I am thinking about 25 years' worth of messaging to "good Catholics." We were supposed to vote for the Republicans in 1994, because abortion, and never mind about Newt Gingrich's then-shocking decision that it was better to shut down the government than to negotiate with the liberals.
We were supposed to vote for GWB in 2000, because abortion, and never mind that he broke his campaign promise to hold the line on embryonic stem cell research less than seven months into his first term. Never mind the war, because abortion.
We were supposed to vote for Republicans in 2008 and 2012, because abortion, and never you mind about candidates who refused to take a principled stand against torture. The liberals were supporting a worse mortal sin, the logic ran (if torture was even a mortal sin -- they weren't convinced about that), and at least torture didn't kill anybody. Remember when they told us Obama was going to shut down all the Catholic hospitals because he was so committed to advancing the abortion activists' agenda?
I found myself more and more puzzled and unhappy across these years, as the rhetoric became more and more divisive. These are the Five Non-Negotiables, screamed the pamphlets, with lots of bold-face type and little sourcing.
There are a couple of men I know who would describe themselves as pillars of their churches, but I have had to mute them on Facebook because of the ugliness in their political posts. If Nancy Pelosi is a beloved child of God, redeemed by the death of the Lord, then there are limits on what we as Christians should say about her. But it turns out that if you spend decades telling people that WE are right and THEY are dedicated to promoting evil, it gets a lot harder to see Nancy Pelosi as a beloved child of God, redeemed by the death of the Lord. If you tell people that all good Catholics vote Republican, it pushes people to overlook Republican policies that are problematic for Catholics.
I thought surely Donald Trump was a bridge too far in 2016, but I was wrong. I thought surely SURELY his 2020 campaign would flounder and fail, but I think he would have won if not for COVID, and the Catholics saying "most pro-life president ever!!!!" would have propelled him toward that victory.
I am permanently done with any flavor of pro-life activism that looks favorably on the Trump administration. Catholic Vote mailers? Straight into the recycling bin, unopened, forevermore. I called and harangued the Priests for Life office again and again, until they finally took me off their mailing list. I can't even deal with the sight of their envelopes. Because when you tell people to overlook evil in the name of stopping evil, you blunt their moral sense. And when you steer people toward media sources that play fast and loose with the truth (because those sources tend to condemn the evil you oppose most emphatically) you wind up with a nation in which astonishing numbers of people believe that the Most Pro-life President Ever (no) won the election (no) but was thwarted by widespread voter fraud (no) and that there is somehow justice (no) in their refusal to accept the outcome of a free and fair election and in obstructing the peaceful transfer of power in a democracy (so much no ALL THE NO). You wind up with armed insurrectionists smashing windows in the US Capitol, shouting that it's time to hang the vice-president who has been attempting to do his constitutional duty even as the mob erected a gallows on the lawn.
The church is full of people saying "you can't be a Catholic and a Democrat!" as if it were a self-evident truth. This position has led an appalling number of Catholics to reject biblical truth (family separation at the southern border, anyone?), the Catechism (capital punishment is morally inadmissible, Roma locuta est), and science (climate change deniers, repent and submit to the Pope). If a person rejects the Bible, the Catechism, and science, what's left?
We have profoundly damaged our Christian witness in the name of rewriting abortion law. And as the nation picks up the pieces (and, please God, removes from office the man who fomented the Wednesday insurrection), we in the church need to have some hard conversations about where we've found ourselves, and where we go from here.
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