Tomorrow is Election Day, when the American people will "quietly (wield) their staggering power," as Walter Mondale once put it. He said those words in defeat, after being denied a second term as Vice President by the U.S. electorate. During this latest primary season someone, I don't remember who, said that the best speech a candidate gives is often the one given in concession. If this is true, and I tend to believe it is, it's because of our political system that puts public service before personal ambition. The vanquished often congratulates the winner, gives a summation of the reasons why he or she ran, thanks those who helped in the campaign and vows to either return to the fight or else assist from the sidelines. Like Vice President Mondale, they usually express humility, and acknowledge, often quite eloquently, that they were a part of a reality bigger than themselves, that they are merely servants of the people, not their masters. This is the ideal, I know - an ideal that is too often put on a shelf to collect dust once victory has been accepted.
Ideals are important, though, and I'm not sure Americans in 2016 are idealistic enough. Ideals are what guide us on the straight path or else are beacons to point us to the way back if we have gone astray. No one, short of our Lord and our Lady have ever managed to live their ideals perfectly, but for the rest of us virtue lies in the honest effort we put forth to remember who we are, where we come from and what we stand for, and then embody those things in how we live. This particular ideal, that it is the staggering power of the people that decides their leadership, and for how long, which is meant to keep the political class humble and focused on the things that really matter.
In other words public servants are meant to be exactly that - servants. They are not in their respective positions to gain private advantage but to offer their abilities for the public good. I would even go further and say the they are not there to advance a purely political or ideological agenda. Ideology implemented or institutionalized for its own sake is an invitation to totalitarian dictatorship. Presidents or governors may have some guiding political philosophy or economic theory that they believe works best, but these are tools that help them do their job - to improve the lot of the people they serve. While the Constitution isn't a sacred text, it is a legal document, the highest civil document in the United States. It is the guiding framework by which we judge all other civil laws. To pursue some fundamental change of how the nation functions apart from the Constitution takes us down the road of national amnesia. Of course the amending or, even the complete revision of the Constitution by a special convention of the States is possible. Right now I'm not at all sure that the Constitution as written really plays any meaningful part in how laws are formulated and policies implemented. We have forgotten who we are and what our national purpose is. We are being guided by either ideology or expedience, but rarely by the rule of law. It is a state of might makes right, with people seeking office too often driven by a desire for power - which might be worse than the crooked politician tempted by mammon.
The great law which supersedes all is the Law of Love laid out in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It would be a gross error, though, to assume that Christians want, or should want, a theocracy. If we look at what Peter and Paul write in their letters on the topic of the relationship between the community of believers and the state we find a kind of semi—detached, go a long with the flow but don’t get swept away by it attitude being promoted. Of course Christians were on the outside of political power looking in at that point. They had been expelled from the synagogue and were considered a suspect cult by the Roman civil authorities. It made sense to lay low and not cause waves. If we were asked to offer sacrifices of incense to the emperor, or some other action that was clearly contradictory to the faith, Christians were to resist, even to the point of martyrdom, but otherwise believers were to strive to be peaceful citizens and good neighbors, praying for the good of the nation and the king (though there is evidence that Christians did participated in acts of civil disobedience against Roman authorities during periods of relative peace).
If we go back to ancient Israel, when God’s people did control the levers of power in their own land, God didn't force a particular form of government on His people. God was considered the sovereign during the time of Moses and the judges, but how the practical day to day running of the tribes was to be handled was left up to them. In fact it was Jethro, Moses’ gentile father-in-law who suggested to him how to organize the leaders of the people, so that the burden of governance placed on Moses' shoulders could be delegated. When the tribes clamored for a king, so they could be like the rest of the nations, God didn't forbid it, even though He warned against it.
In each instance God was to be consulted, either through referring to scripture or else through the prophets, but He wasn't, and isn't, a dictator. He gives us the freedom to organize civil society as we see fit. Gospel principles are to guide us through this process, but doesn't bind us to a procedure.
Such an arraignment only works if the civil authority understands that it functions under God. Not under the Church as an institution, but under divine wisdom as expressed in the natural law, at the very least. A nation only really prospers, and despotism avoided when presidents, prime ministers, and even monarchs, bow to an authority greater than themselves. All the great dictatorships of the twentieth century somehow demanded the loyalty of the people at the expense of all other possible allegiances. This included ties to family as well as the obedience due to God.
If there is a crisis right now, it is rooted in the fact that the United States, in its civic life, has lost touch with this basic concept. It has interpreted freedom of religion as meaning freedom from religion. More and more government is placing obedience to its laws above the obligation of the Christian to follow God's. And I'm not just talking about in regards to the contraceptive mandate or gay marriage. There are places in our nation where you can be arrested for feeding the homeless. In 2012 New York City put restrictions on restaurants donating food to soup kitchens and shelters, because it's better for the homeless to starve to death immediately than risk the high blood pressure from too much salt later on. We are becoming a nation where fulfilling the basics that the Gospel requires is becoming more and more difficult. If obstacles are placed in the way of even performing the basic works that Mercy requires, how can we ever hope to address the weightier issues before us?
The present situation reminds us that the Church of Christ is on pilgrimage in this world, even as Her members call the nations of the earth “home.” These are only temporary ones, true, but we still have the responsibility to be politically engaged. We have the obligation to ensure the rights of the Church to function, unmolested by the civil authorities, while Her members are free to promote justice and contribute to the common good of the societies in which we live. We should be careful though not to confuse things. Because a civil government or political movement seems to share certain Gospel values, or holds the Church in favor, doesn't mean that they represent “God’s Party.”
The Church functions best in a political culture informed by the spirit of servant leadership, as the Church calls it, that I highlighted above. Unfortunately the spirit of our age is rather conformed to the notion that the goal of the politician is to gain or maintain political power, then organize and control the social order - either by implementing a rigid ideology or (and possibly in addition to) for the purpose of personal economic gain. As long as the Church is seen as an aid to achieving these ends, She will be in the good graces of the civil authority. If the Church is perceived as standing in the way, she will be at the very least marginalized or at worst persecuted. There are exemptions, I'm sure, but for the most part the politically powerful today see the Church is an alien in a strange land and will either tolerate, use, or crush Her as the shifting political tides dictate.
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Our Vice Provincial has been conducting the yearly visit, mandated by our Salesian constitutions, so I've been writing this in snatches. If I'm rambling a bit, that is at least partially the reason why. While time to write has been at a premium, so has time to read. Judging from headlines what I've noticed is that Catholics are either being told that voting the pro—life candidate is a moral imperative, even if the standard bearer is suspect, or else this election is proof of how we've put our faith in the wrong thing — namely the power of politics, divorced from Gospel values, to effect positive change. One headline, quoting the psalms, reminded us to not put our trust in horses or warrior’s strength. I've tended to be be in the latter camp. I wrote before that I couldn't vote for an aggressively pro abortion candidate — and I could maybe pull the lever for a “pro—choice” candidate if his or her opponent shared this position, and they represented the less harmful of the options available. My dilemma this year is over not only who to vote for, but even if to vote at all — a decision I will keep between God and myself.
We should not put our faith in horses or warrior’s strength, nor in political platforms or ideologies. We shouldn't even put our faith in the staggering power we wield in the voting booth, especially not now. This is so, not simply because we are fallible people who can make the wrong choice, or that no matter who we choose seems to be the wrong choice. It's because, collectively, we have forgotten who we are. We have forgotten our own Constitution, and the principles that under gird it. We have forgotten how to integrate our life in Christ with our public responsibilities. We have been so caught up with protecting and expanding our individual rights that we've forgotten the responsibility we have to the common good. We have been so conditioned to believe that separation of Church and state means a divorce of religious values from public life that we will vote for politicians whose policies violate the very foundation of human dignity.
I've been writing a great deal over the last six months or so about the political crisis in our nation. I've tried to be non—partisan in my analysis, and if I've betrayed a bias, I apologize. I don't think complete impartiality is possible for us mere humans, but I still try. I do sincerely believe though the present crisis is a bipartisan affair that can't be pined on one side or another.
I don't believe that the problem is the system, either. As imperfect as our Constitution is, it works pretty well if we use it correctly. But in an age when vice is considered virtue and licence is confused for liberty, the political system becomes a mechanism of self serving tyranny. The renewal of the political life of the United Sates will only happen when we recognize that there is a power greater than the government, even bigger than we the people. The reform of the political system will only happen through the revival of faith that points us, and the culture, to a standard outside and greater than ourselves.
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