Catholic Churches Do Not Endorse Candidates by Bill Droel

 Catholic churches will not take advantage of a new provision in the U.S. tax code.

Since 1894 all charitable groups that obtained a 501 (c) 3 tax letter have been excused from paying federal taxes, and usually local taxes. In 1954 there was an addition to that IRS policy. Named the Johnson Amendment after its sponsor, Senator Lyndon Johnson (1908-1973), the change specified that tax-exempt groups could not endorse partisan candidates. Critics in recent years, including President Donald Trump, have called for the elimination of the Johnson Amendment. Early this July the IRS said that churches (though not other non-profit groups) can indeed endorse candidates.

The new provision is symbolic. Reading between the lines, it is meant to make legal what evangelicals do anyway. Evangelical pastors and congregational leaders routinely give pulpit time to candidates during local and national campaigns. Many evangelical media outlets comment on the desirability of candidates and elected officials.

Catholic churches will continue to adhere to the Johnson Amendment for reasons practical, pastoral, and theological.

The practice of Catholic churches staying out of elections is not because “politics has no place in church.” Just the opposite. Can you think of anything more political than the ancient Roman administration executingthe Creator and Redeemer of the entire universe? 

Catholic churches, newspapers, and internet media, guided by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, enter politics without favoring particular candidates. Catholicism and the Constitution agree: a separation of religious institutions and government institutions is beneficial to both. The engagement between Catholicism and politics in our country occurs in the voluntary give-and-take between Catholic groups and society, and more significantly between individual Catholic citizens and our democratic processes. In practice this means that Catholic churches and Catholic officials teach morality as it pertains to issues like the environment, the sanctity of each life, or the tragedy of war. They must do so. They are not, however, by their ecclesial standing competent to instruct the laity on candidate preferences or on the intricacies of specific pieces of legislation. When priests, bishops, deacons and religious—in their official roles—wade too deeply into partisan politics, they violate Catholic ecclesiology.

Bishops and most Catholic priests in our country are U.S. citizens. They lose no rights or duties or privileges of citizenship because of their job. For example, a priest at the ballpark among his friends can grouse all he wants about any politician, or he can praise a specific bill in the legislature. Clergy and religious should freely vote in elections. The mistake occurs when, in the church or at a parish function, a priest asserts his partisan opinion as if it were the Catholic teaching.

When priests, bishops, deacons and religious—in their official roles—wade too deeply into partisan politics, they upend the order of Catholic sacraments. The sacrament of baptism gives a person the responsibility to practice the beatitudes, to exercise the works of mercy and to live a vocation as homemaker, neighbor, spouse, citizen or worker. A baptized person needs no further permission from the rectory or chancery to improve society. Just as the sacrament of ordination adds nothing to a person’s competency to teach mathematics, so too a priest or religious can lobbya legislator based on his or her own citizenship. One’s education and experience might yield competency in worldly affairs, but ordination in itself does not.

When priests, bishops, deacons and religious—in their official roles—wade too deeply into partisan politics, they squander their moral standing. Yes, Catholicism has absolutes. At the same time, the wise Catholic—both Church officials and laity—knows that no one appreciates righteousness. Principled, yes. Arrogant, never.

The spirit of the Johnson Amendment well suits Catholicism. Our democratic process, though strained nowadays, still contains avenues for influencing the common good. There is no need for clergy to take shortcuts that likely do more harm than good.

 

Droel is with the National Center for the Laity (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629).

The Working Catholic by Bill Droel

It was called Americanism. Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903) condemned it.

In 1899 Leo XIII sent a three-page letter to the U.S. bishops in care of Cardinal

James Gibbons (1834-1921) of Baltimore. It is titled Witness to Our Good or sometimes

On New Opinions of Virtue, Nature and Grace. Leo XIII’s admonishment was aimed at

progressive U.S. Catholics. Its general theme speaks to today’s U.S.

Catholics—conservatives and liberals.

The second paragraph of Witness to Our Good mentions Fr. Isaac Hecker, CSP

(1819-1888), the principal founder of the Paulists. Hecker himself was not Leo XIII’s

villain. In fact, Hecker died more than ten years before the papal letter. Rather, as Leo

XIII says, a translated biography of Hecker, written in 1891 by Fr. Walter Elliott, CSP

(1842-1928), “has caused no little controversy” in Europe. Leo XIII goes on to name the

erroneous traits of Americanism as conveyed in the biography, more specifically in its

French introduction by Fr. Felix Klein (1862-1953), a professor of philosophy and

literature in Paris.

Hecker desired a Catholicism appealing to North Americans, rather than one

dependent upon European languages, customs, theological formulae and rituals.

Hecker was optimistic that our country’s pluralism, religious freedom, voluntary

associations, layered authority and individual striving are harmonious with Catholicism.

Hecker’s disposition toward the U.S. emerged amid a strong anti-Catholic

movement among nativists. Contrary to their attitude, Hecker believed that Catholicism

makes a positive contribution to our country. Further, the church learns from give-and-

take in our modern world. Thus to live the gospel within the specific conditions of North

America requires Christians to engage, humanize and civilize their surroundings, said

Hecker.

Of course, Hecker’s view can go too far. When Christianity is fused with any one

culture or political regime, religion is debased. Public figures, as we know, can coopt

religion for their own ambitions.

What is it like in the U.S. today? Our libertarian culture makes individual choice

the highest value. Freedom is equated with options, devoid of pre-set, firm obligations.

Decisions in our culture are always circumstantial, not directed by any absolutes. A term

like alternative facts is accepted as rational. Thus some—conservatives and

liberals—are cafeteria Catholics. That is, their faith being captured by our individualistic

culture, they select some Catholic markers of identity while ignoring some basics. A

cafeteria Catholic might say, for example, that any individual woman has an

unencumbered, autonomous right to abortion. Or a cafeteria Catholic might say that

assisting refugees, immigrants or others in need is an individual’s choice, not obligatory

in any way.

Leo XIII’s main concern in Witness to Our Good is the danger of religion over-

embracing a particular culture, society or political order. Yes, patriotism is healthy. In the

U.S. our patriotism is devotion to and respect of our experiment in democracy,

regardless of anyone’s religion or birthplace. Be aware, however, that healthy patriotism

differs from nationalism: The attitude that our country is ipso facto superior, that it

stands alone, that it is destined to expand with never an apology. A Christian nationalist

uses religion to distort history, to excuse the serious shortcomings of their political

favorites, to claim the superiority of their type of Christian over other denominations and

to favor their race or ethnicity over others.

Perhaps Leo XIII’s Witness to Our Good would have better made the point

without dragging Hecker or an obscure introduction to a biography into it. Like his

predecessor, Chicago’s-own Pope Leo XIV must deal with the position of Catholicism

within U.S. culture, and other cultures as well. He knows that some U.S. Catholics,

including its leaders, have bought big time into our extreme style of individualistic

capitalism and the political policies supporting it. There are also a few Catholics who,

reacting to the defects in our culture, opt for sectarianism, a trip to an imagined golden

age. This retreat is no better.

A genuine Catholic life “in our age,” says Hecker, must take its place “in busy

marts, in counting rooms, in workshops, in homes and in the varied relations that form

human society, and it is into these that sanctity is to be introduced… [We are to] seek

occasions to practice virtue, to do something for God, and these occasions are, if I may

use the expression, right under our noses.”

Fr. Isaac Hecker, CSP (1819-1888)

Droel is associated with National Center for the Laity (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL

60629). It distributes a new edition of Leo XIII’s encyclical, On the Condition of Labor

($7).