Political Dimension

I wanted to follow-up on Rob's comments regarding the "politcal" leanings of those who support "action" or "anthropology." First, I think it is important for those of us who believe in a Christian anthropology to remember that we agree more than we disagree or, put another way, we are addressing issues based on a shared understanding about what is fundamentally true. There are, nevertheless, some important points of divergence when it comes to how we deal with the practical realities of living in the world.

I think both American political parties are deeply rooted in an anthropology of autonomy. At base, the Republican vision is one in which the individual needs to be set free from communal constraints so that personal freedom can be maximized in the economic/public sphere. This "freedom" justifies all kinds of inequalities in American society (and around the world) primarily in the service of an ever expanding market. It also helps explain the growing commodification of American life. These changes do not benefit the blue collar and middle-class people who have become Republican voters to the extent many of them believe (see e.g., Elizabeth Warren's The Two Icome Trap), but in order to woo those voters, the Republican party has, in my view cynically, taken a traditionalist position on cultural issues. This is simply a natural extention of the Southern Strategy.

The Democrats need individual autonomy to free individuals from communal contstraints in the cultural/private sphere. They were able to seize on the inability of American conservatives to deal with serious questions of social justice regarding race. Since then, however, the Democrats have allowed themselves to be captured by the idea that unfettered personal freedom is the highest good. We should all be able to live as we wish, and the state will clean up our messes. The cultural and economic insecurities of African-Americans, poorer immigrant groups, and others have given the Democrats a reliable base of voters who are actually more conservative on social issues than the party, but who are afraid to trust the Republicans. The primary beneficiaries of the social freedom offered by the Democrats are the cultural elites of the large cities and their suburbs--well educated professionals, etc. Indeed, the money elites of the Republican party are also key beneficiaries of the highly permissive culture championed by the Democrats.

So, I don't think either party presents a choice that a Catholic should feel good about, but I suppose individual Catholics might take a pragamtic view that one party is "less bad" than the other. Either way, the entire body of the social teaching stresses the need to confront structures of social, economic and cultural power that undermine human dignity, as we understand it in our tradition. In particular, Sollicitudo rei Socialis and Centissimus annus develop the concepts of structural sin, solidarity, and the priority of the poor that, when applied to American politics, show how broken our political system is. But human life is imperfect, and so are human institutions. Catholics live in the world and the credibility of the social teaching is rooted in its witness of a lived Catholic faith. In Evangelization in the Modern World , Pope Paul VI made this point: ". . . the first means of evangelization is a witness of an authentically Christian life, given over to God in a communion that nothing should destroy and at the same time given to one's neighbor with limitless zeal. . . modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses."

Vince