Political Catholicism and renewing American politics

[Vouthon]

While the church itself in the US spans the partisan divide on a host of issues, this does not appear to be very clear to the average, ill-informed lay person if they - for instance - looked at many CAF forum posts which tend to be littered disproportionately with pro-conservative, pro-Libertarian right-wing economic/political agenda that has nothing to do with the life issues Catholics are expected to uphold but rather reflects the uniquely divisive ‘Republican/Democrat’ split in US politics into a very clear ‘pro-life and right-wing/pro-choice and left-wing’ situation largely unparrelled elsewhere in the world. This creates a very strange linkage between Catholicism and the right-wing sector of American politics that, while it might be expedient due to pro-life issues that are of pivotal importance, creates a false impression of Catholic teaching that seems to filter down to the masses.

While Catholics in the US may have to exercise their vote on behalf of the Republicans if it is thought that it will have tangible benefit vis-a-vis curtailment of abortion, it should be made absolutely clear that there is a lot wrong with the remainder of the Republican Party programme from a Catholic perspective, as with the Democrat Party too in a different sense. In fact more than a few Republican Party-specific policies outwith pro-life issues are actually quite far removed from Catholic Social Doctrine, not to suggest that the Democrats are any better. This should be better emphasised.

What I see, instead, is many Catholics on CAF assuming that the entire gamut of right-wing economic and political views in America is in accordance with Catholic teaching simply because the Republican Party, in general at least, takes a notably commendable position on life issues and on the family. This is an erroneous perception. Small wonder, then, that Pope Francis is falsely seen by the US media as a “communist” and “modernizing liberal” merely because he is voicing long-established Catholic social teachings on capitalism.

There is a problem here that needs addressed. I understand the difficulties given the bifurcation of American politics but I think that American republicans, while sticking to their guns on moral pro-life issues, should embrace principles closer to the social market economy in Germany which is supported by the Conservative (in European terns) Christian Democrats who are partly inspired by Catholic Social Teaching and grew out of the older Catholic Centre Party.

American conservatism could be renewed along Catholic lines - cutting out all that economic liberal, libertarian nonsense and taking a different approach to welfare and immigration more like German Conservatives - without losing its conservatism and centre-right position in politics.

Why can such a movement of Catholics not emerge within the Republican Party? I think it would bring a lot more support to the Republicans as well from swing voters and would be a worthy rival to the farther-right Tea Party movement. It would be an authentically Catholic Conservatism. The Republican Party, due to its pro-life political stance, looks like the best party to gradually mould towards a Catholic position.

This is happening, to an extent, with the ‘Blue Labour’ movement in the centre-left British Labour Party:

catholicherald.co.uk/issues/march-20th-2015/a-new-politics-for-strange-times/

**Germany went a different way after the war, building its approach around Catholic social thought and a form of social democracy. **It embraced subsidiarity…It Equally importantly, there was a balance of interests in corporate governance between workers and owners so that there could be genuine accountability and a common good within the firm…

Labour needs to repent of its exclusive reliance on an administrative state and the redistribution of money, often through back-end transfers to the private sector. Relationships, responsibility and reciprocity should be the guiding principles of welfare reform, where contribution plays a central role in the renewal of solidarity.

There is no more reasonable tradition from which to begin to fashion a politics of the common good than Catholic social thought. It is more rational and provides a firm secular footing for thinking about how to strengthen the institutions of society, of constraining the destructive power of states and markets while harnessing their necessity.

The change our country needs is that which has been nurtured and developed by the Catholic Church since the publication of Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. For the first time since Thomas Cromwell was chancellor, Catholic social, economic and political thought is entering the mainstream of British politics, subverting the orthodoxies of Left and Right as it moves.

**Blue Labour is the force within Labour that is championing it, but it is not an isolated movement. ** The bishops of the Church of England, with an unremarked ecumenism, adopted the framework of Catholic political economy in their pastoral letter on the elections. Tim Montgomerie, founder of the Conservative Home website, and the “Good Right” are moving into a mutual space, and the shape of a political consensus is becoming visible between previously estranged traditions. Religious and secular, Left and Right, Labour and Conservative, Catholic and Reformed. That is the politics of the common good in action.

While Labour seems the best fit in Britain, the Republican Party seems the best fit in America. But a lot has to change and people have to be willing to make the necessary changes. Could this ever happen?

 

[JackVk]

All it is is a best fit. Catholics supported the Franco regime in the Spanish civil war because the alternative was supporting the atheists and Marxists. You don’t side with one faction without losing a little bit of yourself by their questionable tenets rubbing off on you. That just happens.

 

[Vouthon]

All it is is a best fit. Catholics supported the Franco regime in the Spanish civil war because the alternative was supporting the atheists and Marxists. You don’t side with one faction without losing a little bit of yourself by their questionable tenets rubbing off on you. That just happens.

That is true but shouldn’t we strive to have movements, as have emerged here in Britain like ‘Blue Labour’ and ‘Red Tory’ as well as with the governing Christian Democrats in Germany, that are directly inspired by Catholic Social Teaching? I just don’t see people trying in the US. Support the Republican Party by all means given its pro-life stance but why sit and do nothing to mould it according to Catholic doctrine in other areas as well?

The parties have changed historically in the US. The Democrats were originally the party of the South and former slave-holders, the Republicans the Party of the North and abolitionists. Why can reform not occur again? Why need politics be static?

 

[Matilda_Bennett]

Please remember that discussions of particular political parties or figures are not allowed in the Social Justice forum. Thank you for your cooperation. This thread is now closed.