Failing America’s Faithful

On a recent trip back to Rome from the US, I read Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s new book entitled Failing America’s Faithful: How Today’s Churches Are Mixing God with Politics and Losing Their Way. While the book provides an interesting read, I must question some of the author’s assertions. While I realize that her work was not intended to be a scholarly examination and presentation of the confluence of law, religion (particularly the Catholic faith), and public life, I was surprised that the author’s bibliography did not contain any Church texts whatsoever. However, authors such as Joan Chittister, Harvey Cox, Mary Daly, E.J. Dionne, Jr., Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Elizabeth Johnson, and Gary Wills made the cut. Joseph Ratzinger, Eugenio Pacelli, Angelo Roncalli, and Karol Wojtyla amongst others, did not.

One of Kennedy Townsend’s central and inspiring premises is that “Churches could be the place to encourage, nurture, and promote moral action.” However, in her estimation, they fail in this because “faith in America now divides communities.” It struck me that she has made a mistake in this assertion. I do not see faith dividing communities or anything else, but I do see political issues such as abortion, bioethical questions, euthanasia, same-sex marriage—to mention but a few—providing the grist for this divisive mill. She makes a further important claim that “We no longer hear in our churches, or in our homes, the daily reminder that to walk in God’s path is not just to pray or give charity, but also to work for justice for every creature on His earth.” (Her italics) The assertion is all the more startling when one considers the author’s personal record when she held public office—did she extend justice to all of God’s creatures? She equates the mission of the Church—her Church as she often says—with social justice. Little or nothing is said of a deep faith that takes into account God’s truth, sin, redemption, and salvation. Consequently, her prose reads more like a political treatise than it does an account of faith in public life.

On several occasions she says that the Bible is silent on issues such as contraception, abortion, same-sex marriage, and embryonic stem cell research, but the Church preoccupies itself with these public issues. She then critiques Her Church and other denominations for not connecting religious teachings with pressing issues such as “corporate greed, environmental degradation, failing schools, or lack of health care.” These are surely important issues, but I do not remember the Gospels addressing these either; however, she does not mention that these items are also absent from the canonical texts of Sacred Scripture.

Nevertheless, she insists that she wants the Catholic Church to play its part in the world. In this contexts, she contends that the Church must be able to handle the issues of the day, which include contraception, family planning, and the role of the laity and of women in the Church and society. With regard to the role of the laity, the author does not indicate any familiarization with Pius XII’s 1939 encyclical Summi Pontificatus wherein he made some important points about the significant role of the laity. But, it again strikes me that the Church has addressed all these issues that she has raise and many more besides, but it seems that it has not done so in the fashion that the author prefers. Perhaps that is the real bone of her contention.

At another point she makes the interesting claim that “A number of Catholic leaders such as Father Robert Drinan suggested that the Church refrain from taking a political position on abortion on the grounds that all moral issues need not be legislative ones. But the hierarchy in Rome refused that stance.” Her statement begs the question what was the Church to do when, in fact, abortion became both a legislative and judicial matter? Was the Church, its hierarchy, its members to remain silent? Where would justice and the faith be if they did remain silent? But her response to my question is this: “I—and many other Catholics—were faced with a Church whose teachings seemed increasingly out of step with our lives. Our all-wise Church, which had seemed so embracing, so understanding of human sin and weakness, did not seem so wise anymore.” She quickly follows up this critique by stating that “Whenever I begin to despair of the Church’s recent retreat from the fight to create a just society, I remind myself of the moments when [it] lived up to its name, rose above the denominational limits, and spoke out on behalf of justice for all people.” This assertion demonstrates how unfamiliar she is with her Church, its teachings and its actions across the globe. It seems that when the Church takes a position contrary to her own, it is divisive; but, when it acts according to her views, it is wise.

She concludes her most blistering critique of the Church with her vision for a “reformed Church” that “can advance the vision of love of neighbor that the Gospels call for. As Jesus said, ‘As you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.’” I don’t believe the author took into consideration her own public record when she penned these lines about Jesus’s discourse on the Last Judgment from the Gospel of Saint Matthew.

When all is said and done, this author hopes and prays for a “new beginning” for her Church so that it can “preach a more balanced vision of the earthly ethics our faith requires—a bold, broad form of Christian virtue.” I believe her prayers have been and continue to be answered in a positive fashion, but her vision—perhaps for the time being—does not enable her to see and take account of this.   RJA sj