John Carr | Subversive Thomism

“Does your faith shape your politics, or does your politics shape your faith?” John Carr, November 2nd, 2011

At first, this question called to mind the Euthyphro question for me:

Does God love what is just because it is just, or is it just because God loves it?

As any freshman philosophy student will recall, the Euthyphro question brings to light the difficulty with talking about God and justice. If God loves what is just because it is just, then we do not need to refer to God to understand what is just. In other words, we don’t need the 10 Commandments or the Beatitudes to tell us right from wrong. But if what is just is so only because God loves it, then it makes justice (or morality) arbitrarily dependent on the will of God. God could, for instance, change his mind, telling Abraham at one moment to kill his son and at another moment not to kill his son.

So when John Carr asked whether faith shaped my politics or politics my faith, I started thinking of the question in light of Euthyphro. If faith shapes my politics, does that make my politics arbitrary? What if I changed faith or what if my understanding of my faith changed? If politics shaped my faith, does that not itself make my faith secondary in life?

In the end, though, I think that Carr’s question is unnecessarily bifurcating. Today, the members of the Catholic Church are often seen as torn: many in the Church believe that abortion defines the beginning, middle, and end of morality and politics, believe that it is a grave moral sin to vote for anyone who would support a “woman’s right to choose,” and believe that politicians who do not actively fight for the end of abortion rights are not Catholic. Other Catholics believe that abortion is one among many important issues, and that social justice issues are as important, as are issues of war and torture, and that it is hypocritical, if not morally wrong, to vote for someone on the basis of abortion alone. Of course, both camps look to Scriptures to find the “rightness” of their position.

Carr’s question challenges this tactic, but I think the challenge could be made more helpful. Rather than asking “does you faith shape your politics or your politics your faith,” it might be better to ask, “how should your faith shape your politics and how should your politics shape your faith?” This form of the question gets us to think more concretely about what already happens — that faith and politics shape each other. It also challenges us, however, to think about how they shape each other and whether we want them to shape each other in the way they do. So we can revise the question to ask, should my faith shape my politics in the way it does (do I become a single issue voter or do I ignore some issues) and should my politics shape my faith the way it does (do I ignore the multiple passages in the Bible that talk about the poor and the marginalized or do I ignore what the Pope’s say about the culture of life)?

When it comes down to it, Carr is right: the question is, how do we form our consciences to be active participants in the political community. This participation goes beyond mere voting — it involves asking after these questions in the context of community.

On Wednesday 2 November 2011, I attended the annual Tobin lecture held at All Saints Parish in Portland, OR. The guest speaker was John Carr, the Executive Director of the Office for Peace, Justice, and Human Development. He spoke on Faith and Politics.

Carr divided his talk into five segments:

What the Catholic Church’s mission is,
Our Current Context
What Catholic Bring to Public Life
Message
Directions and dangers

I will not take the time to summarize each of these sections. Rather, I will reflect on what I saw as the most important contribution Carr made to discussions of Faith and Politics. He notes that the Catholic mission is stated most clearly in Luke 4:

Good news to the poor,

Liberty to captives

New sight to the blind

Set the downtrodden free

This mission is truly Catholic and beyond partisanship. It means that we, as Catholics must bring to bear into the public debate a concern for the most deprived in our society. We bring about this concern through our assets: a consistent moral framework, another way of looking at the world that combined human life AND dignity, solidarity AND subsidiarity, and our focus on everyday experience. Our mission and our work is about individual people — it goes beyond voting cycles to what we do in between those cycles. Fundamentally, our task as Church and as members of the Church is to form the conscience of individual people with a moral vision that helps them live a virtuous and political life. For, in the final analysis, our counter-cultural activity to bring about a culture of life out of this culture of death is to participate in politics.

I found Carr’s message inspiring and correct. The way he framed the issues he spoke about proved to highlight key features of what we, as Catholics, are called to do in light of our faith. As a Thomist, his words about politics ring true, but the radical nature of those words did not come out in the talk. For what is radical about engaging in politics is that we say no to voting and to elections, and yes to participation in the formation of the common good. We form consciences by engaging in that politics and shaping the common good. As Catholics, we are called to live in the world and to participate in the common good, which is much different than voting in elections in the United States between pre-determined candidates who differ very little between each other. Both democrats and republicans embrace an individualism that contradicts the deepest nature of our faith.

Individualism is not good news to the poor, not liberty to captives.

It is not new sight for the blind.

Nor does it set the downtrodden free.

Subversive Thomism

Living Justly and Loving Kindness in a World on the Brink of Collapse

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