Since January’s inauguration, I have found myself often preoccupied with what seems to be today’s principal flaw in American public life: that those who are asked to lead us are at the same time asked to surrender the integrity of their convictions, and in that moment lose both their freedom and the ability to lead society in any meaningful way.
To take you back a generation or two, in the presidential campaign of 1960, a charismatic and energetic John F. Kennedy was trying to overcome a host of religious prejudices to become the first Catholic president in our nation’s history. When anti-Catholic bigotry fueled the rumor that Kennedy would take his political orders from the pope, Kennedy assured the nation that he would act independently of foreign (i.e. papal) influence and only in the nation’s best interests. But the candidate with the winning smile went even further.
In his 1960 address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Alliance, Kennedy insisted that he would never allow his Catholic beliefs to shape or influence his political decisions. “I believe,” he confessed, “in a president whose views are his own private affair.” (The full text of Kennedy’s speech is available online at www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkhoustonministers.html )
At that moment, Kennedy publicly surrendered the integrity of his private conscience. If he believed in God, he promised that such a belief would not move him one way or another. If he understood that by Baptism, he no longer lived, but only Christ in Him, Kennedy was willing to deny that life, with all that it entails and make every decision affecting the welfare of this nation with regard only for the practical, the expedient or the popular.
By privatizing his faith, Kennedy invited his political successors to waltz with two grinning evils. First, by insisting that religious convictions have neither social nor moral implications, Kennedy removed religion from the public square, where social and moral considerations are openly discussed. This marginalized the Church, and though we count for 17 percent of the world’s population, as Catholics we will have no common voice in this country.
Then, by removing from the political conversation any reference to what is really true and good, Kennedy and his successors have determined that the reference point of our political decision-making would be what appears to be good right now and what appears to be true in this moment. This is the reason why our political system has become so self-serving and so corrupt. In place of a moral integrity born of faith, our only motives are practical self-interest and the expediency of what works.
For example, I did not hear one word spoken during the last presidential campaign on behalf of the increasing number of destitute families in the Third World. Neither candidate offered any measure of hope for the people of places like the Congo, Darfur, Zimbabwe or Haiti, whose suffering is of little strategic importance for American foreign policy or our economic recovery.
This is why I say that politicians who compromise their integrity cannot serve the public good in any meaningful way; and as for my statement that by compromising themselves, they corrupt our freedom, let me ask you whether our country has lost its religious freedom when no Catholic could be elected to public office as long as he or she will not renounce what it is the Church teaches?
His Holiness Pope Benedict articulated this loss of freedom with stunning clarity when he addressed the United Nations almost a year ago now. In explaining that the freedom of religion is not limited to the freedom to worship according to one’s conscience but includes the right to act conscientiously in every area of one’s social and professional life, the pontiff said, “The full guarantee of religious liberty cannot be limited to the free exercise of worship, but has to give due consideration to the public dimension of religion and hence to the possibility of believers playing their part in building the social order.”
But we cannot demand of our public servants an integrity we ourselves do not possess. It is true that Kennedy could have said that under no circumstances would he compromise his faith. He could have said it, and we Catholics could have demanded that from him. But he wanted to win, and we wanted him to win, and so we allowed it, becoming complicit in his denial, which, I believe, has led to the present scandal of Catholic politicians who seek to have it both ways, claiming to be Catholic while they reject some of the most basic moral teachings which the Church offers and, in particular, refuse to listen to Her constant pleas in defense of life.
In the third century, St. Cyprian of Carthage challenged his people as to why they were willing to compromise their faith by having it both ways, that is, praying for God’s Kingdom to come while accepting the security this world offers and all its enticements. He asked, “The world hates Christians; so why give your love to it instead of following Christ who loves you and has redeemed you?”
I will not ask you how you would respond to St. Cyprian’s question, but I will ask you this: Don’t you think America would be a stronger, freer nation if all Catholics exercised their civic responsibilities without having to compromise their faith or surrender the integrity of their moral conscience?
Bishop Slattery
Diocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma
