Comments on: First Thoughts on Caritas in Veritate, #3

By: Is Blog Stipes Est In Latin « Around The Sphere

Is Blog Stipes Est In Latin « Around The Sphere — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:56:57 +0000

[...] Part Three [...]

By: Dan Moloney

Dan Moloney — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:13:53 +0000

Jody took issue with this paragraph:
“Every Christian is called to practise this charity, in a manner corresponding to his vocation and according to the degree of influence he wields in the pólis. This is the institutional path—we might also call it the political path—of charity, no less excellent and effective than the kind of charity which encounters the neighbour directly.”

I take this paragraph as an application of the universal call to holiness, emphasized in Lumen Gentium, which says that the heights of holiness can be pursued within in any legitimate occupation. It is obviously true that in God’s providence some people are called to public service in politics–we couldn’t have governments otherwise. So politics is a legitimate occupation. For someone called to be a politician, then, it follows that he can achieve genuine sanctity as a politician by doing the things that politicians do, so long as he does them in the manner in which God wants him to do them. But if the politician is fulfilling his vocation according to God’s will, he is clearly acting with a charity “no less excellent and effective” than any other person doing God’s will.

I don’t see this discussion of the Christian politician as revealing a bias in favor of impersonal political institutions–on the contrary, it is precisely a call to personal integrity in politics, which will often require that one mistrust political institutions!

By: First Thoughts — A First Things Blog

First Thoughts — A First Things Blog — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:01:18 +0000

[...] at First Thoughts, Jody Bottum is blogging while reading—not one but two, three, four, five posts. Also, Jody also finds his prediction concerning the media’s response is [...]

By: The Anchoress — A First Things Blog

The Anchoress — A First Things Blog — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:59:54 +0000

[...] at First Thoughts, Joseph Bottum, writing as he reads, has many first second, third and fourth with more promised (or [...]

By: Stephen M. Barr

Stephen M. Barr — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:47:16 +0000

I agree that the nun emptying bedpans is more heroic than the legislator wheeling and dealing. But there are forms of public service that can be heroic. Was there not something heroic about Churchill, or Lech Walensa, or those generals and politicians who plotted against Hitler? Often it takes enormous courage and self-sacrifice — even the willingness to be traduced and have one’s reputation destroyed — to do the right thing in the realm of public service. Being willing to face what Judge Bork and Justice Thomas faced requires virtue of a very high order. With positions of great public responsibility come enormous burdens and temptations. The wheeling-dealing politician isn’t the best example. But I know you agree with all this.

The point you are making, I think, is that it is too easy to substitute having the “right opinions” on politics for acting virtuously — to think that voting for the candidate who talks about the poor is as good as actually helping the poor oneself.