Michael Sean Winters thinks Bishop Robert McElroy’s article on the religious duties of voters has merits, but I wonder after reading this paragraph:
Most important, a spiritual political conversion requires the orientation of soul that flows from the principle of solidarity that St. John Paul II powerfully outlined as a fundamental element of Catholic social teaching. This orientation reminds us that in society we must always understand ourselves to be bound together in God’s grace and committed, in the words of “On Social Concerns,” “to the good of one’s neighbor, with the readiness, in the Gospel sense, to lose oneself for the sake of the other rather than exploiting him.”
The implications of such a spiritual stance for discipleship in voting are clearly reflected in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church: “The principle of solidarity requires that men and women of our day cultivate a greater awareness that they are debtors of the society of which they have become a part.”
I get having a sense of belonging to the rest of the people in the society of which I am a member. I don’t get what grace has to do with this.
Is it really true that Christians understand themselves to be bound together with non-Christians in God’s grace? Or if we apply the antithesis that Augustine affirmed in his formulation of 2 cities, then are we only bound together in society with other Christians? That was the construction that led European Christians to wonder about where Jews and Muslims fit in Christendom, and John Calvin to wonder about where Michel Servetus fit in Geneva.
So once again, perhaps the Bishop needs to make clear the difference between the two kingdoms, one that affirms a spiritual antithesis and a social commonness. Blurring the two will get us to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.
Old Life 