Allen's gut check

Thank you Michael P. for posting John Allen's latest.  I wanted to highlight two bits of Allen's essay:

[T]he real "losers" from Caritas in Veritate are Catholics who operate as chaplains to political parties, cheerleaders for political candidates, and spin doctors for either the Bush or Obama administrations, cherry-picking among church teachings to support those positions. Needless to say, the American Catholic landscape is dotted with prominent examples of all the above.

and

Can American Catholics evangelize the country's politics, or are we content to be evangelized by it?

That, in any event, seems to be the gut-check posed by Caritas in Veritate.