"We Have a Positive Idea To Offer"

Rocco Palma, of "Whispers in the Loggia" (link), has a thoughtful and worthwhile post-election essay about (among other things) how the Church and Catholics might better present and witness to the Faith in the public square, posted over at "Busted Halo."  A bit:

Moral of the tale: to be faithful to our Catholic values in the public square, to exhibit them with the care they deserve, means to stand up for them responsibly. It means a consistent witness, not just to the moral teachings on the ballot, but to how we’ve been taught to treat those with whom we disagree and to be patient with the process. . . .

Just like any other actor on the stage of this pluralist democracy, the church’s message is given a chance, and we only have so many of those before the opportunity is gone for good.  No culture, no electorate can justly be blamed for our failure to present our teaching as it is: salient, rich, life-giving, and wise enough to have stood the test of two millennia.  Whether it succeeds at the ballot box hinges not on its truth and value, but on the faith, hope and love with which we bear it.

Rocco also notes that "the fact that three of the Church’s high-octane ballot items—stopping embryonic stem-cell research in Missouri, banning most abortions in South Dakota, and sanctioning parental notification in California—went down to defeat should serve as a clarion call that the way our leadership engages questions of faith in public policy is in need of a full and thorough rethinking."  This is probably right.  That said, I would not want (and, I suspect Rocco would not want) the result of this re-thinking to be a conclusion like, "we bishops, although we are shepherds and teachers, should no longer address divisive issues like stem-cell research and abortion, and should not bother reminding Catholics of Church teachings relevant to these matters, but should focus instead on more positive-sounding matters."