Thought Exercise

Primary Mission of the Catholic Laity: Apply Principles Taught by the Church to the Secular World. That, to me at least, was the general underlying theme of the insightful lecture I attended last night given by Fr. Michael Sweeney, O.P. at St. Dominic's church. Within the realm of American politics, this is an incredibly challenging goal, especially when one considers the inherent conflict between the traditional emphasis that our culture places on individualism (which all too often has lead to destructive self-centeredness -- see, e.g., the Sexual Revolution) and the prime importance that the Church gives to self-sacrifice and doing things for the common good.

It is, of course, important to make a distinction between principle and doctrine. Although both are taught by the Church and can be upheld by Her as infallible truths, it seems to me that principle tends to transcend religion. As such, even an atheist can embrace and believe in a principle that the Church recognizes as being from God. The most obvious example would be the prohibition against murder (which, legally defined, is the intentional killing of another person with malice).

Because of the failure of many American Catholics to make a distinction between principle and doctrine, self-identified and elected Catholic politicians like Mario Cuomo, John Kerry and presumably Gavin Newsome have pretty much "gotten away" with making convoluted public statements about personally being against something that the Church also opposes (e.g., abortion) but nevertheless supporting its legality. In the view of these politicians, the use of their public authority to apply a transcending principle that is dogmatically upheld by the Church equates to an impermissible imposition of religious doctrine. This is plainly untrue, and it’s also scandalous to the extent that many other Catholics have been persuaded into embracing the same false belief. That being said, while no one of us in the Catholic laity can claim perfection in carrying out the primary mission we have been given by the Church, those Catholics who refuse to even engage in the mission by raising the false legal pretense of "separation of church and state" would seem to be especially culpable.