A Public Faith

How many of us live with the basic family rule that we should always refrain from discussing either religion or politics at the dinner table? Certainly we should never attempt to discuss both subjects at once. To do so is to be impolite. It is also a sure fire way to ruin a Thanksgiving dinner. 

In this nation we are sensitive to the separation of church and state. The founders of our nation honored this principle because their English experience witnessed the bloody conflicts that were fought between the Protestants and Catholics. Our own Bill of Rights protects our religious freedom in ensuring that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” I believe that our founders were wise in establishing this separation. I respect it and hope that it continues to be a part of our guaranteed freedoms.

Yet many people of faith interpret this separation in such a way as to cripple the moral values of our own religious traditions. Many of us, especially those of us like myself who believes in progressive social values, feel that our only recourse is to promote secular values because to articulate religious values somehow contradicts religious freedom. It is with this conflict that we face a great moral dilemma.

The Catholic faith is a faith that begins with a set of beliefs. We articulate our belief in one Creator God and our redemption through Jesus the Christ. From these core beliefs flow other articles of our faith. Along with this, however, we also accept moral values and principles that guide the way we live our lives. We consider these values to be universal and so they are meant to guide our own personal lives as well as our social lives. Not to make the shift from accepting a set of beliefs to living by a set of moral values is to accept a faith without moral responsibility. This is what St. James warns us about in his epistle when he says, “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”

My own early Catholic experience was one of dead faith. Until I had gone to college I understood my Catholic faith to be a dictate of mandatory rituals and devotions. I recall a time early in my life when I was studying the lives of saints.  My family dissuaded me from this practice because saints were holy. I was to pray to them, but I did not have to live like them since God made them special. This unfortunate experience of meaningless faith led me away from the church for a time.

Half way into college, as a student of history, I again began to study St. Francis of Assisi and St. Augustine of Hippo, but from the lens of an historian and through the context of their own time. I became amazed with how human these people actually were. I was able to identify with St. Francis’ early rambunctious lifestyle. It impressed me to see how difficult it was for people like St. Augustine to attain a life of relationship with God. It dawned on me from that point on that the Catholic faith was a lived faith, a public faith.

This started my re-entry into the church as a public Catholic. Once I had made this decision I became aware of how many resources our Church had on social and personal values. It surprises me to see how these Catholic teachings are relegated to secondary status rather than essential reading. It is equally surprising to me that the Catholic community is also less interested in our social and personal values than it is with liturgy and rituals. The title of one of my favorite books on Catholic social teachings said it all: Catholic Social Teachings: Our Best Kept Secrets.

An essential component to our faith is its personal and social moral values. The 25th chapter in Matthew highlights this when Jesus discusses the final judgment. In it God does not end up dividing the sheep from the goats based on their church attendance or their prayer lives. Rather God judges based one’s social actions, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”

To promote and advocate your Catholic social values is not to go against our religious freedom; rather it is an expression of it. The state expects that we, as citizens of this nation, should have a voice and opinions in political matters. Part of living out your faith is to advocate and promote your basic moral principles. Nowhere is this stated more eloquently than in the 1971 document by the Synod of Bishops, Justice in the World:

Action on Behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church’s mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation.

I consider it my own religious duty to express Catholic social teachings. Whether it is advocating for the dignity of every person and the protection of their rights, promoting family life, or promoting economic justice and the option of the poor, it becomes my combined religious and political duty as a Catholic American to advocate a Christian ethical stance on issues of public policy. So far my congressional representatives have appreciated hearing from me. Moreover, Thanksgiving dinners are never dull!

By John Gonzalez

John Gonzalez, a husband and father of young children, works for the Passionist community on issues of justice and peace.