How to be ‘distinctly Catholic’ in a polarized political world

Kenneth Craycraft, associate professor of moral theology at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary and School of Theology in Cincinnati, Ohio, has a new book, “Citizens Yet Strangers: Living Authentically Catholic in a Divided America,” which looks at how faithful Catholics can engage in today’s polarized political climate. He recently spoke with OSV News’ Charlie Camosy about the book and the current political landscape.

Charlie Camosy: As the 2024 general election cycle kicks into a new gear, politics and partisanship take center stage on our culture. I wonder what’s primarily on your mind right now. Anything faithful Catholics should be avoiding in our current moment?

Kenneth Craycraft: My primary concern can be summarized by two closely related problems.

First, I am troubled by the difficulty that we Catholics have in thinking about the moral life in terms that are distinctly Catholic, without being necessarily concerned with how that might play out in the American political arena.

This is not to suggest that I advocate withdrawal from public life. Nor am I suggesting that we Catholics cannot have civic conversations about important moral issues that divide America. But if our moral deliberation starts from a presumption that our positions should be translatable into the idiom of contemporary American political discourse, we tend to shape our thinking accordingly. Put another way, if we presume that our moral commitments have no real purpose if they do not speak the language of the political culture, we tend to shape that language by that culture. In the process, of course, we tend to compromise the richness of our Catholic moral theological heritage.

For the purpose of recovering a distinctly Catholic moral vocabulary, we should be less concerned than we often are about whether it “translates” into American liberalism. Otherwise, we are compromised from the start, and have difficulty even knowing what our own moral foundations are.

This leads to the second, related, concern. If we succumb to the first temptation, it often leads to defining our moral positions not by the teaching of the church, but rather by the political platforms of the two major political parties. This can take either of two forms.

In the first, we find ourselves adapting our Catholic witness for the purpose of justifying the policy platform of the partisan commitments to which we primarily identify. So, we might try to round out the edges of the church’s teaching on important issues related to the dignity of the human person, more as an apology for one of the parties’ platforms than a careful articulation of the Catholic moral position.

The second, more insidious form, is that we actually collapse the church’s teaching into the partisan position. In this case, we do not attempt merely to justify partisan policies in terms of Catholic theology. Rather, we start with the partisan position, form our moral commitments by them, and then call it Catholic.

These maladies are not confined to one end of the political spectrum. From the left to the right, we Catholics succumb to the same temptations. Thus, in an effort to be relevant to American public life, we actually become completely irrelevant, saying nothing different from the regnant partisan ideologies.

Camosy: Every “no” the church offers us is part of a broader and more foundational “yes.” Can you frame opportunities for faithful Catholics during this election cycle as positive opportunities?

Craycraft: I believe that the most positive contribution we Catholics can make is to begin to speak Catholic to one another in a public way, such that we can begin to demonstrate a better moral language.

In the book, I am very critical of “rights” language as divisive and therefore corrosive of authentic community. Indeed, I suggest that, as used in American political discourse, “rights language” is not compatible with the Catholic social doctrines of solidarity and common good. Reforming our language around dignity, solidarity, subsidiarity and common good will be a positive contribution to our own moral development and, in turn, to public discourse.

We also should take this election cycle as the opportunity to show that our responsibility to engage in public life, for the sake of the common good, might call us publicly and forcefully to say that neither party’s candidate is morally fit to be president. I believe this would be a very positive position.

Camosy: OK, how about naming an elephant in the room: the U.S. bishops continue to teach that, in our context, abortion remains our “preeminent” issue. Is there a way of following and honoring this teaching that doesn’t lead to an idolatrous focus on politics?

Craycraft: In my chapter on politics, I criticize single-issue voting for precisely the danger that you suggest. I unequivocally agree with the USCCB’s (U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops) statement. But that does not commit me to support the candidate who espouses policies that appear to be anti-abortion, if he or she is otherwise demonstrably unfit.

I take the statement that abortion is the preeminent position to mean that some candidates cannot be supported. But that doesn’t mean that the other candidate wins our support by default. This would be, as you suggest, an idolatrous conclusion, as it leads to blind commitment to a party or candidate that supports policies that contradict other Catholic moral teaching.

We cannot reduce our political commitments to the issue of abortion while ignoring immigration, capital punishment, euthanasia, medically assisted suicide, health care reform, prenatal care and early childcare, social welfare safety nets, support for young families and obscene accumulations of wealth.

Camosy: Especially once we leave Lent and Easter seasons, it might be less easy for Catholics to develop a spiritual set of practices that resist political idolatry. Can you recommend any spiritual practices that can help inculcate the ideas in your book?

Craycraft: My son is a first-year seminarian in what is now called the “propaedeutic” stage according to the new Program of Priestly Formation. One of the things I have learned from his experience is the importance of substantive praying and thinking with the church as spiritual discipline.

I am referring specifically to the Office of Readings and daily prayer. If we are going to re-learn to speak Catholic, as I suggest in the book we must do, there’s no better place to start than the readings and prayers that the universal church says every day through her priests and religious. In addition to teaching us the language of the church, it is a daily reminder that political life is ordered toward the spiritual life, not vice versa. Indeed, it is a reminder that the supernatural society of the church has primary purchase on our lives. This does not mean we withdraw from public life. But it might be a way to speak Catholic in public in a way that is more consistent with the witness of the Gospel.

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