Prayer and introspection are key elements in easing divides.
How might Catholics engage secular culture with a view to diminishing the polarization and hostility that colors so much contemporary social discourse, especially on the heels of the presidential inauguration Jan. 20?
Zina Gomez-Liss, a parishioner at Sacred Heart parish in Newton, Massachusetts, is mildly optimistic that polarization and political discord might ease if Catholics in particular remain “guarded by our better angels.” Quoting Abraham Lincoln from his first inaugural address in 1861, Gomez-Liss told the Register that the recent presidential election campaign seemed to leave the world “changed and more fearful.”
Nonetheless, Gomez-Liss, who was among the more than 250 people who attended a talk on the subject of civil discourse held recently at the University of Notre Dame’s Catholic Imagination Conference, believes that if citizens recall the Good Samaritan narrative and earnestly search out neighbors and friends, rather than enemies, a sense of commonality will prevail.
Kenneth Craycraft, a professor of moral theology at the Athenaeum Seminary in Cincinnati, recommends efforts to recover a language of common good, human dignity, solidarity and subsidiarity.
“A second, and closely related step, is to refrain from relying on one of the two major political parties as the source of our moral and policy positions,” Craycraft told the Register. “Since most of us identify as either Republicans or Democrats before we are Catholics, we tend to perceive ‘Catholic’ thought as synonymous with the thought of one of these two major political parties.”
Meanwhile, Sean Fitzpatrick, an educator and writer at Gregory the Great Academy in Elmhurst Township, Pennsylvania, advises against becoming locked in rigid political ideologies and instead understand that being Catholic means being called to be united with all.
“Disagreement is different than disparagement,” he told the Register. “The surest and most sacred place for American Catholics to place their prayers and their opinions is that the grace of God must affect the miracle required to bring about the union of all beneath the one true faith, where the truth will make this land free as it never has been before. It may seem like an impossible position to hope for or propose, but … we believe that with God nothing is impossible. Pray, then, that all Americans may be united in the peace of Christ by maintaining truth as their common standard and closing the divide of political polarization.”
As Father Damian Ference, the vicar for evangelization and secretary for parish life and special ministries for the Diocese of Cleveland, recommended at the recent Notre Dame conference, “Christ is King. Keeping that in mind is helpful. Politics are important, but politics is not religion. Worship God and love him and love your neighbor as yourself.”
Michael Mastromatteo is a writer, editor and book reviewer from Toronto.