The Pastoral Mandate, Politicians and Religious Liberty | Joe Tremblay | Homiletic & Pastoral Review
Is this threat to religious liberty a political problem, or is it a pastoral problem?
On January 19th, 2011, EWTN’s The World Over with Raymond Arroyo aired an interview with New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan. To his credit, Raymond Arroyo represented the concerns of many Catholics by asking the Archbishop about his pastoral position on discipline as it pertained to New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo. As most viewers know, Cuomo had long been an unapologetic advocate of abortion rights. In June of 2011, however, he took his public dissent from Catholic teaching to yet another level. The governor signed a bill making same-sex marriage legal in the state of New York. Cuomo, mind you, is a highly visible public figure who calls himself a “Catholic” and one who attends Mass from time to time. Accordingly, Raymond Arroyo asked where the governor of New York stood in relation to the Church to which he professed allegiance. Archbishop Dolan answered by saying that the talks between him and Cuomo are on-going, maintaining: “Our job is to invite people in and try to patiently change hearts—and not be throwing people out” (New York Daily News June 17th 2011). I think it is fair to say that many U.S. bishops, especially in several of the archdioceses in the United States, concur with Archbishop Dolan on this form of dialogue.
Religious Liberty
The next day, January 20th, the Catholic News Agency reported
that “the Department of Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen
Sebelius announced that the administration would not expand a religious
exemption for employers who object to its ‘preventative services’
mandate.” In other words, the Obama administration made it known that
they would mandate that, against their will, Catholic agencies must
provide abortifacients, contraception, sterilization, etc., in their
health care coverage. In fact, these Catholic agencies have until August
of 2013 to comply with the federal health care mandate. Archbishop
Dolan did not mince words when he told the press what he thought of it.
He said: “In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure
out how to violate our consciences.” In fact, a day earlier the Holy
Father weighed in with these sobering words: “No one who looks at these
issues realistically can ignore the genuine difficulties which the
Church encounters at the present moment.” Indeed, Pope Benedict’s
“Dictatorship of Relativism” is on the march in America.
Asking Important Questions
The question then becomes: Is this threat to religious liberty a political problem, or is it a pastoral problem?
Joe Tremblay has hit the mark, gently, but hit it nonetheless.
My wife was raised in the Church pre-Vatican II and as I am a convert since the turn of the twenty-first century I asked her whether there were many people sitting in the pews, not receiving communion, in those days. She indicated that yes there were much larger numbers of those who stayed back, for whatever reason of conscience, although they fulfilled their Sunday obligation by attending Mass.
It has occurred to me many times over the years that because people are creatures of habit, particularly social habit, poor teaching and practices can become just as embedded as any other kind, even in the face of the truth and it occasionally takes a more forceful preaching of the truth to break through.
If we are to consider not just the politicians but all of us who go to communion I have noticed how uncomfortable it is to remain back and not receive when on occasion I haven't made it to confession and believe myself unworthy to receive. There is a great deal of social and conventional pressure to receive communion and it takes fortitude to resist sacrilege at that point, particularly when I am one of only two or three in a mass with some two hundred or more.
How much more the politician whose conscience is already seared in this popular disconnect between worship and practice. For someone who lives by their public profile, to remain in their seat and not receive would be difficult indeed, even if their conscience was telling them to do so.
The problem that the Cardinal Dolan's of the Church forget/overlook or don't think important in their quest to reclaim the wandering politician is the damage that is done to the rest of the faithful, because of the fact that those politician's sins in objective sense are manifest to all. That is the scandal. And it is compounded by the special treatment that those politicians get in the course of this pastoral emphasis and lack of disciplinary emphasis. While the sins of those of the rest of the people in the pew are not public, is it any surprise if we find that they may have a certain nonchalance regarding the Eucharist when they witness this public ongoing scandal?
The way out of this is for the bishops and priests to preach the truth about exactly who is to receive and not to receive, what constitutes a mortal sin, very specifically, and preach this often. Then, when sins are so manifest and public the bishops have the perfect follow-through in the form of excommunication, and the politician, though he/she may try, cannot fool the vast majority of Catholics in the pew who have heard the truth already preached constantly.
They may have the sympathetic ears of the dissenters, but even those people will have likely become uncomfortable enough in the glare of Catholic truth to be forced to conform or leave. And the majority of the people will support the Bishop, in which case the dissenters find themselves without support, because now the people are informed.
Posted by: LJ | Friday, November 02, 2012 at 05:56 PM