Catholic school nuns practically canonized John F. Kennedy, never ceasing to remind us students that he was the first Catholic President. By all accounts, Biden is a more devout Catholic and a more devoted family man than the philandering JFK. Yet, most white Catholics voted for Trump — and the more frequently they attend Mass, the more likely they are to be MAGA voters.
If lay Catholics are tepid in their support, many clergy are downright hostile toward the President, adopting what Timothy Busch of the right-wing Napa Institute calls “in-your-face Catholicism.” A large majority of the Council of Catholic Bishops voted to deny Biden communion with some priests claiming that “you can’t be a Catholic and a Democrat”. A few clergy believe that Catholic leaders discredited the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency and that this helped give “rise to the violence at the U.S. Capitol.” Who could miss the Christian symbols on display at the insurrection, including a statue of the Infant of Prague?
The Faithful Citizenship Document and a 1994 Vatican Directive state that priests and the Church “should refrain from actively engaging in politics or endorsing parties and candidates.” The Pope warned against the communion vote but many clergy simply ignored the Vatican and the directives as if they are unaccountable to any earthly power. Thanks in part to Leonard Leo, SCOTUS has a large MAGA Catholic contingent with some members behaving like unaccountable clergy. A staunch supporter of the Christian Nationalist agenda, Leo is co-chair of the Federalist Society and was instrumental in guiding Thomas through his Supreme Court nomination hearings under Bush senior and even more involved in shepherding Roberts and Alito under Bush junior. It’s said that he simply provided Trump with the names of his Supreme Court nominees, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, and Trump followed his direction.
When Justice Alito says it is the job of the government “to return our country to a place of godliness,” he agrees with the thirty percent of American Catholics who adhere or sympathize with Christian Nationalist ideas. They completely are mostly agreed that “the U. S. government should declare America a Christian nation’’ and that “God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American Society.” It’s clear that Christian Nationalism is driving people away from organized religion, especially young women.
American Catholicism has never been free of politics.
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In 1933, Dorothy Day co-founded the left-leaning Catholic Workers Movement. The principles of Christian service that she promoted can be found in the Sermon on the Mount and Mathew 25. Her purpose: “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” The Dorothy Day way to return “our country to a place of godliness” is not by government order but by the example of living a life of Christian service. “In-your-face Catholicism” is anathema to this version of the Church.
Historically, nuns outnumbered priests 3 to 1 and performed most of the back breaking labor of Christian service but many earned advanced degrees at Catholic Universities and were teachers, doctors, nurses, and administrators who ran schools, hospitals, orphanages and charities. Since 1965, their number has declined from 180,000 to around 42,000 today with an average age of 80 and only 1% under age 40.
Women are more empathetic and compassionate than men while their presence is known to alter institutional culture. With the departure of nuns, the Catholic culture of Christian service changed forever while church politics became more stridently right-wing. Hospitals were secularized, orphanages and parish schools closed or often transformed into prep schools for rich kids causing the Church to relinquish much of its relevancy in the daily lives of Catholics.
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In contrast to the arrogance of many clergy surrounding the Church’s sexual assault scandals, the humility and humble service of nuns has served as an inspiration to generations of Catholics. As one woman I know put it, “the reason I’m still a Catholic is because of the nuns.” No longer able to provide an inexpensive Catholic education to working class parishioners or inspire them with a message of Christian service, some misguided clergy have tried to recapture a measure of relevancy by offering a political message.
Nationalism in the 20th century was always about the race/ethnicity of the “real citizens.” In their book Taking America Back for God, Whitehead and Perry argue that Christian Nationalism “gives divine sanction to ethnocentrism and nativism.” A number of their survey respondents doubted that non-English speakers could ever be “truly American.” MAGA Catholics should remember that the first U.S. citizen to be canonized a saint was an Italian immigrant, Mother Cabrini, “the patron saint of immigrants.” Before government-funded social services, she established hospitals, orphanages and founded 67 missionary institutions to serve the sick and poor. Fortunately or unfortunately for today’s Church, many Catholics still prefer the Christian service vision of Mother Cabrini to the Christian politics of Leonard Leo and Justice Alito.
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