Church and State

Catholic Social Teaching is called the best kept secret of the Catholic Church. It makes sense; think about how often we hear that being Catholic means kneeling nicely at Sunday Mass and praying the Rosary daily. Then think about how often we hear that being Catholic means fighting for the rights of workers, joining the struggle to empower disadvantaged communities, or creating safe havens for pre- or newborn babies? Sure, every now and then we get that image, mostly along with the message that these people are the extremists, sometimes even the loons, not your regular, run-of-the-mill variety of Catholic.

What if it's the other way around? What if those who advocate CST live exactly as a true Catholic should live, and the rest of us are "Catholic Lite" : same surface taste, but no substance underneath?

One of the sad results of our negligence of CST expresses itself in the political realm. Our negligence allows political parties and actors to co-opt passion for justice and tricks people into believing that justice solutions reside in a specific party, politician, or piece of legislation. The belief that we need just political action forms a core part of CST, but so does the idea that political action will not fix the world without the action and support of the faithful outside the political realm.

This dichotomy of political and religious solutions poses a fascinating question in a country that obsesses over the "separation of church and state," which we translate into the "restriction of religious actions and values to the church building and maybe home life." Not quite what our Founders had in mind when they wrote the First Amendment.

The Post-Dispatch today had an article that focused on the breaking down of this false wall with a "church-state disaster relief partnership." Tim Townsend, who wrote the article, explained Missouri's system that facilitates the state government and religious groups to work together at providing disaster aid. Using Katrina as an example of where the government failed and religious groups pulled through, he describes how this cooperation happens at a national level as well. Reading the article brought back memories of Sociology of Religion and Latino/a Migration, when we discussed religious-based justice movements. (We used Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo's God's Heart Has No Borders, a great book.)

Townsend does not discuss any Catholic groups, however. (Hondagneu-Sotelo does. Apparently on a small scale, you find Catholic justice groups all over the place.) Why are Catholic groups not discussed? I can think of a few reasons, and I don't know which is the case. First, they could simply fly under his notice, for a variety of reasons. Second, Townsend could not like Catholic groups. Or, third, they simply are not there, as part of the governmental partnership, or at all. Each of these reasons would have very different implications as to what we need to change to receive the notice that these Baptist and Methodist groups received.

Of course, this begs the question : Do we want that notice? I do. Not for the praise that Townsend rightly gives religious-based groups, but instead for the image change. If we make CST part of the image of a Catholic, maybe we can motivate ourselves to live up to that image and we can become the change in the world.