The Morning After
I was up late last night baking chocolate chip cookies, watching the returns, and trying to sort my feelings about the election. I was pleased, yes, but in a way that was hard for me to grasp.
As I watched the returns come in, the first thing I felt was a sense of satisfaction. I felt strongly that the judgment of this election needed to extend beyond the president himself to include his party. I agreed with James Fallows that “for America to return the incumbent party to power after this record would make a mockery of the idea of ballot-box accountability and two-party competition.” A majority of voters clearly agreed with that assessment.
A second emotion, which rushed in after the networks called it for Senator Obama, was pride. There was no question that this was a historic day, not merely for African-Americans, but for the nation. I thought of those-Black and White-who had marched and organized and even died to make this day possible. I thought once again of my own ancestral roots in antebellum Virginia and the historical burden those bloodlines entail. My reflection was made more poignant by Obama’s invocation of Ann Nixon Cooper during his acceptance speech. While there were many Nixon families in the South, it is not outside the realm of possibility that some of my ancestors owned some of Mrs. Cooper’s as property.
A third feeling, which emerged during the president-elect’s acceptance speech, was hope. The deep sobriety of his address conveyed to me that this was man who understands both the dangers and possibilities of the present moment in our nation’s history. We clearly have elected a man of singular intellectual and political gifts to guide us in a difficult time. From his writings and his speeches, one can clearly see that he is a man who listens well, consults widely and thinks deeply before he acts. His invocation of David Plouffe and David Axelrod during his speech reminded me of the impressive competence of his campaign organization. It is said that presidents govern in the same way they campaign. If that is so, we can hope for the restoration of a baseline-and much needed-competence to the day to day operations of the executive branch.
I don’t have a long laundry list of things I am looking for the new president to do. I’d like to see a significant change of direction in foreign and military policy. I don’t object to moving the tax burden upward a bit, but we need to pay as much attention to how to get the pie expanding again as to how to distribute it. Before we go overboard in re-regulating the financial markets we need to be very clear what our desired outcome is. Some form of health care reform is long, long overdue. While it’s hard to care about deficits during a recession, I’d like to place the nation on a path to fiscal sanity again, including a solution to the long-term structural deficits in the Medicare and Social Security programs. To the extent that the Republicans in Congress are willing to be pragmatic partners in dialogue, I think that most of these are areas where bipartisan solutions could emerge. We need the spirit of Eisenhower to re-emerge within the Republican Party.
I am not blind to Obama’s faults, particularly the way he embraced increasingly radical positions on the issue of abortion during the campaign, such as his endorsement of the Freedom of Choice Act. I think that Greg Sisk is right that Catholics and others with pro-life convictions who supported Obama will have a particular obligation to make themselves heard on this issue in the months to come. This election was certainly no mandate for federalizing abortion law and limiting the ability of states to find workable ways to embed respect for the unborn in law.
A final emotion, perhaps, is sadness that the election–as expected–aggravated the political fault lines within the Catholic community. I certainly understand the frustration of bishops with political leaders who-whether deliberately or out of true ignorance-misrepresent Catholic teaching in the public square. The collapse, however, of what initially appeared to be a strong episcopal consensus around the Faithful Citizenship document was not an edifying sight. Nor was the misuse or misunderstanding by many of key concepts from our tradition of moral theology: “intrinsic evil,” “prudential judgment,” “formal and material cooperation,” just to name a few. The catechetical collapse of the last few decades seems to have led to the loss of a language in which we can talk to one another. We are the poorer for it.
Which is one of the reasons I was glad to be baking cookies last night. The cookies are for a Christian prison retreat in which I am participating this weekend. They were a physical reminder to me that as important as it is for Catholics to “take their faith into the public square,” the country that has our first loyalty is not of this world. Activists of the left and right may articulate their respective visions of social reform, but we are here not so much to “build the Kingdom” as to be heralds of the One who is building it. It is true that this may sometimes require prophetic confrontation with the forces of evil. It may also, however, require contemplative withdrawal in the face of aggressive demands to “choose a side.” As Stanley Hauerwas once observed, the “Church does not have a social strategy, the Church is a social strategy.” To the extent that the way we engage in social reform simply apes the worst aspects of our political culture, we become the salt that loses its flavor. If that happens, we lose no matter how many elections we may win.
Peter,
“Amen” to all of the above; and Prayers for the Retreat.
Echoing Fr. Imbelli – I too say Amen! Your words are thought provoking and a call to the idea that who we are and what we do is not limited to an election. Yesterday I spoke to many people who felt otherwise – from both parties and that made me sad. The last line of our post spoke to my heart about that.
Many prayers for your prison retreat, for which I shall join you in general and at the appointed hour that I have agreed to pray with you at.
I am compelled to close with this quote from Annie Dillard and will stop there lest I head off topic!
“”Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”-Annie Dillard-
Rahm Emanuel=Chief of Staff does not bode well for any element of the vision which you outline, Peter. It immediately sets us up for a very partisan, nasty (given Emanuel’s history with the Clintons) administration, if this is Obama’s go-to guy.
Deeds, not words or “tone,” Peter.
What’s not edifying is seeing intelligent people getting played so dramatically by a Chicago pol.
See you on the other side.
I’ll add one thing that I think Obama must get done: humane immigration reform.
Peter Nixon rightly caalls attention to the issue about how the authors and interpreters of “Faithful Citizenship” deployed notions like intrinsic evil, etc. Those notions, coming from the discipline of moral theology, do not readily translate into a vocabulary attempting to address political practice. Political practice is always “en route.” There is no “bottom line.” Political practice is inherently ambivalent. Consider, for example, budgets. They are always open to reasonable challenge. There is no such thing as a perfect budget.
The document “Faithful Citizenship” betrays no sophistication in talking about political participation. Though it is not dreadful as it stands, it all too easily lent itself to the absurdities uttered by people like Bishops Morlino, Martino, and Finn. We have to hope that somehow the bishops of the US Catholic Conference gain some sophistication about the nature of political practice. If they fail to do so, the can only continue to do damage to the Church when they address political issues. They are right to claim a voice in political matters. But they have a duty to know what they’re talking about.
“I think that Greg Sisk is right that Catholics and others with pro-life convictions who supported Obama will have a particular obligation to make themselves heard on this issue in the months to come. ”
Yes. There was also a particular obligation before the election, one that, had it been shouldered with more unity and resolution, might have extracted some meaningful concessions from the victorious campaign. Too late now. Sisk sees some value in noble defeats, and I believe he will have more of them to celebrate in the coming months. I fear the lesson learned by pro-choice activists is that they were able to elect one of their own to the White House and achieve a solid majority in Congress, at no cost.
Excellent analysis, and so true on Faithful Citizenship. I fear the approach taken by many (including some bishops) will only hinder the pro-life cause.
First, a very thoughtful post from Peter.
I think Mark’s post was deeply disappointing: Emanual is an abrasive guy, but has he mellowed (see NPR this morning). To say that folks here and around the country haver been played for suckers is the kind of divisive and superior talk down that has turned many of our youn g(and old) away.
It looks like the Obamas have made one big decision: the new puppy is to be a golden retreiver mix/mutt,”Goldendoodle” who will be a therapy dog.
My old dog, Doodle, another loving mutt, smiled knowingly at that.
It reminded me of what I’ve previously wrote about the lessons of the former bestseller (soon to be a major motion picture) “Marley and Me” where the Catholic author finds lesons in the unconditional love of his often wildly boundin gand exasperationg pet.
How love sends a message!
To transmit our messages of faith effectively, I continue to submit that its credibility will depend not so much on the force or brilliance of how we present it but with the love of God and neighbor that we exemplify in speaking out.
If we, clergy or non-clergy, just talk at one another and our fellow citizens and leaders – and o not stop to listen- I fear we’ll not do well.
“To transmit our messages of faith effectively, I continue to submit that its credibility will depend not so much on the force or brilliance of how we present it but with the love of God and neighbor that we exemplify in speaking out.
If we, clergy or non-clergy, just talk at one another and our fellow citizens and leaders – and o not stop to listen- I fear we’ll not do well.”
Very true, Bob. Thx for the timely reminder. (Btw, I don’t often respond to you, but I read all your comments and enjoy them).
I’ll take this oppty to add what I should have said initially: Excellent post, Peter.
Re: post-partisanship. I think Senator McCain could play a large role in bridge-building, if he is so inclined (and to judge from his concession speech, he is). In a private exchange with another dotcommer a couple of weeks back, I remarked that in the financial crisis, Obama seemed to grow, and McCain seemed to shrink; and that it was becoming clear, to me at least, that the Senate is probably where his true vocation lay. I think he now has a historic opportunity to be a statesman in what I believe to be his natural environment.
Re: Rahm Emmanuel: he’ll be the bad cop.
Re:
“Nor was the misuse or misunderstanding by many of key concepts from our tradition of moral theology: “intrinsic evil,” “prudential judgment,” “formal and material cooperation,” just to name a few. The catechetical collapse of the last few decades seems to have led to the loss of a language in which we can talk to one another. We are the poorer for it.”
Peter,
I wonder if you just wrote in general so that there was something for everybody. You leave enough room so that each may choose her own. How can a true discussion take place with such ambiguity? Did Bernard understand you correctly or did you mean something else.
Similarly, your comment about catechetics. One way to look at catechetics is that too often it is without soul, merely drifting into juridicism and creating a battleground for scruples. Is that what you miss and that we are the poorer for it? I don’t think Catechetics is that complicated. Too often it is constructed to obfuscate the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount seems a wonderful Catechetic. But too often it is something that Catechetics tries to destroy.
Bill:
I suspect I was writing generally because it was late and I was still exhausted from staying up the night before to watch the election returns…:-)
I wrote a post a couple of weeks back talking about my frustration with how the term “intrinsic” was being used as a synonym for grave and also how it was incorrect to suggest that intrinsic evils were more binding on an individual’s conscience than evils apprehended through the use of prudential judgment. There were both bishops and laypeople who made these claims.
As to my reference to a collapse in catechesis, perhaps the phrase was inartful. Cathy Kaveny has talked about a discernable shift from “casuistic” to “prophetic” discourse with respect to how Catholics speak about moral questions, particularly in the area of social ethics. I think she’s right about that. But at the parish level, it’s also about the loss of the “casuistic” language. I think this is partly due to a shift at the theological level, partly due to a decline in the reception of the sacrament of reconciliation (which gave priests and penitents regular “practice” in applying these categories), and partly to how parish RCIA and adult ed programs now approach questions of moral theology. I suspect that a lot of us really don’t grasp the distinction between “formal” and “material” cooperation with evil, to the point where the two categories are just collapsed into one another.
All this sounds very intellectual, but it has real practical implications for how people wrestle with questions about who I can vote for and under what circumstances. When people lack a common language with which they can discuss their differences, they tend to fall into shouting at each other.
“as important as it is for Catholics to “take their faith into the public square,” the country that has our first loyalty is not of this world. Activists of the left and right may articulate their respective visions of social reform, but we are here not so much to “build the Kingdom” as to be heralds of the One who is building it. It is true that this may sometimes require prophetic confrontation with the forces of evil. It may also, however, require contemplative withdrawal in the face of aggressive demands to “choose a side.” ”
Interesting thought, Peter.
I guess to this question, I would say that there are many gifts but the same Spirit. All of us are called both to be in the world and also to pray without ceasing. But some of us have particular gifts in one area of discipleship or the other (or perhaps yet some other one). I’ve been thinking about the parable of the talents, that comes up as the Gospel in a couple of Sundays. Part of the genius of the Catholic Church is its ability to incorporate many different gifts and modes of spirituality into one edifice of living stone. And from that point of departure, I would say, whatever God has gifted you with – please, please use those gifts!
If your heart tells you that now is a time for withdrawal and contemplation, I don’t say you’re wrong – far from it. But there is also a need for witness and proclamation of the Good News, and inasmuch as Jesus entrusted it to us, and some of us are graced with gifts in this area, we *must* obey his command. Or so it seems to me.