ONLY VOTING WAS NEVER ENOUGH
Politics only rarely finds a place on this blog. The last entry with any political reference
was back in March when I quoted in agreement the statement issued by some
conservative Catholics, Robert George in particular. He and others found Trump “manifestly unfit
to be president.” All the way through
to election day, George did not waver one bit from this opinion even though he
made it clear that Clinton had no place as president either.
In the waning days of the campaign (and why not before?), I
found myself praying for all the candidates on the ballot that I would see on
November 8. I realized by then that the
country was dangerously divided. And I
felt some of the shame and confusion that many commentators have expressed because
they missed the pain that called out for change. Let's pray, for example, that the cry for jobs will resonate. Just rebuilding our infrastructure would create a wealth of jobs.
It did
not take the election to know that any leader would have great difficulty
unifying the country around goals that would meet expectations…much less goals
that addressed all the issues of the common good.
On the Sunday before the election I preached about our duties
after the election. If any of us had
been somewhat uninvolved in the community, that time is now past.
Despite the “manifest unfitness” of our new president, we
Jesuits have an opportunity to heed a warning that Ignatius was moved to give
to his companions in the earliest days of the Jesuits. It happened that a man who had a strong
dislike of the Jesuits became Pope.
Ignatius asked his companions not to speak ill of him and he himself
made every effort to convince the new Pope of the value of the Jesuit
mission. (During his short reign, the Pope
made many bad decisions.) But the point
that Ignatius made was well within his own practice: try to make the most
generous judgment you can of those who carry opinions contrary to your own. Respect of our political figures must be the
first rule of our political advocacy.
We will do our best. I think first of all of Jesuits and their
colleagues who serve the needs of immigrants and refugees along the Mexican
border, especially those in the Kino Border Initiative in Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora, two
towns on the opposite sides of the border.
Immigration policies promoted by the Bishops of the United States stand
little chance of being enacted by the new president. But more to the point the Kino Border Initiative and others are not likely to stay silent should new deportation policies create situations like the break up of families.
We Catholics speak a great deal about abortion policy,
too. And most of us will welcome a new
judge on the Supreme Court who wants to curb the extent of late-term
abortion. What else the Court might do regarding
abortion with another one or two newly appointed figures on the Court is
difficult to predict. It is at the
same time difficult to predict the commitment of the new president to any substantial
shift in abortion policy. But there is
no question about our own need to expand our services to pregnant women who
need help to bring their children to term.
Health care, climate change, religious tests for civic
involvement,
Any one issue of many could bring some Catholics to engage in civil disobedience or even risk arrest. In
this present climate all kinds of policies benefiting the common good will come
under fresh review. Such reviews
demand a broad range of eyes. Maybe politics needs a broader place even
here.
