Suffering With Joy

Archbishop Chaput on Catholic Social Teaching

June 23, 2011

Archbishop Chaput of Denver

Archbishop Chaput of Denver isn’t one to mince words.  On June 21, 2011, he addressed the Catholic Social Workers Association with his usual knock-’em-out-of-the-park style.  To read his entire speech click on the link in this paragraph.  All Catholics should care about what he said because the issues he raised affect all of us no matter our state in life.

Some of my favorite parts of his speech titled “Renewing the Mission of Catholic Charities”:

Everything in Catholic social ministry begins and ends with Jesus Christ. If it doesn’t, it isn’t Catholic. And if our social work isn’t deeply, confidently and explicitly Catholic in its identity, then we should stop using the word “Catholic.” It’s that simple. [Bravo, bravissimo, good Bishop.  Thank you for the word, "simple". This statement is directly in line with Pope Benedict XVI's mission to restore the Catholic identity in the modern world.]

Real hope has nothing to do with empty political slogans. It has nothing to do with our American addictions to progress or optimism or positive thinking. [Amen.  It's now the long season of Pentecost where we hear every Sunday in the sacred liturgy what it means to live the Gospel.  Christianity is not a political movement and progress, optimism, and positive thinking won't get us to heaven.]

Here’s my first point: What we do becomes who we are….We need to realize that what applies to individuals can apply just as easily to institutions and organizations. The more that Catholic universities or hospitals mute their religious identity, the more that Catholic social ministries weaken their religious character, the less “Catholic” they are, and the less useful to the Gospel they become. [Let's make sure that Catholic hospitals and nursing homes hang crucifixes in the patient rooms, have a recognizably Catholic chapel, don't perform vasectomies and abortions, don't prescribe contraceptives, and don't starve and dehydrate patients to death or kill them by any other means under the guise of "compassion."  If we co-operate with the culture of death we become killers ourselves.]

[Second point:] The individual is sacred but not sovereign. For Catholics, every human person — no matter how disabled, poor or flawed — has a unique, inviolable dignity. That “sanctity of life” and the basic rights that go with it begin at conception and continue through natural death….

…The state has no right to interfere with their legitimate work, even when it claims to act in the name of individuals unhappy with Catholic teaching. The individual’s right to resent the Church or reject her beliefs does not trump the rights of the Catholic community to believe and live according to its faith.

That brings me to my third point, and it gives context to the other two: A new kind of America is emerging in the early 21st century, and it’s likely to be much less friendly to religious faith than anything in the nation’s past.

…Another British Catholic, the historian Paul Johnson, noted that America was “born Protestant,” but it was never a Christian confessional state. America was something unique in modern history. It was a moral society without an established Church. [Those morals came from the Judeo-Christian heritage and were freely portrayed in film, literature, theater, television and music until shortly after the mid-twentieth century.  How many of today's works can we say that about?

We have thrown ourselves headlong into the culture of hell committing increasingly horrifying depravities against one another without blinking an eye.  Conscience has been extinguished in a large part of the population.]

America could afford to be “secular” in the best sense precisely because its people were overwhelmingly religious….

But I do think we’re watching the end of a very old social compact in American life: the mutual respect of civil and sacred authority and the mutual autonomy of religion and state. That’s dangerous, and here’s why.

American life has always had a deep streak of unhealthy individualism, rooted not just in the Enlightenment, but also in Reformation theology. In practice, religion has always moderated that individualism. It has given the country a social conscience and a common moral compass.

Religion has also played another key role. Individuals, on their own, have very little power in dealing with the state. But communities, and especially religious communities, have a great deal of power in shaping attitudes and behavior. Churches are one of those “mediating institutions,” along with voluntary associations, fraternal organizations and especially the family, that stand between the power of the state and the weakness of individuals. They’re crucial to the “ecology” of American life as we traditionally understand it.

And that’s why, if you dislike religion or resent the Catholic Church, or just want to reshape American life into some new kind of experiment, you need to use the state to break the influence of the Church and her ministries…. [This is why we need real Catholic politicians with a strong grounding in philosophy, the natural law, classic rhetoric, and a heart docile to the Holy Spirit.  They must be people of regular prayer who honor the dignity of the human person. This is the proper role of the laity who must be in the world but not of the world.]

The basis of Catholic social doctrine is really quite straightforward. Speaking to Caritas International earlier this year, Father Raneiro Cantalamessa, OFM Cap., the Pope’s personal preacher, said that “Christianity doesn’t begin by telling people what they must do, but what God has done for them. Gift comes before duty.” In other words, our love for God and our love for neighbor begin as responses to love we’ve already received. [Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta started every day with prayer, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and Mass before going into the streets.  She immersed herself in the Holy Trinity, receiving the grace of God to sustain her love of neighbor.]

Chaput goes on to articulate Catholic social doctrine and make many other good points, but I’m going to stop here. Just read the whole speech.  Thank God for this bishop because he is everything a bishop should be.  Let’s pray for all our bishops, current and future, that they speak with such openness and clarity to the issues we face.

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V. Praised be Jesus Christ!

R. Now and forever. Amen.

(Click on the link above to read why I am ending my posts with this.)

Tags: Catholic Church, Catholic social teaching, politics

Archbishop Chaput on the Health Care Bill

March 15, 2010

A HT to Father Zuhlsdorf over at What Does the Prayer Really Say?  for alerting us to Archbishop Chaput’s latest column on the health care (or is it death care?) bill.  From the Denver diocesan site we have his letter which will be published in the March 17 Denver Catholic Register.  Please send this on to every Catholic and pro-life person you know.

This is a good week to fast, pray and suffer so that God will intervene and this bill will not pass.  Stupak’s 12 are down to 5 and many “deals” (bribes?) are being cut behind closed doors.  Meanwhile, God bless Archbishop Chaput for his outspokenness.  The emphases in the text are mine.

Archbishop Chaput of Denver

The Senate version of health-care reform currently being forced ahead by congressional leaders and the White House is a bad bill that will result in bad law.  It does not deserve, nor does it have, the support of the Catholic bishops of our country. Nor does the American public want it.  As I write this column on March 14, the Senate bill remains gravely flawed.  It does not meet minimum moral standards in at least three important areas: the exclusion of abortion funding and services; adequate conscience protections for health-care professionals and institutions; and the inclusion of immigrants.

Groups, trade associations and publications describing themselves as “Catholic” or “prolife” that endorse the Senate version – whatever their intentions – are doing a serious disservice to the nation and to the Church, undermining the witness of the Catholic community; and ensuring the failure of genuine, ethical health-care reform. By their public actions, they create confusion at exactly the moment Catholics need to think clearly about the remaining issues in the health-care debate.  They also provide the illusion of moral cover for an unethical piece of legislation.

As we enter a critical week in the national health-care debate, Catholics across northern Colorado need to remember a few simple facts.

First, the Catholic bishops of the United States have pressed for real national health-care reform in this country for more than half a century. They began long before either political party or the public media found it convenient.  That commitment hasn’t changed.  Nor will it.

Second, the bishops have tried earnestly for more than seven months to work with elected officials to craft reform that would serve all Americans in a manner respecting minimum moral standards.  The failure of their effort has one source.  It comes entirely from the stubbornness and evasions of certain key congressional leaders, and the unwillingness of the White House to honor promises made by the president last September.

Third, the health-care reform debate has never been merely a matter of party politics.  Nor is it now. Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak and a number of his Democratic colleagues have shown extraordinary character in pushing for good health-care reform while resisting attempts to poison it with abortion-related entitlements and other bad ideas that have nothing to do with real “health care.” Many Republicans share the goal of decent health-care reform, even if their solutions would differ dramatically.  To put it another way, few persons seriously oppose making adequate health services available for all Americans.  But God, or the devil, is in the details — and by that measure, the current Senate version of health-care reform is not merely defective, but also a dangerous mistake.

The long, unpleasant and too often dishonest national health-care debate is now in its last days.  Its most painful feature has been those “Catholic” groups that by their eagerness for some kind of deal undercut the witness of the Catholic community and help advance a bad bill into a bad law. Their flawed judgment could now have damaging consequences for all of us.

Do not be misled.  The Senate version of health-care reform currently being pushed ahead by congressional leaders and the White House — despite public resistance and numerous moral concerns — is bad law; and not simply bad, but dangerous. It does not deserve, nor does it have, the support of the Catholic bishops in our country, who speak for the believing Catholic community.  In its current content, the Senate version of health-care legislation is not “reform.” Catholics and other persons of good will concerned about the foundations of human dignity should oppose it.

This bill is not about health care.  Bottom line: it is about the government deciding who gets to be born, how long we will live, and when we will be forced to die.  I thought that was God’s job.

Tags: pro-life