Many of those who are commenting upon B16’s latest Encyclical bring little value to the discussion because they have not read the document or they cannot see beyond their particular ideology in order to competently engage the Pope’s thought. One such example is a particularly obtuse commentary by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland and daughter of RFK.
Kennedy does not seem to have read the Encyclical upon which she comments and neither is she able to extricate herself from her radically dissenting ideology in order to put together any coherent thoughts. She uses the events of BO’s audience with B16 with the Encyclical as renewed opportunities to lambaste the Church for her teachings on…what else… those issues dealing with sex and the human person.
Kennedy presents an ironically ignorant essay due at least in part, to these two shortfalls. She goes so far as to say that BO better represents the views of American Catholics than does B16 (more on that later). So why comment upon such screed? Well, her op ed serves as an example of the long road ahead in trying to bring Catholic politicians to use their intellects for a change and so to seriously engage the teachings of the Church.
Kennedy seems to recognize that the title of the Encyclical means truth in love but she does not seem to appreciate that the Pope is directly addressing the issues that she raises. In her comments, Kennedy uses the same tired canards to attack the Church’s teaching on abortion, same sex attraction disorder, artificial contraception and women’s ordination that have been thrown out for all too many years now. Of course, she unabashedly rejects all of these teachings.
Kennedy does not even bother to address the argument that Benedict puts forth in the Encyclical that love without truth is not love at all. Perhaps she is not even aware that he has made such an argument. Instead, she simply asserts, without any supporting logic, that the Church’s teaching demonstrates a lack of love. She also asserts, again without demonstrating, that the only reason for the Church’s teaching in these areas is due to a fear of losing power. She never seriously considers that her understanding of love and truth may be seriously deficient. The same could be said of her understanding of the interrelationship between the two.
It is ironic that she makes a claim for truth in love without making an obvious argument for the truth of her position. What she does do is to make a reference to polls of US Catholics on certain issues, the results of which she claims contradicts the “positions of the Pope.” Her argument is based upon a not very well thought out assumption that the Pope is supposed to represent the “values” of some constituency, here US Catholics. She doesn’t even address the Church’s 2000 year old teaching that the Holy Father’s role is rather to lead all Catholics in truth.
It is perhaps this contemporary political mindset that Kennedy impresses upon the Church that keeps her stuck in obtuse diatribe in which she is never able to rise to the level of basic argumentation. Kennedy does not seem to understand that she assumes an indefensible definition of truth. Truth is not the higher percentage number response to a question (an all too often leading question at that) that some pollster is able to squeeze out of the few who answer their phones and the fewer still who will answer the pollsters’ questions. Neither is love to be equated with the particular position for which you receive affirmation from the group that you identify with.
Again, Kennedy is quite ironic in her rather arrogant assertion of those things that BO has to teach B16. She says that “respectful disagreement and the willingness to recognize [sic] differences” are two of these lessons. Here she is referring to Church teaching on the killing of innocent unborn (and those born after a failed abortion) and the promotion of the rupture of the social fabric of society by the redefinition of marriage and the family that BO promotes and still he was so graciously willing to go to UND anyway…imagine that for a politician. Apparently, Kennedy has not herself learned that same lesson as she does not respectfully disagree with the Church but accuses her leaders of cowardice and ignorance. She is not willing to “recognize” (rather, tolerate) the differences between her worldly views and the teachings of the Church which the Magisterium upholds. Rather, she demands that the consistent 2000 year old, infallible teachings of the Church be changed to fit her personal world view.
A final example of Kennedy’s tortuous thinking are the two times she refers to Church teaching in order to support her position. The first is her reference to the latest Encyclical which she claims that it gives credence to BO’s policies and to “progressive politics writ large.” She mentions it again, when she asserts that Notre Dame’s giving an honorary degree to BO was simply that school’s highlighting of “the best of Catholic teaching” applied to politics. She embraces Catholic teaching when she is able to twist it to fit her secular world view and rejects it when she is not. She does not even try to provide an argument that justifies how she can both embrace and reject teachingz which come from the same source. If she is writing off the authority of the Church then why even bother noting when there is apparent agreement? If she recognizes the authority of the Church, then what is her justification for the selective dissent?
The new Encyclical, if one reads it with an open mind and an open heart, can and must transform the way we think about the world and the way that our current public and private organizations, institutions, and structures operate. There are many who are spilling much ink and/or electrons writing about it but few have read it. Fewer still have allowed themselves to read it as it was written without projecting their own ideologies upon it. This does not bode well for expectations of progress with these dissenting politicians. Kennedy is proof positive of the old addage that you can lead a horse to water . . .
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