From and of the ghetto, even in wealth. St. Patrick's Day Parade, New York City, 1913. John D. Crimmins, contractor, Catholic layman and philanthropist; John Cardinal Murphy Farley, and William Sulzer, governor of New York
Something different has been going on this election. It's something we haven't really seen since the 1960 election, when the country unfortunately elected John F. Kennedy to the Presidency.
No, I'm not going on to analyze the disastrous Kennedy presidency, although I do have to wonder how a guy with such lecherous personal behavior and whom nearly got us into a shooting war with the Soviet Union. . . twice, and who did get us into the swamp of Vietnam, still comes across as a hero, but that's another story that I've already written about.
Now, what's different is that for the first time in a very long time Catholic figures, including clerics are starting to address politics from the ambo and the pen/computer.
About time.
Okay, should not Catholics continue on reading this? That presumes anyone reads these entries in the first place, a big assumption, but this actually tacks pretty close to the purpose of the blog, so maybe so. And it won't be strictly a "Catholic things" in any event.
People speak about the "Catholic Vote", but there hasn't been one for a really long time. Since 1960 more or less. When there was one, prior to 1960, that vote tended to be a minority vote in opposition, something Catholics have forgotten. That was because Catholics were on the outside. Indeed, people at that time spoke of the Catholic Ghetto.
The Catholic Ghetto wasn't a physical place, although a Catholic Ghetto was real enough in a lot of places, but an intellectual one. There are a lot of Catholics in the United States, to be sure, and there has been a significant number ever since the Great Famine in Ireland. There was a trickle of Catholics in the country before that, but not really all that many. Indeed, Catholics in North America were most strongly represented in those places where the French had colonized or that Spain had, which of course had long included some areas of the United States, which following the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican War would include a larger and larger area (our purchase of Alaska, interestingly, would bring in the sole region of our country where the Russian Orthodox are strongly represented, mostly amongst native populations). Indeed, riffing off of Orthodoxy here, what I'd note about the Catholic Ghetto is that there was also an Orthodox one, and a Jewish one as well, all in the sense I've noted here.
Salt Lake's Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral, in its "Greek Town", a physical and cultural space in Salt Lake. Salt Lake still retains a well regarded Greek Orthodox elementary school.
St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Denver, a Polish church with a high school (which it still retains) in a once heavily Irish and Slavic neighborhood in Denver.
Still, prior to the American Civil War Catholics were openly and harshly detested. Forgotten now, anti Catholic propaganda was common and often incredibly vile.
The Civil War started to change that, but the change was slow. Also forgotten now, the American Civil War featured a very strong religious aspect to it in that the contestants prior to the war often made strong resort to religious arguments, which for the most part omitted Catholics and therefore tended to be strongly worded arguments from different Protestant positions in various regions. Indeed, accordingly to at least one student of the era the results of the war in the South actually had the result of changing the religious makeup of the region, which is not to say that it made religion in the South weaker but rather to say that it weakened one Protestant branch while strengthening another. At any rate, the valiant efforts of Irish and German troops, which followed up on concerns over their loyalty under oppression during the Mexican War, had the impact of causing a lot of the open hostility towards Catholics to back off, but not end.
Indeed, as late as the late 19th and early 20th Century Catholic politicians in a lot of the United States were pretty careful about being over identified with their religion. It's been noted, for example, that even in very egalitarian Wyoming (of that period) an early and successful Catholic politician kept his distance form over open identification with his church. That may not have been admirable, but that sort of thing was pretty common.
Things began to change more significantly after World Wand before World War Two such that strong identification with Catholicism became less of a liability. Indeed, this was so much the case that New York National Guard chaplain, Father Francis P. Duffy, would be regarded as a great hero of World War One and his statute would be placed in Times Square. Presidential candidate Al Smith didn't try to shy away from his religion in his campaigns against Franklin Roosevelt, and he still remains a popular politician today.
As has been noted elsewhere on this blog, it was World War Two that really changed Catholic fortunes, and the fortunes of other minorities, in the United States, both figuratively and literally. Prior to the war, Catholics were a typical American minority in some ways in that they did not generally break into what today we'd call "white collar" professions. By and large, they became middle class, but middle class in the blue collar world, with exceptions for medicine and law (exceptions which have been and remain common for other minorities). The G.I. Bill, however, changed that. With the G. I. Bill, the Serviceman's Readjustment Act, Catholics started going to college and broke into general American life. This is true, of course, of other minorities that had tended to be strictly or nearly exclusively blue collar prior to that time as well.
And Kennedy was the sign of that in the 1960s Presidential campaign. He was young, seemingly energetic (he was also subject to severe health problems that were kept secret). And he was Catholic. However, as has been explored before, his speech in front of the Southern Baptists neutralized that, and gave us the Catholic politician. And beyond that, it gave us a sort of model of the modern American politician, which endorses the compromise of deeply held beliefs in the name of the expedient and popular by allowing, indeed nearly mandating, their balkanization.
Ever since then we've had the concept that Catholics, and others, could basically act against their stated beliefs, in membership in a religion states a set of beliefs, and if it is sincere it does, and still be in good standing. This has been the case over a long series of political developments which have taken us further and further from what the Catholic religion holds to be acceptable morally. Most of these positions are very simple to discern and are few in number, but politicians have sold themselves out on them least they lose votes. Boiled down to their current essence, Catholics hold that abortion is murder, and so is euthanasia. They also hold that same sex marriage if contrary to the natural law and not marriage at all.
Now, there's clearly more to the Catholic faith (and the Orthodox one) and its moral views than that, but that's what are the bulk of what Catholics have taken to calling "the non negotiables". No Catholic holds that its easy, in this current political environment, to find a candidate who really hold to all our views, but plenty of Catholics and Catholic politicians believe that they can act on compromises and not be acting contrary to their faith in what Catholics and Orthodox view as a "grave manner". Put another way, the position hold by Vice Presidential candidate Kaine on at least a couple of these issues is so contrary to Catholic beliefs that at least a couple of Priests have publicly stated that he shouldn't show up in their communion lines.
What has been absent all of these years, however, is a concerted and blunt effort to address these matters with some authority. It's finally come, but it's rather late in the day.
There's little excuse for this coming so late, however. It's long overdue and more than a little late.
As an example of what we're currently seeing, in at least two of the local Catholic parishes the pastor addressed politics this past Sunday in their homilies. In the one that I heard, the homily was largely based on the reading of Monsignor Charles Pope's September 29, 2016 article in the National Catholic Register, entitled Vote as a Catholic with a Catholic Moral Vision and subtitled Be Catholic. Vote as a Catholic with a Catholic moral vision. Advance the Kingdom of God. It's a strongly worded piece, to say the least. Some quotes from that article.
Satan is no idiot. He has successfully convinced most Catholics that moral issues are political issues. And in so doing he has successfully shut down a huge amount of moral exhortation and reflection. This is especially true in a political season such as this, when the distinctions between the candidates on critical moral issues could not be clearer or sharper.
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