If Protestants have problems holding public office in a constitutional republic because they feel compelled to bring their personal and private (as opposed to public) views into politics, then imagine the challenges that Roman Catholics have. Say hello to Paul Ryan who continually receives complaints that he is departing from 100 years of Roman Catholic social teaching. (And boy oh boy do they have social teaching, though I have yet to see Pope Francis weigh in on Ferguson, Missouri.) Michael Sean Winters has a bead on Ryan as a libertarian and Winters knows that libertarianism is antagonistic to the gospel — though I don’t think Winters has Trent in mind:
It is unclear to me whether or not these Catholic apologists for the GOP will give Ryan’s policies the cover he needs. Unlike Sen. Rick Santorum, who made social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage his calling card for many Catholic (and evangelical) voters, Ryan rose to prominence on the strength of these economic views that are clearly at odds with the Church. Already, it has been heartening to watch Ryan’s fetish for Ayn Rand become his Saul Alinsky: a radical association that causes people to question the intellectual heft and judgment of the candidate to whom the radical is tied. But Weigel and company have been working to force (think round peg, square whole) their economic views into compliance with Catholic social teachings for some time, and their influence has a long reach.
Still, one suspects these GOP Catholics mostly preach to the GOP choir. The real Catholic swing voter is more likely to listen to the counsel found in the Gospel of St. Matthew: “Whatever you do for these the least of my brethren, you do for me.” And, on that score, Ryan is a tough sell.
Michael Brendan Dougherty, to the right theologically and politically of Winters, has a different estimate of Ryan:
No longer is Paul Ryan the P90X-ripping, budget-slashing devotee of Ayn Rand that Democrats gleefully caricatured as someone who wanted to push grandma off a cliff. Today he’s the geeky white guy dancing badly at a black church, and then biting his lip and nodding to signal how much he is listening, and learning. He’s putting in an effort to expand his horizons personally. He is undergoing a political conversion, or at least a conversion on political rhetoric.
Quite literally, Paul Ryan experiences a kind of Come-To-Frank-Luntz moment when someone asks him who he is talking about when he refers to some people as “takers.” Ryan had in the past adopted the language of “makers and takers” to describe people who are paying more in taxes than they receive in benefits, and people who are receiving more benefits than what they pay. Ryan says this language was just in the air at the time he adopted it. And it was. A Nation of Takers was the scorching title to a sobering (and sober) book by Nicholas Eberstadt about the shape of America’s entitlement state. Eberstadt’s book is exactly the kind of doomsday look into the spreadsheets that Ryan was getting into then.
Today, Ryan won’t disavow the math, exactly, but he has discarded the implied insult he attached to it.
Irrespective of Ryan’s adherence to the church’s social teaching, isn’t the demand especially from the Roman Catholic left a replay of what Houston’s Baptist ministers feared about John F. Kennedy? If a Roman Catholic legislator or executive or justice is supposed to be obedient to Roman Catholic social teaching, the teaching of the papacy, doesn’t that suggest that Roman Catholics are supposed to be submissive to a foreign prince? Not to mention the application of Roman Catholic teaching to public life in the United States through federally elected officials seems to be a breach of religious disestablishment? (And doesn’t that ironically make the Roman Catholic left, who are generally supportive of Vatican 2’s teaching on religious freedom and don’t care a lot for a hierarchical church, another iteration of Roman Catholic traditionalism which stands for the authority of the papacy and bishops?)
One additional irony here is the way that Roman Catholics in the U.S. — at least some of them — expect folks like Ryan to adhere closely to church teaching but they don’t have the same expectation for Roman Catholic theologians. Paul Griffiths ruffled a few feathers last summer when he asked Roman Catholic theologians to follow the lead and authority of their bishops. That seems only fair if so many are going to fault Ryan for departing from church teaching about economics (even though the performance of the Vatican Bank Institute for Religious Works suggested that the bishops didn’t know economics so well). But then again, in an area where the church could enforce its teaching — at its teaching institutions — the will is not there, which so far is no different from Paul Ryan’s bishop who apparently gives the Congressman a long leash. (How Jason and the Callers keep up with all this audacity is anyone’s guess.)
Old Life 
Bonhoeffer—-This distinction between private person and bearer of an office as normative for behavior is foreign to Jesus Christ. The Lord does not say a word about such a distinction. Jesus Christ addresses his disciples as people who have left everything behind to follow him. ‘Private’ and ‘official’ spheres are all completely subject to Jesus’ command.
leave room for His wrath. For it is written: Vengeance belongs to Me; I will repay, says the Lord. But If your enemy is hungry, feed him.
If he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
For in so doing you will be heaping fiery coals on his head.
21 Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good. Everyone must submit to the powers, for there is no authority except from God, and powers that exist are predestined by God. 2 So then, the one who resists the powers is opposing God’s command to submit, and those who oppose God’s command will bring judgment on themselves….The powers are God’s servant, an avenger that brings wrath on the one who does wrong….
knowing the hour, it is already time for you to wake up from sleep, because now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. 12 The night is nearly over, and the daylight is near, so let us discard the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.
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Where’s Bryan when we need him?
10,000 words on reconciling the Catholic Right & Left should do it.
Every Catholic dollar that goes to a government to care for the poor is a dollar that is not available for the Bishop of Bling to spend on construction or to pay defense attorneys and settlements with plaintiffs.
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Darryl,
Somehow you’re probably begging the question by assuming a Protestant idea that discipline is necessary for the church to be the church, or something. Remember, it’s begging the question to question Rome in any sense because you are gratuitously assuming that Rome isn’t what she says she is, when the evidence clearly is that Rome is what she says she is—except when its not, and then you can ignore it because evidence only counts when it is evidence for it. Or something.
C’mon, that isn’t clear enough for you?
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Robert, but I thought inquisition was discipline.
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Erik channeling Bryan:
Your error is in asserting that there is such a thing as a Catholic “Right” or Catholic “Left”. For there is but one holy, Apostolic, Roman Catholic Church and Her Bishop in Located in Rome. The fact that you do not know what She believes on these matters is not evidence that she does not believe something really great on these matters and merely renders you a dunce for not understanding as such.
In the piece of crap,
Bryan
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Hi Dr. Hart: I was wondering what your thoughts on Mr. Patrick J. Buchanan’s latest column in the American Conservative Magazine, website? When you have time to peruse it—here is the link.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/a-secular-age/
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David, it’s Patrick Deneen.
This tightens my jaws:
Why isn’t it possible to say that Massachusetts Bay is the logical outcome of Protestantism? Or what about Alexander VI the inevitable outcome of papal supremacy?
This is more rant than substance, though I respect a lot of what Deneen writes. Just more Roman Catholic anti-modernism from Roman Catholic individuals who don’t realize their solidarity and submission to bishops that embraced modernity.
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This quote from Deneen’s article is striking:
Ironically, the logic of Protestantism eventually turned against its own institutionalized origins in the churches, since such a setting comes to be seen as merely an arbitrary organization that seeks to exert social control over the individual.
Has the man not talked to any average lay RCs? What about RC academics? This is their view of the church. Hello Council of Women Religious.
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D.G. Hart,
I appreciate the response! You helped clarify many things for me. I was a bit confused because I do not have the history knowledge that you do. What you said sure makes sense to me. I apologise for getting the author wrong. Must not read the by-line carefully. Oops!
I was curious as to what a two-kingdoms assessment of what Mr. Deenen wrote would be; being that I not only think 2k to be biblical, in terms of my limited knowledge, but also the best approach to things cultic and cultural.
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David, I think the 2k response would be to follow Ecclesiastes in its depressing message of “all is vanity.” You can never set expectations for this life too low. Just ask the 2014 Phillies.
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“…just ask the 2014 Phillies…” Or the 2014 White Sox – just as bad a record. This has been a weird wet Summer, following a snowy vortex Winter, slam-dunked by some badly played baseball. The only one leaving the season in a triumphant way is Jeeters.
On a different note regarding the quote from Deneen’s slam against protestant indifference: What about the baptizing’/catechizin’/marryin’/buryin’-only Catholic pew-sitters? I’ve yet to meet one run-of-the-mill RC lay person who can present a proper apologetic for the papal structure of his chuch, IF they even understand enough to open the argument. I suppose one could say that they didn’t really have any say in the matter pre-VAT II, but what about since then? It’s been a myriad of make-it-up-as-you-go-along ever since.
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