fundamental human dignity and concern for the poor and vulnerable. We must always thrust back hard against those that define the stranger as a threat.
As a pacesetter of a Catholic university, I try (admittedly, sometimes with trepidation) to make our institution a middle of nuanced discussion of critical issues. Within the Catholic mental tradition, I hope our institutions will reveal the facility of mental curiosity and humility. I feel we are able to construct bridges over the growing divides.
None of this might be easy. The forces pulling our country apart also divide American Catholics. In a time of absolutes, the language of nuance and humility falls flat. But as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us, progress shouldn’t be inevitable. We’ve got to fight for it, day by day.
We speak within the language of hope because we must. We follow the teachings of the Gospels because we imagine. And we pray hard that we are able to make a difference.
