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Keep the pulpit nonpartisan
Publication date:
June 13, 2008
Section:
C. Editorials By almost any measure, Chicago’s Fr. Michael Pfleger has had a remarkable ministry. Pastor of St. Sabina Church on the city’s South Side since 1981, Pfleger has led the predominantly black congregation to financial security, including an expanded and enviable school, and in a transformation of the neighborhood. The parish has successfully taken on liquor stores that sold booze to youngsters; shut down porn shops and stores that sell drug paraphernalia; campaigned to restrict billboards pushing the sale of cigarettes and liquor. At one point, Pfleger and parishioners conducted Friday night anti-gang and anti-drug marches around the neighborhood during the spring and summer.
That his position of leadership could crumble under the weight of a few imprudent lines of a guest sermon suggests much about the YouTube age in which we live, our political culture and the vulnerability of the church when our leaders become public partisans.
Pfleger, who has apologized for mocking Sen. Hillary Clinton during a guest sermon at Sen. Barack Obama’s former church in Chicago, has reportedly agreed to take a temporary leave as pastor. However the church politics plays out in this instance, we agree with Chicago Cardinal Francis George’s simple and direct instruction: “The Catholic church does not endorse political candidates. Consequently, while a priest must speak to political issues that are also moral, he may not endorse candidates nor engage in partisan campaigning.”
Pfleger, in those comments that now have famously played repeatedly on TV talk and news shows, was not only partisan, he was also racist and sexist, not to mention downright juvenile in his mocking ridicule of Sen. Clinton.
Just as the YouTube-fueled frenzy over Pfleger’s comments was subsiding, another video began making the rounds, this time of a well-known New York monsignor, Jim Lisante, mocking Democratic candidate Obama and endorsing Sen. John McCain because he’s antiabortion. Lisante acknowledged he should not have made the endorsement but qualified that by saying his only mistake was the setting in which he made his remarks.
Certainly we would agree that being a priest does not rob one of citizenship and its requirements. Priesthood, in fact, should be a reason to engage the pressing issues of the day.
The danger with public partisanship, however -- and this goes for bishops who would use the Eucharist as a political weapon against politicians -- is that a condemnation or endorsement of a party or candidate by church officials compromises the community, not to mention the Gospel.
On the Democratic side of things, for instance, an endorsement may be based on that party’s reflection of the church’s social justice tradition, but it may also tie the community to abortion strategies that some in the Catholic world would find untenable. On the Republican side, an endorsement because of the party’s antiabortion stance may require embracing domestic policies that offend the social justice tradition. And in either case, an endorsement too often means approval of militarism, including preemptive war and the use of overwhelming force, that offends the nonviolent Christ and ignores the consistent condemnations of modern popes.
The lesson seems clear for pastors and bishops. Speak passionately and out of the heart of the Gospel about the issues of the day but steer clear of partisan endorsements, trusting that your teaching will lead your listeners to informed, adult decisions about how to vote.
From a Christian’s perspective, the choice is always among imperfect candidates and parties.
National Catholic Reporter June 13, 2008
If nonpartisan means
If nonpartisan means Republican our Bishop is nonpartisan.
Chicago’s cardinal
Chicago’s cardinal disciplined Fr. Michael Pfleger for his partisan mockery of Hillary Clinton. But no one disciplined bishops and cardinals like Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver or Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis when they attacked John Kerry for his position on abortion by threatening to withhold the eucharist from public officials who espoused positions contrary to what they call church teaching. their political convictions. When Cardinal John O'Connor told a New York broadcast reporter in 1984 that he did not know how a Catholic in good conscience could vote for a candidate (Geraldine Ferraro) who supports abortion, he was endorsing Ronald Reagan for reelection. He wanted to signal his support of Reagain to Catholics who still blindly follow the lead of their religious leaders. I keep waiting for a bishop or cardinal to threaten ecclesiastical action against a public official for promoting war or advocating policies that damage the urban poor.
Here in the Archdiocese of
Here in the Archdiocese of Denver I see that its officials are up to their old manipulative tricks to scare Catholics into pulling the Republican lever in the voting booth come November under penalty of incurring the wrath of God and the fires of hell. I attended one of the 'how you should vote as a Catholic' sessions at the campus of the diocese before the 2004 election and the atmosphere was like a Republican Party caucus. I was roundly booed when I sarcastically asked a participant (who gave a 1 minute pro-GOP pep talk): "Are you saying George Bush is pro-life? He ought to be standing before the International Court of Justice shackled at the ankles to Milosevic."
The regrettable thing is that the efforts of these neo-con prelates is working, one indication being that the majority of voting Catholics voted for Bush/Cheney in 2004 despite all the suffering and sorrow these two callous killers have brought to the world.
Eugene Fitzpatrick
Not all issues are the same
Not all issues are the same and making them appear to be equal and of the same importance does an injustice against what we refer to as the Catholic social justice tradition.
But Kudos to NCR. Finally, they mention the right to life, but of course they call us Catholcis antiabortionists (a negative), not prolifers (a positive).
Words mean a lot and unfortunately, NCR continues to make the divide even wider between the various factions within the church with their poor choice of words.
Can a priest or bishop
Can a priest or bishop threaten to deny the sacraments to a Catholic who appears to be violating some aspect of Catholic teaching? Gene Romabn's observation is interesting and deserves some kind of ecclesiastical response. The idea of a sacrament-denying cleric violates the most funadamental ideas of the priesthood, of ministering to sinners, of redemption and forgiveness. Even more importantly, it ignores the responsibility that thinking adult Catholics must follow the dictates of their conscience. If your conscience says A and your Bishop says B, what do you do? I have always understood that we are compelled to follow our conscience, not the conscience of someone else.
The answer is "A" of course,
The answer is "A" of course, regardless of who says "B".
As far as I'm concerned, anytime a member of the clergy, at any level, denies communion to another, that cleric has committed a mortal sin. Denying communion to another is not love, and anything that is not love, is HATE! Perhaps it is hate wearing a pretty coat and nice shiny boots, perhaps it is justified with a bouquet of floral rhetoric, but it is still HATE. Hate has no place in the clergy.
Denying communion to someone also perverts the sacrement. If we truly believe in the transubstantiation of the host, then we also must believe that the person receiving communion is also receiving the very essence of Christ. What might the very essences of Christ infusing every fiber of a person's being be able to accomplish? If Jesus set the example by not denying himself to Judas, who are any of us to arbitrarily decide who to give or not give communion to.
Denying communion is also a lack of faith in God. Do we truly believe in the omnipotence of our Savior or not? I for one choose to believe that if Christ doesnt want to share Himself through communion, He can make that happen without our assistance.
It's not that tough to be
It's not that tough to be nonpartisan, if you really intend to be nonpartisan. Every government, every party, and every candidate holds positions that are contrary to Christ's teaching. That's just the pervasive nature of sin. The simple trick to nonpartisanship is criticize equally (and praise equally too). The deeper, harder trick to nonpartisanship is to use those contrary positions as inspiration to examine our own lives and our own community, and ask how we too can more fully live out Christ's radical challenge to our country and culture.
If you hate abortion, do you kill by hateful accusations and speech, denigrating and reviling those who feel backed into a corner? If you love choice, do you deny others the possibility of choice by refusing to say that Christ has a better way for them to live (I know, I know, it sounds so judgmental.) If you hate war, do you make it inevitable by refusing to countenance action against tyrants? If you hate tyrants, what do you do to make sure one vile dictator isn't replaced by a worse one?
We each have gifts and callings from the Holy Spirit, and those often make it easy to focus on one issue and ignore others. One thing I have noticed, though, is that the Holy Spirit seems to often call people to action against sin that has hurt them most deeply, or which is deeply rooted in their own hearts. Pro-lifers are too often willing to kill spirits with hurtful rhetoric; pro-choicers are too often willing to bring down the police-state hammer on their opponents. So if an issue is your passion, remember that the sin, the perversion of that issue, is probably a real temptation for you.
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