Catholics, Political Parties, and Just Desserts

John Zmirak on the hazards of Catholics getting too attached to a political party. Excerpts:

...As Catholics and Americans, it's clear from recent events that we have just embarked upon a long and dangerous Lent. It's a secular Lent, with no resurrection promised, with tempting spirits aplenty, and no guarantee we will refuse their bread transformed from stones, their angels to cushion our fall, their kingdoms on offer for kneeling before the world. The hungrier we become, the more reckless we will get, more likely to worship would-be "saviors..."


Societies, even Christian societies, really have collapsed. Catholic missions to pagan empires that came achingly close to mass success – in Japan, in China – have failed thanks to human mistakes, to hubris or corruption, and ended in massacres. More tragic than those who died horribly as martyrs are those who succumbed to fear, who traded (as most of us would) the integrity of faith for a few more years of "quantity time." Catholic nations have lost the Faith, as the English did, under slow, relentless pressure from their governments. Still others have weathered persecution nobly, then greeted the dawn of freedom with a yawn. The faith that sustained my Irish ancestors through the Famine in time of feast seems childish, a bogeyman of the past that adds local color – like the leprechauns.

As Americans we like to think that we're exceptional, that our nation is some unique, divine experiment, immune to the laws of history. (We're not the first nation to think so, and we're unlikely to be the last.) The events of the past eight years have disproved this charming theory. It turns out we really can't impose modernity and liberalism on a civilization of a billion through either force or farce; neither the Pentagon nor Hollywood seem likely to turn the Dar al-Islam into one more interchangeable piece of a globalized, peaceful McWorld. Nor can we live in prosperity forever without making anything – trading for cheap imports our cleverness at finagling finances. One needn't think all lending at interest sinful, nor even reject the market economy, to see that the hucksterism that passed for investment wizardry on Wall Street amounted at last to usury. Nor can we count on the order and stability of a society that has undermined its very building block – the family – through sexual revolution, incessant contraception, and easy divorce. Anarchy begins at home...

This faithful, angry "remnant" would soon find itself in hock to Republicans disdainful of other Catholic principles – such as just war theory. When the hype machine that lied America into the Iraq war started churning, it was all too easy for most of us who'd found our aid and comfort from secular nationalists and fideistic Protestants to convince ourselves to support the war – if only out of political expedience. "What harm could it do? WMDs or no WMDs, even if 'preventive war' violates some non-infallible encyclical, we'll give them their war in return for the next three Supreme Court justices," I remember people saying – under their breath.

Now "the Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return." The unpopular, hideously expensive Iraq war helped destroy the fortunes of pro-life candidates in every branch of government. It elected a president who will surely have the chance to stack the Supreme Court, rendering the life issue moot for a lifetime. The money poured down that Middle Eastern hole would surely come in handy right now – as we weather an economic collapse of bipartisan provenance. Meanwhile, gay marriage has spread from Massachusetts to the Midwest, and the taxes our children must pay for our current spending spree will make it ruinously expensive to procreate and educate. And the leaders of our "trademark" Catholic university are cringing before the power of the newly anointed prince of this part of the world. "We adore you, O mighty sultan, and beg for your protection..."