Thread by @stevenpmillies

1/ Here is an #ElectionDay thread about #Catholics and #democracy. You should read it all but here is the TLDR headline: Catholics have done our part to bring US politics to this point, and we need to fix it.

Let's begin with a long view.

2/ The #CatholicChurch spent 1900 years avoiding #democracy, quite comfortable with empire and monarchy. The closest the church ever got was the Council of Basel (1431-1449) that followed something like democratic procedure to challenge papal supremacy, suggested a conciliar...

3/ ...approach to the governance of the church. It did not succeed.

A century earlier Marsiglio of Padua had praised ideas very close to popular sovereignty & he remained "the accursed Marsiglio" into the 19th century.

Very little in Catholicism has pointed to #democracy.

4/ All of which is why this para of Gaudium et Spes was a big deal. It doesn't name democracy. It doesn't endorse it farther than to say praise is due. But it does set forth a case for self-govt in a new time when education & development make self govt a credible possibility.

5/ This is the #CatholicChurch recognizing a changed situation. Tens of millions of #Catholics in the world at that time already took #democracy for granted. More would soon. The church needed to figure out a way to start getting comfortable with it.

6/ But that is why these paragraphs of Evangelium Vitae (1995) are so shocking to read. The concerns expressed are not so different from the centuries-old concerns that the state needs to adhere to the moral law. But 1995 was not 1324. Neither is 2022.

7/ Think about a #CatholicChurch that only 30yrs earlier had opened interfaith dialogues with Jews and other non-Christians, and had extended a hand of friendship to non-#Catholic Christians.

Now the state that governs them must agree with #Catholics about the moral law

8/ The context of Evangelium Vitae was #abortion, of course. That heightens all the more the problem, since Jews and some non-Catholic Christians see abortion differently.

Are we really welcoming their sincere faith convictions? Are they political equals? Because it seems not.

9/ We can sense the problem here: John Paul II's encyclical voices anxiety about what an unconverted world might choose by way of #democracy.

As a #Catholic, I understand that.

But also as a Catholic, I think we can be bold enough to believe something better.

10/ If we don't believe something better, the trouble is that seemingly very-well-justified off-ramps from the political process begin to multiply in the presence of overriding moral claims.

In other words, for too many #Catholics opposing #abortion has meant 'all is permitted.'

11/ #Catholics' moral claims about #abortion (and #LGBT, #contraceptives, etc.) became comfortable justifications to resist the spirit if not the letter of the constitutional system.

Roe was delegitimized, and to reverse it the political system was delegitimized.

12/ McConnell held up one SCOTUS nomination, accelerated another with naked hypocrisy, both of which were required to engineer a desired outcome.

Democrats, liberals, and progressives became bogeymen. It was a short step to say they must not be permitted to govern at any cost.

13/ Jan. 6 & #electiondeniers followed And, the point is NOT that #ProLife #Catholics per se are bad citizens because we who are prolife Catholics are not monolithic.

But the point IS that have not been #democracy's reliable defenders. The costs are in view now.

14/ I say we need to be bold enough to believe something better. We need to figure out how to be comfortable with #democracy even when it reaches a conclusion we don't approve.

And we need to see that as necessary for human dignity.

15/ The authoritarian future that is in view, one where votes may not count, does not affirm the lives of those who will be born. It does not affirm them as persons. And there will be other heinous suffering.

#Catholics can find resources to defend #democracy. We must.

16/ The very best thing about #democracy is that no gain or loss ever is permanent, and we are free to persuade fellow citizens ahead of the next election. A free people always changes its mind.

We're supposed to be good at that sort of evangelization.

17/ It would be far better to think that way than to insist that the law must be acceptable to us, and never change.

#Catholics have done our part of the damage to #democracy and it's not very clear we want to do our part to fix it.

We should. We must.

18/ Only a healthy, free, open political community can affirm and defend life. Only that.

If we must have a "pre-eminent priority," then that healthy, free, open political community is it.

We don't have one now.

19/ Do #Catholics believe in the human person and the God who creates persons well enough to accept the heavier task of living in the complexity and the imperfection of a democratic society cheerfully, working toward its best expression despite discouragements?

20/ I am far from confident. I would love to be wrong. /END/