Washington – Evangelical Catholicism has arrived as a new and politically potent voice here in the nation’s capital.
On Friday, in just its second year of existence, the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast lured President Bush to downtown’s biggest hotel ballroom.
Two U.S. senators, 11 representatives, White House political adviser Karl Rove and some 1,600 others braved a downpour of near-biblical proportion for early morning Mass and pancakes.
The keynote address was given by one of the movement’s heroes, the archbishop of Denver, the Rev. Charles J. Chaput. They love the guy.
“Someday: Chaput for pope!” said Austin Ruse, the master of ceremonies, after the archbishop had spoken.
They love Bush too. He was greeted by an exceptionally warm and lasting ovation. If he had not done so well with such conservative and moderate Catholics in last fall’s campaign, the president might not be president.
Joseph Cella, the founder of the breakfast, says he and other evangelical Catholics take their inspiration from John Paul the Great, as the late pope is now known, who called for “a New Evangelization … in ardor, methods and expression.”
Catholics spent America’s first two centuries trying to “be accepted,” Chaput said. But now it is time for Catholics to examine “the cost of fitting in.”
“Since the 1960s, many American Catholics have been acting like we’re lucky just to be tolerated … in other words, we’d better not be too Catholic or somebody will be offended,” Chaput said.
“That’s a mistake,” he said. “If we don’t conform our lives to what we claim to believe, then we’re living a lie.”
Once Catholics have conformed, Chaput said, they are morally bound to try to turn their beliefs into law.
After all, “all law is the imposition of somebody’s beliefs on somebody else,” he said.
Cella’s group is nonpartisan but leans Republican. On a day when the headlines announced new advances in stem-cell technology and the Senate was in knots over judicial nominations and abortion, there were continual references, from Bush and other speakers, to the “culture of life.” Later that morning, Bush would threaten to veto legislation to expand federally- funded embryonic stem-cell research.
Give Cella credit. He reserved as much time on the program for Sister Margaret Mary, of the Little Sisters of the Poor, as he did for the archbishop of Denver or the president of the United States.
The holy sisters devote their lives to caring for impoverished senior citizens and conducting other acts of Christian charity in near anonymity in Denver and 29 other American cities.
I’ve come to believe that Christians can be divided, no matter their denomination, into two camps. There’s the Sermon on the Mount Christians, who aspire to be blessed as merciful seekers of justice and peace, and the Ten Commandment Christians, who place more emphasis on obeying the “Thou Shalt Nots.”
For the former, the sisters are like rock stars. Chaput is known as a social conservative, but he didn’t leave Catholics off the hook when it came to social justice. The archbishop’s list of modern evils featured abortion and stem-cell research but also included “the neglect of the poor and the elderly” and “the mistreatment of immigrants in our midst.”
“Do these things make us angry?” he challenged the crowd. “Do we really have the courage of our convictions to change these things?”
I would not think much of a faith that did not take to the public square and speak out against evil.
The Catholic Church could have used some of John Paul’s “ardor and methods” in the wars against slavery and Nazi totalitarianism.
I hope that, with the spirit of Tom Joad, Catholics will always be there, “wherever there is a fight so hungry people can eat.”
But we face a ruthless modernity, and upon the earth all peoples claw for moral purchase. The surety of faith – religious or political – can itself be a seduction, and righteousness lead to pogrom.
And so I’ll end with Chaput’s caveat.
“President Bush is not ‘Lord,”‘ he told the crowd. “Our political parties – whether Democratic or Republican – are not ‘Lord.’
“Our possessions are not our ‘Lord.’ Nor are our talents or our friends.
“Renewing our hearts – that’s where we begin,” Chaput said.
John Aloysius Farrell is the Washington bureau chief for The Denver Post. His column appears each Sunday. Contact him at jfarrell@denverpost.com or 202-662-8990.
