Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

Most have probably read Bishop Tobin’s public rebuke of Representative Patrick Kennedy last week.  The public rebuke of wayward Catholic politicians is becoming a growing trend among our US shepherds.  For decades now, the dominant pastoral strategy among bishops who have taken seriously their responsibilities, has been to engage these politicians in private.  The thinking being that pastoral dialogue is only possible when done in private.  Once the matter becomes public the opportunity for personal dialog is generally lost.  Unfortunately, those politicians have come to recognize this and taken great advantage of it.

Kennedy, like others before him, thought himself free to publicly proclaim the meaning of being Catholic assuming that he was exempt from public rebuke.  I suspect that part of this comes from the predominant American heresy that says religion is a completely private, individualistic affair.  In other words, no one can tell me what “my faith” means.  Thus, wayward Catholic politicians regularly proclaim that they can do whatever they wish and still be “good” Catholics.  I would argue that this heresy has been unintentionally abetted by the previously dominant pastoral strategy of US bishops.

Bishop Tobin’s public action is the latest in a trend among US bishops that recognizes that this one-sided strategy has borne more ill fruit than good.  The relativist assumptions of politicians such as Kennedy, that because they claim the Catholic faith then it is whatever they define it to be, has had a corrosive affect on US Catholics by and large.  This last election I think has been a turning point.  Here we had a politician who publicly promised to do everything he could in order to put laws and policies in place which would bring about the greatest expansion in history of the killing of unborn innocents, who at the same time garnered a majority of “Catholic” votes.  The confusion among Catholic voters could not be more manifest.

This last election has made it clear that the private approach must have its limits.  Its affect has been to allow many Catholics to assume, as do the politicians, that faith is simply personal opinion.  The lack of sufficient public rebuke for obstinate politicians has led others to reach the conclusion, perhaps in an unarticulated way, that while perhaps not a good thing abortion is certainly not an evil on the level of murder. This confusion must be remedied.

Other than one grammatical error, I find Bishop Tobin’s missive to Rep. Kennedy to be a model for the right pastoral response.  Kennedy has rightly been silenced.  His complaints that the discussion about his faith is something that should remain in private (though he himself previously made it public) demonstrates his faulty expectations of free public reign on his part with silence on the part of his bishop.  Bishop Tobin’s approach will not only serve to help to correct Kennedy’s false public witness but it also will serve as a warning that politicians may not speak with impunity about what it means to be a Catholic when they contradict Church teaching.

It is true that wayward Catholic politicians have souls in need of salvation and that this is part of a bishop’s responsibilities.  However, many bishops are coming to recognize that there are many other souls being led astray with a one-sided strategy that looks only at the conversion of the politician.  It is still a matter of prudential judgment when it is time to go public.  Nevertheless, there is a growing realization that eventually taking the issue public is a necessary matter of public witness.