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Religion and the Renewal of Civic Society
With public confidence in the Catholic Church waning, and Mass attendance slipping, it may seem like a bad time to ask about Catholicism's role in shaping culture, conscience, and public policy in the United States. Yet even with the recent scandals of clergy sex abuse, participation in civic and political life is no less a virtue and indeed a religious obligation for individual Catholics and the institutional church. And, in many ways Catholicism remains well positioned to help infuse public life with religious and moral sensibilities, as several speakers argued during the Woodstock Forum held at Georgetown University on January 30. Moderated by The Washington Post columnist and Brookings Institution scholar E.J. Dionne, Jr., the forum included presentations by Woodstock fellow John Farina, social ethicist William O'Neill, S.J., and U.S. bishops' adviser Joan Rosenhauer. Among questions put to the panel were: Can religion play a positive role in renewing trust in public institutions today? In particular, can Catholicism, given its own internal problems, contribute to the renewal of civic society? Following is an edited transcript of the dialogue, closing with an exchange between the panelists and moderator Dionne, who co-chairs the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
INTRODUCTION
by E.J. Dionne, Jr.
E. J. Dionne, Jr., is a noted journalist, author, and political commentator. His op-ed column for the Washington Post appears in syndication in more than ninety other newspapers. In recent years, much of his work has involved issues of religion and civic society. He edited Community Works: The Revival of Civil Society in America (1998) and co-edited What's God Got to Do with the American Experiment (2000) and Sacred Places, Civic Purposes: Should Government Help Faith-Based Charity? (2001). Since 1996, he has been a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he co-chairs the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. I want to just put out one thought before hearing from our panelists. Robert Putnam of that famous book, Bowling Alone, is very concerned about "social capital," which is the capital we create not with our money, but essentially by working together and participating in a civic way. And Putnam makes this great distinction between what he calls "bonding social capital," and "bridging social capital." I think that goes very much to the heart of what we're going to talk about tonight. The bonding social capital tends to bring people together in the groups from which they come and bridging social capital brings together people across the lines of - if you will forgive the term - their groupness, whether it be religion, or race, or economic status.
Religion is in some ways the most interesting form of social capital because it is both powerfully bonding at some moments and powerfully bridging at other moments. And I think our panelists, in one way or another, will have a lot to say about: When does each happen? When is each appropriate? And perhaps: How could even bonding social capital turn into bridging social capital?
THE SCANDAL AND ALL, THE CHURCH MUST LIFT ITS VOICE
A presentation by Joan Rosenhauer
Joan Rosenhauer is with the Office of Social Development and World Peace of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington. She coordinates the U.S. bishops' program, "Faithful Citizenship." Her articles have appeared in the New Theology Review and Momentum. My first point has to do with the question of why Catholicism can and must contribute to the renewal of civic society. The first context I'd like to look at is the U.S. church. Some would argue that the recent scandal related to the abuse of children has so severely diminished the church's ability to speak out about ethics and the moral dimensions of public life that we're really not in a position to do that anymore. As someone who works very closely with the bishops, I can tell you that there have been times when having a bishop speak, while all the newspapers were covered with stories about bishops and priests, was not something that was welcomed in various settings in the public arena. I think that as the immediate attention diminishes, that sort of reaction is slowing down a little bit.
When we think, in the midst of this crisis, about whether the church should still be involved in civic life, our reaction has to be that we are more than the mistakes of some of our members. We are all the Catholic Church. It is clearly not every priest who has been doing this and it's not every bishop who has made mistakes. The rest of us are still out here and we are still subject to the demands of discipleship. Discipleship means we need to be very clear and public witnesses of Christ's mission of bringing glad tidings to the poor, liberty to captives, and letting the oppressed go free. That challenge of discipleship is really who we are at our best as it relates to civil society. It's more important now than ever.
Society is seeing a lot of what we might be at our worst. We need to be clear and unashamed of being out there, being who we are at our best in society. That means being involved in public policy, speaking out about the moral and ethical dimensions of civic life. I want to be clear that suggesting that we need to be about other things is in no way to diminish the gravity of what has happened, and no way an attempt to change the subject. The subject shouldn't be changed, but it has its proper place and it shouldn't consume all of us, because we are more than that.
Now I want to look at the universal church, and I'll just say briefly that at this moment it is particularly important for the church to be visible in teaching our own people about what we have to say in the political or public arena because the Vatican has just spoken out on this. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has just issued a doctrinal note which affirms the obligation of Catholics to participate in social, economic, and political life based on the values of their faith and their understanding of human dignity and the common good. We ought to be communicating this message because many Catholics don't understand that that's one of our obligations.
The document from the Congregation also affirms the institutional church's role in public policy. It affirms the church's right and duty, not to propose a single solution as the only solution in every given political debate, but certainly to raise the ethical and moral dimensions and to articulate a moral judgment "on temporal matters when this is required by faith and moral law."
Now, the broader context. Our world now is threatened by terrorism and violence. Our country is trying to make decisions about going to war. There can be no more important topic for the church to speak out in terms of the moral and ethical issues that are at stake than these topics of war and peace, violence and terrorism. I think we have to be very clear that this is an important time as any for the church to speak out. We have a rich tradition of just war theory and we have a lot of teaching about promoting peace. That needs to be shared at this time.
Beyond Tolerance. I think what we can contribute more generally is our social principles. We could have a whole discussion on that, but I would highlight that just a couple of days ago Jesuit Father David Hollenbach of Boston College gave a talk to a meeting of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities in which he focused on the work of Alan Wolfe, who is also at Boston College, a familiar place for some people here at Georgetown. What he focused on was Wolfe's finding that tolerance is one of the very highest values among middle class people in the United States, and you can describe tolerance as an attitude that says, "I will accept what you do and what you believe and you will accept what I do and what I believe as long as neither of us does any harm to someone else."
I think what we say is that there is more to it than doing no harm. We also have to do good and so we have this understanding of the dignity of every human life and our obligation to protect and defend human life in every situation. We have an understanding of the common good that suggests that we cannot only sit back and take care of ourselves and hope we don't hurt anyone else. We also have to work for the common good. Human life and dignity can only be realized in the context of a society that does advance the common good.
Finally, I will just say a few words about how we can contribute, and I think this is best summarized in the bishops' statement called "Faithful Citizenship," which has been issued every four years since 1976. (Another one is scheduled to come out next fall.) What that statement basically says is that we can contribute as individual Catholics by being politically active and recognizing our obligation to do that.
In "Faithful Citizenship," the bishops specifically say that in the Catholic tradition responsible citizenship is a virtue, participation in the political process is a moral obligation. Now if you ask most Catholics and most parishes, I would guess, not many would say participation in the political process is an obligation of their faith. Not very many. So part of the answer to the question, "How can we contribute?," is that as individuals we can contribute by sharing this message that every Catholic has a central obligation to be active politically. That means making choices, getting involved in political parties, voting.
We have to understand that this obligation is not focused only on our vote. I gave a lot of talks on this during the last presidential election and I would run into Catholics who would say, "I'm immobilized, I can't decide who to vote for. It seems like whoever I vote for I'm going to be choosing to affirm one group of vulnerable people I care about, but perhaps not affirming the other. And I can't find a candidate that fits with my values in terms of the dignity of human life from conception to natural death across the board. What do I do?" My answer was always: don't think of your vote as your only activity. If you do that, you will be immobilized. But if we stay involved, whomever we vote for will know that if they do get elected, there are positions they take that are not compatible with ours. Then we have to work as hard as we can to shift those positions to get them to vote in other ways that are compatible with our values.
So we can participate as individuals and we can participate as an institution. A key role of the institution is to educate our members about Catholic social teaching as a road map for their participation in public life. We should highlight the moral dimensions of public policy and help people to understand the moral stakes in these decisions, so we could witness as individuals in the decisions we make everyday.
Two Caveats. It is not a question of trying to impose our will. Our understanding about the dignity of every human life is that every human being must have the right to struggle to understand truth in his or her own way. You can't impose that on someone. You can't force someone to believe something. We're not trying to force people to believe things. We are trying to raise our values as part of the debate. Finally, the bishops say they are not trying to create a religious voting bloc. Catholics will, in different situations, vote in different ways. That's acceptable. Catholics must really struggle with how their faith shapes their politics, rather than have their politics shape their faith.
Conclusion. Let me close by going back to the original question of this forum, "Can Catholicism contribute to the renewal of civic society?" I want to read a quote from the statement, "A Place at the Table," in which the bishops talk about this mission of shaping a society in light of our values. What they say is that for believers, this mission is not simply a matter of economics or politics, but a matter of discipleship. "We may sometimes differ about the specifics of how best to serve those in need, overcome poverty, and advance human dignity, but it is impossible for a Christian to say, 'This is not my task'."
CIVIL SOCIETY AND ITS RELIGIOUS DISCONTENTS
A presentation by William R. O'Neill, S.J.
William R. O'Neill, S.J., Associate Professor of Social Ethics, Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. Author of The Ethics of Our Climate: Hermeneutics and Ethical Theory. His articles have appeared in Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy and Theological Studies. He holds degrees from Yale University (Ph. D.) and the Weston School of Theology (S.T.M.). The curmudgeonly sage, Ambrose Bierce, defines as Christian "[o]ne who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin." Casting a jaundiced eye at the religious fervor inflamed by September 11th, Bierce, I think, would say we have just enough religious belief to be hypocritical. And yet, his agnostic pieties need not have the last word.
In my remarks this evening, I will first say a word about our contending views of the role of religion in public life, most notably, "thin" liberal-philosophic rights talk that banishes religion from public reasoning and the "thick" communitarian rejoinder that civic virtue and the common good are "ineliminably religious." Drawing upon the heritage of Roman Catholic social teaching, I will then propose a way of thinking about the public role of religion that is neither thick nor thin, and conclude by showing what William James would call the "cash value" of these remarks by applying them to the Catholic Worker Movement as an exemplary "faith-based" organization.
Our Religious Discontents. Modernity may indeed be "disenchanted" in Max Weber's words, but religion has proved to be a stubborn inheritance. Disputes regarding its public role persist, disturbing our undogmatic slumbers.
In his magisterial treatise, A Theory of Justice, John Rawls effectively "brackets" religious belief in arriving at his favored conception of justice. For liberal theorists such as Rawls, the radical plurality of our conceptions of the good in modern, democratic regimes implies that our political reason will be "shared and public," i.e., common, only if we methodically abstract from any comprehensive doctrine of the good. Indeed, for liberalism as a philosophic doctrine, the very irreconcilability of our particular ends or conceptions of the good leads us to cherish the "liberties of the moderns" as our foremost rights. "The only freedom which deserves the name," writes J. S. Mill in a justly memorable phrase, "is that of pursuing our own good in our own way."
Liberty, in turn, is parsed as our several immunities or negative rights, limited principally by duties of forbearance; for we must, says Mill, respect others' like liberty, neither depriving them of their own good, nor impeding "their efforts to obtain it." Under the banner of negative freedom, heirs of the liberal tradition extol their individual liberty rights, while relegating positive delimitations of liberty - e.g., claim-rights to adequate nutrition - to an inferior sphere, if not dismissing them as mere rhetorical license. The "politics of rights" thus typically trumps the "politics of the common good."
Indeed, if we are to speak of a global commonweal, we will necessarily do so in the accents of strangers. Strangers, that is, whose talk of rights consigns religion to the vestibule of public reason. At best, then, religion is to be tolerated in the private realm, assimilated to aesthetic preference; at worst, it breaches the "wall of separation" of church and state.
How, then, shall we think of our public reason in modern, pluralist societies? Is the most reasonable doctrine a "thin" public morality, e.g., a "moral Esperanto" of rights? Or as political and moral philosopher Michael Walzer urges, must we concede that "morality is thick from the beginning, culturally integrated" in particular narrative traditions? Or may we discern yet a third possibility, a via media neither thick nor thin? Such I will argue is the heritage of modern Roman Catholic social teaching.
Neither "Thick" nor "Thin." From its inception with Pope Leo XIII's epochal encyclical, Rerum novarum in 1891, modern Roman Catholic social teaching defended a rich, religiously inspired doctrine of the common good (the bonum commune of the medievals). Only later would the modern rhetoric of human rights - through the travails of John Courtney Murray in particular - be grafted onto the tradition, most notably in John XXIII's Pacem in terris.
One might, of course, dismiss the church's belated rapprochement with modernity as, in the philosopher Richard Rorty's words, merely "quaint." But there is, I believe, a rich vein to be mined in Pope John's teaching. When my small, inner-city African American church marched around the block on the commemoration of Martin Luther King's birthday, we were, I believe, engaged in public reasoning. Like King, we were seeking to overcome the enduring legacy of racism and violence besetting our neighborhood. And, like King, our rights rhetoric bore witness to its communitarian, religious roots. The spirituals of the civil rights movement were, after all, just that.
Let me elaborate. I have argued elsewhere that our human rights talk, as a mode of practical rhetoric, is best conceived as a moral grammar expressing the respect and recognition due moral persons as such. Rights accordingly comprise neither a "thin," abstract "meta-narrative," nor a culturally determined, "thick" narrative. As grammar "vanishes" into speech, so the logic of rights is expressed in what is concrete and particular, e.g., the spirituals sung in the civil rights movement.
The gist of my argument, then, is that practical agreement or consensus regarding action in the Res Publica depends not only upon common standards, i.e., rights as warrants in our public reason, but a common understanding of narrative difference - e.g., the religiously distinctive substance of the common good in our narrative traditions. While these are logically, and semantically distinct, they cannot be separated: like grammar, rights will have practical meaning in rational-izing action to the degree that they are narratively embedded or embodied; only then can we speak of a common, family resem-blance or, in Rawls's words, an "overlapping consensus."
But while for Rawls, such consensus regarding rights emerges from methodological abstraction from our conceptions of the common good, including our religious conceptions, I argue, rather with good Pope John, that rights so configure our conceptions of the common good, as to provide for what David Hollenbach describes as their analogical interpretation. In expanding upon political theorist Michael Sandel's notion of "deliberative" tolerance, I've thus argued that our public reason in complex, pluralist societies is enriched by religious understanding, e.g., appreciation of the distinctive Jewish, Moslem, Buddhist, Christian rhetorics of rights. Inasmuch as understanding (i.e., a fusion of particular horizons), rather than bracketing religious difference, underwrites the possibility of practical consensus, a deliberative tolerance will require religious literacy. We must, that is, seek to deepen a common understanding of precisely the metaphors, stories, narratives, and modes of telling that denominate our differing religious "families."
The Catholic Worker. Let me conclude by applying my analysis to the Catholic Worker Movement. The progenitors of the movement, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, were deeply influenced by the emerging corpus of Catholic social teaching. Anticipating later doctrinal developments, rights were, from the beginning, interpreted in a characteristically "catholic" fashion: a universality, that is, predicated less upon abstract impartiality, than the concrete demands of participation and solidarity, especially with society's "least favored." Liberty, of course, was prized, but as ordered to "the sum total of those conditions of social living" (in the words of John XXIII), whereby human dignity is preserved and protected. As in Catholic social teaching, the rights championed by Day comprised not only "negative" civil-political liberties, but also "positive" claims to adequate nutrition, health care, education, etc.
The narrative of the Catholic Worker, recounted in Day's journals and The Catholic Worker newspaper, embodies the rhetoric of rights in Catholic social teaching. For only in redeeming the concrete "rights of the poor" are the goods of "social living" realized. Or to be more precise, in concretizing the rights of the poor, the Catholic Worker summoned the American polity (and the church no less) to abide by their own lofty pronouncements. Day was a thorn in the side of many a prelate like Cardinal Spellman! In such movements as the Catholic Worker, the moral logic of rights is enriched and extended historically, as is apparent, for instance, in the American bishops' pastoral letters on peace and the economy.
Such religiously affiliated institutions of civil society play a notable role, not only in directly promoting an ethos of rights, but in generating the "social capital" expended in their defense, e.g., the political mobilization of the black churches. And so it is, the Worker, precisely as a faith-based organiza-tion, gainsays the politics of "charitable choice" in the narrow and pinched sense of "charity" as merely supererog-atory. Rights, embodied in a distinctively Christian narrative, restore "charity" to its Biblical proportions, i.e., a love no less than just, but implying more, a surplus of religious meaning.
In its ministry, the Worker reminds us of our universal moral duties as citizens, even in telling its distinctively Christian story. Indeed, for the disciple, writes Day, general moral duties are trans-valued, becoming Christian privilege. As she wrote in December 1945: "All this can be proved, if proof is needed, by the doctrines of the Church. We can talk about Christ's mystical body, the vine and the branches, and the "communion of saints." But Christ Himself has proved it for us, and no one has to go further than that. For he said that a glass of water given to a beggar was given to Him. He made heaven hinge on the way we act toward Him in His disguise of commonplace, frail, ordinary humanity."
For a total Christian, the goad of duty is not needed - always prodding one to perform this or that good deed. The deed is done not because these people remind us of Christ, but because they are Christ, asking us to find room for Him, exactly as He did at the first Christmas.
"IN A MORE FAVORED POSITION:" CATHOLICISM, EDUCATION, AND PUBLIC CHARITY
A presentation by John Farina
John Farina, Fellow, Woodstock Theological Center. Co-director of the Catholicism and Civic Renewal Project. Former Editor-in-chief of the Classics of Western Spirituality and editor of Beauty For Ashes: Spiritual Reflections on the Attack on America and Great Spiritual Masters. He has practiced church-state law and authored articles on President Bush's faith-based initiative. I'm going to address the question: How can the church participate with the state in the work of building civic society? We're going to look a little more carefully at the church-state question and not so much at the larger question of religion and culture. I want to suggest that when we look at government funding of Catholic elementary education and government funding of other Catholic social programs in American history, we can see that these two strands have been relatively distinct. Now with the recent faith-based initiative and a recent Supreme Court decision on school vouchers, the two areas are converging with implications for church-state relations. Further, the attacks of September 11th have added a new concern for the potentially divisive force of religion, and lastly, the clergy sex scandal has raised serious questions about the church's ability to actively participate in the process of civic renewal.
To begin with, in looking at what I call the hot and cold wires of state aid to the Catholic Church, and Catholic Church participation with the state over the course of our history, I want to draw two historic pictures, two snapshots from the 19th century.
First, let me take you back to Philadelphia 1843. The Philadelphia School Council has just decided that Catholic students in public schools can read the Douay-Rheims version of the Bible, instead of the King James Version. This touches off a series of riots in which 13 people are killed; five churches and two convents are burned. As the violence spreads towards New York, New York's combative bishop, John Hughes, affectionately nicknamed "Dagger," makes a reference to the scene that greeted Napoleon in his Russian campaign when the Russians burned Moscow, and says that if any Catholics are harmed "New York will become a second Moscow."
Picture number two: 1898, right here in Washington, D.C. The District of Columbia, with money from the federal government, decides to build a new wing onto Providence Hospital, which is owned solely by the Sisters of Charity to treat infectious diseases. The program will be 100-percent funded by the federal government, both in its construction and maintenance. The arrangement is challenged as a violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and its no-establishment-of-religion clause. The Supreme Court gets the case, and decides it solely on the grounds that the hospital is a separate entity. It isn't the Catholic Church; it's incorporated separately. There's no discussion of the establishment clause or the free-exercise clause, and there is no political controversy that results.
Charity Yes, Education No. For the rest of the 19th and 20th centuries, this pattern continues. On the one hand, anything having to do with Catholic elementary and secondary education, either in the courts or in the political arena, is fought with tremendous controversy, while on the other hand, kind of quietly, the Catholic Church is getting vast amounts of federal money to run various social programs. Aid to Catholic schools has been the center of a number of Supreme Court cases in the 20th century that are very important in looking at the whole Supreme Court jurisprudence on religion. A few examples:
Emerson v. Board of Education in 1947 involves Catholic parents saying, "Shouldn't we get some money to send our kids in buses to public schools?" Lemon v. Kurtzman in 1971 involves a program in heavily Catholic Rhode Island, where you have the state saying: "Couldn't we pay teachers of secular subjects in Catholic schools with state funds?" Agostini v. Felton in 1997 - state-sponsored remedial programs in New York that had to be out in the trailers. Remember that set-up in the Title I program in New York? That whole thing was challenged and it's decided that in fact you could move the teachers inside the schools, even though they're getting paid, because we don't have to worry about the symbolic effect and the incidental benefits to the Catholic Church. More recently, there was Mitchell v. Helms in 2000, a program giving educational materials to Catholic schools in Louisiana.
At the same time during that period, a number of Catholic social programs are getting huge amounts of government money and cooperating very nicely with the federal government. Hospitals, for instance - they're receiving millions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid. They're receiving millions of dollars under the Hill Burton Act to build hospitals. Catholic Charities and Catholic Relief Services are receiving monies as contractors for government programs of relief, nationally and internationally. And Catholic higher education, lest we forget in this environment, is receiving funds for federal student aid and benefitting from tax-exempt bond financing offered through local and state bond authorities.
Now, however, with the faith-based initiative and recent voucher case, the hot and cold wires are getting crossed with some interesting fall-out. Doctrinally, the faith-based initiative is following the jurisprudence of the last ten years in the Supreme Court in which neutrality has replaced the doctrine of strict separation. Add to this, the Supreme Court's pro-vouchers decision in June of last year, in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris. This is obviously going to affect Catholic schools.
The result is that Catholics are in a more favored position to work in partnership with the state in the charitable and educational efforts than at any time in the last 150 years. Ironically however, there have been two other events that have transpired, which will influence this. One is 9/11 and the other is the clergy sex scandal.
9/11. We all know the debate between Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington about the nature of liberalism triumphing and the problem that radical religion might play in spoiling the party. Certainly we know that this is not at all an outlandish idea, and we're all reminded of Madison's ideas about limiting the role of religion and state to stem sectarian violence and discord. We're not comforted, I don't think, by thinking about the fact that perhaps true Islam would not endorse violence like this because we realize along with people like Gil Bailie in his book, Violence Unveiled, that there is an atavistic violence that's part of every religion, including our own.
The public policy question then becomes: Are the destructive powers of religion in society outweighed by the culture-forming values? Does religion have what John Coleman, S.J., and others have called "social capital?"
Tragedy and Opportunity. So let us assume that there is a constitutional climate more favorable to the positive interaction of church and state than in any time in recent memory, and that there is serious debate about the valuable role religion can play in renewing civic society. Given that, it's nothing less than tragic that at this time, the sex-abuse scandal should arise. Especially when we had a chance to get it right, back in the 1980s. The implications for this are significant.
Let's take school vouchers, for example. After Zelman, legislatures around the country are free to devise their own programs of vouchers in their locales. How many of them are willing to take the political heat of giving state money to Catholic schools and sending children into what some people might think would be harm's way? Certainly the free exercise clause cannot protect felons. But the justifiable prosecution of the church by civic authority may have the result of restricting the church's liberty in our culture. If we're not careful to put our house in order now, we may be faced with the specter of greater government regulation of church than we would ever want. Remember, the battle for independence from the state has a very long history in our church, going back all the way to Constantine.
However, if we can get our act together, Catholicism in America can bring much-needed resources to the renewal of a sick society. First, these resources include the intellectual tools to understand the relation of church and state and religion and culture. We have this very long history going back to when the Christian community was given the task, rather unwillingly, of running social programs for the Roman Empire. Remember, Augustine was participating in what would have been called the Emperor's Faith-based Initiative, receiving the equivalent of millions of dollars to run educational and social programs in Hippo.
Second, we have experience in blending cultural diversity with unity and purpose. Two of my heroes from the 19th century, Isaac Hecker and Orestes Bronson, in looking at the Civil War, saw it as a moral failure of the American character to blend the qualities of liberty and union.
Third, Catholicism in some sense, lives spontaneously and always in two different worlds. We believe in what is seen and unseen. And lastly, it holds together both suffering and joy, renunciation and possession. This contradiction, this synthesis, this sign of contradiction, that I think is at the heart of our faith; this openness to transcendence; this imagination willing to see the tensive quality of our language and our symbols; this belief in the potentials of human nature; this sacramental life; this sense of solidarity and compassion; this sense of common humanity, of heart - this is what I call "the Catholic heart." And I think it's still beating strongly.
PROPHECY AND THE POWER OF THE PURSE: QUESTIONS FROM THE MODERATOR
E.J. Dionne: It seems to me there is a tension between Catholicism as a form of solidarity that brings people together and contributes to the commonweal, and Catholicism as a form of social criticism. Sort of in the world, but not of the world. How do you bring these two together?
Joan Rosenhauer: There is always a tension. To be part of society, to a great extent, runs the risk of somehow watering down who we are and what we really believe. To not bring those values into society is also a watering down of who we are and what we believe. It's a tension we deal with quite a bit.
E.J. Dionne: Father O'Neill, how do you deal with this in regard to the Catholic Worker, which sort of consciously chose to be more outside than, say, the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists?
Bill O'Neill: I think the Worker, though it may have been on the margins, was also speaking to the center. It was mediating a tradition of Catholic social thought based on dignity and social rights.
John Farnia: We are not given the luxury of being a sect or a kind of Christ-against-culture tautology group. We're just too big and we've been here too long. And that's a good thing.
E.J. Dionne: What do you feel will be the tension between the prophetic social critiquing function that Joan profiled and the impact of increasing receipt of government funds? Might this mute the critique, not by individuals but by the institution?
John Farina: The potential is always there, obviously. I think we have the resources to not fall into that more than some other churches do. I think we can share those with other faith groups and engage in a critical reflection on what it means for us to be a church in the world.
E.J. Dionne: Do you see any danger here that these government funds could be used to favor one religious movement over another, depending on the administration in power?
John Farina: In one sense, we have programs that reflect values appealing to one group or another and there is a political debate and manipulation of that. I do not know that necessarily it's going to co-opt that institution just because they're participating.
Joan Rosenhauer: Yes, I would like to remind us that church programs and institutions are already receiving huge amounts of government money. Schools are in some ways the exception. In Catholic healthcare, in relief and development, in charities, we have the experience already of having a significant amount of our programming reliant on federal funds. I think what we've seen, especially in the last five to seven years, is that those Catholic institutions are getting more involved in looking at questions of public policy and reflecting on Catholic social teaching and seeing their Catholic identity as tied to bringing their experience and Catholic teaching together in an advocacy role. In other words, I think what we've seen is actually the opposite. At the same time, I do think there is always a risk that programs of this sort will be misused and certainly "cronyism" or favoritism is a possibility.
Bill O'Neill: I think groups like the Catholic Worker that refuse to take government funds remain necessary gadflies of calling us to our original purposes. My sense is not that we're thinking of a single a priori way of addressing the question. I think the virtue for me is that of prophetic humility. Are we humble enough to recognize that ours might not be the only prophetic voice in this?