Catholics, U.S. Culture and Transformation

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - August 10, 2007

In every generation, Jesus has called on his disciples to transform society.

He wants his followers to be the "light of the world" and communicate to those around them the truth about God and about the human person that Jesus himself irradiated. He wants them to be "the salt of the earth" and preserve people from corruption. He reminds his followers that they are meant to be like "leaven" in the midst of dough: their presence, even in small numbers, is meant to lift up all of society, just as one candle can illumine a pitch-dark room.

At the same time, Jesus has warned his disciples from the beginning to beware lest their salt lose its saltiness, their light be eclipsed by a bushel basket, or their leaven supplanted by the yeast infection of teachings of the Pharisees and Sadducees, who represent the rigorists and pseudo-cultic laxists, respectively, in every age. Jesus reminds us, in other words, that, while we are carrying out our mission to transform those around us for the better, we need to be on-guard lest the culture around us transform us for the worse.

The history of the Church has been a chronicle of both great epochs when Christ's disciples as a body have largely converted those around them, as well as of wasted periods where disciples for the most part lost their identity and were seduced by the spirit of the age. The history of every believer turns on a similar choice: between being transformed by Christ and his Church and taking that transformation out to others, or being transformed by others and taking that transformation back as the principles of an altered relationship with Christ and the Church.

The major controversies within the Church in the United States, and between the Church and our society as a whole, focus on the directionality of this transformation. Should the teachings of the Church transform culture or should culture transform the teachings of the Church?

This is the essential background to a Catholic call-to-arms sounded by Professor Robert P. George in an article earlier this month that has quickly become a much-read internet sensation. A law professor and philosopher at Princeton, George has long been recognized as one of the sharpest thinkers in the United States, serving, among many other posts, on the President's Council for Bioethics and on the Presidential Commission on Civil Rights.

In his article, entitled "Danger and Opportunity: A Plea to Catholics," Professor George described that the future direction of our country rests in the hands of Catholic adults in America today, specifically whether they will seek to transform society with the principles of the Gospel with respect to marriage, sexual morality, and the sanctity of human life, or whether they will do nothing and allow the secularist ideologists preached in universities, the media and the elite sectors of American culture to triumph.

At issue, he says, is not merely whether particular policy decisions will be approved or denied, but which understanding of the human person that informs the position on both sides will be adopted.

George says that "two issues are so central to our future and, indeed, to the future of mankind that they must, surely, be given a certain priority. Both are on the table now and will be resolved—for better or for worse—in the next decade or so. Critical (possibly irreversible) decisions will be made in the next year or two." Those two issues are "marriage and the complex set of issues sometimes referred to compendiously as 'bioethics.' In respect of both matters," he writes, "things will go one way or the other depending on the posture and actions of Catholics.

"If the Catholic community is engaged on these issues, working closely with evangelical Christians, observant Jews, and people of goodwill and sound moral judgment of other faiths and even of no particular religious faith, grave injustices and the erosion of central moral principles will be, to a significant extent, averted. Indeed, with respect to both marriage and the sanctity of human life, earlier reverses may themselves be reversed.

"If, on the other hand, the Catholic community compromises itself, abdicates its responsibilities, and sits on the sidelines, the already deeply wounded institution of marriage will collapse and the brave new world of biotechnology will transform procreation into manufacture, and nascent human life into mere disposable 'research material.'

Professor George calls on all members of the Church to be engaged. He summons lay people to reflect on their responsibilities to be salt, light and leaven and, as good citizens, to take the Church's teachings in these areas to the public arena and to the ballot box. He also called on bishops and priests to remind lay people "in no uncertain terms" of the difference they can make and are called by Christ to make.

"Bishops need to lead on this," he states, "but not by becoming politicians; the primary responsibility to work in the political sphere falls to the laity. But bishops and clergy do their part when they challenge those of us in the laity to fulfill that great responsibility. Their role is to encourage, exhort, and even cajole us to do the right thing. Moreover, they should never hesitate to reprove us when we fail in our obligations to defend human life, marriage, and the common good, as far too many Catholics, including Catholics prominent in public life, have done and, alas, are doing."

George notes that the Church's ability to do this has been wounded not just by the clergy-sex abuse scandals, but by the reticence of far too many priests and bishops to announce the Church's teachings in areas modern culture finds controversial, and by the unchallenged refusal of many lay Catholics to live them.

Be that as it may, George, says, "This is no time for Catholics to be looking inward, gazing at our navels, too embarrassed (or desirous of the approval of cultural elites or fearful of their disapproval) to speak to the moral crisis of the culture. On the contrary, now is the time to bring our Christian witness, the very practical and effective love of Christ, unabashedly to the culture."

That is the type of transformation Christ is urgently asking of American Catholics today.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.