Tuesday, October 5, 2010
The Church gets "political" in Minnesota
Minnesota Catholics are buzzing (at least in my parish) about the DVD sent out by Abp. Nienstedt last week to all Catholic households in the state advocating for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Aside from the ongoing debate about the substance of the Church's teaching on marriage and the priority placed on that teaching over other issues, as well as the Archbishop's characterization of the state's elected leaders as "ruling elites," there has also been criticism over the "political" nature of the mailing, coming just four weeks before election day. Though the marriage question is not on the ballot (Abp Nienstedt is arguing that it should be on the ballot), only one candidate for governor opposes SSM, while the other two support it. Whether or not the Church's position on a given issue is shared by lots of candidates, no candidates, or only a single candidate, issue advocacy cannot be transformed into candidate endorsement for purposes of the laws on tax-exempt status (though if I'm wrong on that, please tell me). I was puzzled, though, by this paraphrase of the Archbishop's response to criticism:
Nienstedt, who says he does not know how much the DVD campaign cost or who donated the funds, insists the DVD is not political but part of an ongoing effort to educate Minnesota Catholics about marriage.
Since this is not a direct quote, I'm not sure if the Archbishop actually said that the campaign is "not political" or if that was the reporter's characterization. Either way, the phrasing seems unnecessary and unhelpful to the conversation about the Church's role in public life. Of course the DVD campaign is political -- how could it not be? It may not be partisan, but we should be careful not to conflate "partisan" and "political." The Church's teaching has political implications, just as the Gospel has political implications. That's not a bad thing, and it's difficult to conceive of how it could be otherwise.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/10/the-church-gets-political-in-minnesota.html
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I agree that there is a problem with the word "political." It has many meanings and connotations depending on the context. In the sense of the Church's social teaching, the word is not a taboo and the Gospel impacts that sphere like it impacts every sphere. To be fair, this article does not put the denial of that word in the diocese's mouth in *quotes*, so by this article alone we don't know what they said. (Because there are no quotes, we can fairly assume that their response was more nuanced--so nuanced that the reporter had to paraphrase.) But assume that they did say "this wasn't political." The word political in this context, as shown in the article, is being used as a slur. People opposed to the Church's actions are improperly cashing in on the word's ambiguity--that people hear it as meaning pure partisanship and something violating the law--to accuse the Church backhandedly. Then the response, which will only get printed if it is in soundbyte form, is subject to being so nuanced that it fails to get printed (an exposition of the nature of politics in Church teaching and the difference between issue advocacy and moral implications on politics and pure partisanship and the First Amendment and tax law)--and if that response gets issued in the form of an 80 page document, the Church is criticized for being inarticulate and bumbling and the news coverage conveys even less of what they said if anything at all. Instead, the response (we are supposing) was issued was to say this isn't political, this is issue education. Which is basically accurate in this charged context. It fails to possess the precision of a treatise on social justice, but where the word political is being used *because* of its partisan baggage, the response actually gets printed and delivers the message, and that seems reasonable to me.