Dan Hanson
In the United States, Catholics have long been a staple demographic of the Democratic Party. This includes the racism of Irish immigrants against African-Americans during the Civil War, and a century later, the iconic liberalism of the Kennedy’s. In the 20th century, American Catholics became a bastion of the Labor Movement and the popular liberalism of the post-New Deal political landscape. Catholicism was a religion of immigrants, a religion of the oppressed, and a religion of workers.
Today, however, the common political image of the Catholic Church has become that of Bill O’Reilly, Robert Novak, and, most disgustingly, Rick Santorum. It appears that just as many Protestant denominations have come to pray at the altar of bigotry, nationalism and capitalism under the penumbra of the broad evangelical movement. Exponents of the Catholic Church are sadly beginning to move in the same direction.
While I no longer identify as a believer in God or Christianity, it disturbs me greatly that the Church I was brought up in, the church with traditions of social justice, liberation theology, and a great connection to the working people of the United States, has become connected more to misogyny, homophobia and the nascent American fascism of the Republican Party’s right wing.
Do Santorum and company’s positions on birth control and homosexuality have some basis in the social teachings of the Catholic Church? Of course they do, just as the oppression of Palestinians has a basis in Judaism and the myriad strains of Islamic fascism have their bases in Islam. Every faith’s traditions has aspects that are grotesque and wonderful, and political Catholicism has leaned towards the former.
Within American Christianity in general, this shift is one of the main factors that led me to lose my faith. But I still hope that this Church can maintain its brighter qualities by reflecting the positive messages of the New Testament.
I attended a Catholic high school, which taught us that teaching the Gospel is not done through spreading the bigotry and hatred that Santorum holds dear, but rather through volunteering at homeless shelters, opposing the death penalty, fighting violence and prejudice and teaching social justice.
I am not a believer in the traditional sense, but I can read, and these principles are what the New Testament teaches. And although it is a false claim, (I can also read the Constitution, which holds that church and state are separate) I could tolerate the common conservative cry that America must be governed as a Christian country if Christian governance meant that we did all we could to help the poor, ended the corporate greed that has lead to unearned privilege among the super-rich, treated all people as equals and neighbors, and did not worship the cult of military domination.
It is a tragic irony that these principles, which are the sum of Jesus’ biblical teachings, are those that are demonized as “socialism” by many of those who profess Christianity the loudest in our society. Those who do not observe Catholicism through these goals, but rather cling to attacks on women and gays are not Catholics or Christians of any form. They are fascist bigots who are a disgrace to this country as well as their faith.