Review: A Partisan Church, Part III | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: That Novak and Neuhaus were not particularly anti-abortion was not a surprise. The Pro-Life movement is reactionary. Until Roe, the only activists were feminists pushing for abortion rights. Likewise, pre-Reagan, the Cold War did exist in the background - everyone was likley paying attention to theViet Nam meat grinder.
Interestingly, when Reagan took office and the bishops began preaching about economic justice and nuclear war, our three heroes sided with Reagan. I suspect that where they stood related to where they sat (and who were writing for). That, and Reagan ignited strong passions, for and against. That up to half his tenure was an Alzheimers nightmare means that like the whole presidency was dominated by strong advisors, not bad if the President is strong, disasterous if he is failing. What had them pick Reagan over the bishops - probably the spirit of Vatican II was unsettling to them (at the time it dominated parts of the USCCB) and they found a spiritual ally in Rome with Saint John Paul II - although the parallel between Reagan and John Paul late in life is astounding. We made him a Saint for his physical struggles - rather than retiring him. MSW cautions liberals to not put politics before faith - although being politically liberal and being a modernist are actually two different things. As for resisting some of our current John Paul bishops (you know who they are), I respond that it is they who are resisting the Pope while they also resist the President as the Pro-life Amen Corner of the Republican Party. They should read this book and heed its lessons.
Still, for a blow by blow of how Reagan, et al (personally, I think Bush Sr. was pulling the strings) and the bishops dealt with (and locked horns over) Central America and nuclear policy, this book is a good place to start, although until Bush has been dead for a while, the truth may not be clear - if ever.
Neuhaus' attacks on liberation theology as somehow culturally captive are interesting. The train of thought that such relativism must be stopped is taken up separately by Pope Benedict XVI, although what we finally get from Benedict is a kind of Magisterial Catholic Relativism that is unaware that it has moved from a search for truth to a moral Catholic ghetto. Of course, now we have a pope in Francis who may actually be a Liberationist. No wonder our three heroes are taken aback by current developments.
Our heroes v. the American bishops is the subject of the last chapter. It is fun that the author decries the bishops for secular concerns when our heroes do so defending Reagan, who is a political, rather than religious figure. They also did not like the political priests emerging. I know a few of those, who were actually giving voice to the thought that we were better taken over by the Russians than destroying them at the cost of our souls. This is in the ear where limited nuclear war was being stated as a possibility. They surmised that the strength of Christianity would emerge from the occupation. Of coures, recent events in Iraq and the extinction of the Japanese Church during its closed period who that sometimes martyrs are just murder victims (so I guess a fully loaded nuclear arsenal may not be a bad thing after all). That are heroes were also critical of partisanship by the bishops is not just ironic, its a sick joke, which can be diagramed with the red and gold pens of your choice.
Is the Church a political lobbyist? It has such people at Catholic Health and Catholic Charities because poverty is a political thing. It has Chaplains too, although I doubt they speak of defense spending - although I am sure they have something to say (probably wrong) about military gay Catholic weddings. They speak the truth as they know it from natural law, but sometimes they get a bit caught in the belief in its infallibility to realize that natural law does change as society does - and as our knowledge base advances. Where the neocons become neotrads is where they resist the possibility that what they have been taught is wrong. Some of those Republican bishops go the same place - and are abetted by their own partisan leanings in defending past error. That we know they have done so is the theme of the book and of MSW's review. I tend to agree.
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