Don’t worry.
This post is not going to be yet another commentary on the HHS mandate itself. Plenty of those are floating around
nowadays.
Instead, I
shall be a good American and talk about Freedom. Before you get too excited though, I must admit I shall be a
bad American and not talk about Freedom © American Founding Fathers, 1776. Instead, I shall be a good
American Catholic and talk about Christian freedom. One of the beauties of Catholicism is that its perspective
is goes back so much further than Locke, Madison, and Montesquieu (yup—a large
part of American political thought came from a Frenchman—erm—freedom-man). Scripture
is full of freedom-statements such as “The truth shall set you free” and “freed
from sin you have become slaves of righteousness.”
Wait a
second. Slaves of righteousness? St. Paul can’t have meant that. We are Free Americans. We
sorted out that whole slave thing a century and a half ago. Men and women have paid in blood for
that freedom. And, honestly, St.
Paul, you really need to work on your slogans. Crying “freedom isn’t free,” and watching crusades to topple
genocidal dictators, heartless baby-killers, and liberal governments expecting
insurance companies to give Church employees the options of purchasing contraception
just seems so much more inspiring than being a “slave to righteousness.” Whatever that even means.
But there’s the problem. Wars— traditional or
cultural—are fundamentally political, and politics is essentially dehumanizing.
It turns real people with complex personal problems into sound-byte-ready
issues to rally the base and divide America down the middle. It’s an extremely powerful pull that
has reached even the Church.
Politicians and the media try to make us, as Catholics, decide whether
we are liberal or conservative. Democrat or Republican. Many in the Church fall right in
line—e.g. Catholic writer George Weigel, best known for his biography of John
Paul II who issued a scathing critique of the parts of Benedict XVI’s
Encyclical “Caritas in Veritate” that might not have fallen in line with the current vogue in Conservative
economic values. But the Church is
a collection of people, with human problems. It’s interesting that the Catholics
in Iraq weren’t begging for American liberation, but merely for food.
One cannot
simply legislate away the thorns God gives us. Paul is very clear that it is not the law that saves. He’s referring to Biblical
law, and if the written Word of God for His chosen people cannot save us, then anything
Congress does can’t possibly, either. “Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height,
nor depth, nor any creature will be able to separate us from the love of God.”
So certainly,
promoting a just society is central to the Catholic mission, and that probably
means Bishops will wade into the political ring. However, Bishops must
remember they wade into the political ring as the Vicars of Christ—teachers—and
not as the leaders of just another interest group trying to push yet another agenda
on the rest of the nation. Sadly,
to many outside and even within the Church, this is how they come across.
During this
fortnight for freedom, I urge you to reject the partisan politics that threaten the Church. I beg the
USCCB and all Catholics to look to our history and remember what freedom means
to us as not just Americans, but as Catholic Americans. Freedom means something so much more
beautiful than restricting elected officials. It means being free from the yoke of sin. And so I urge you to take this fortnight
to not only reflect on Christian freedom, but do something freed from
sin—something righteous. For it is only in losing our lives will we gain it, and
only in being slaves to righteousness shall we be truly free.
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