To many onlookers, particularly secular ones, the name “Timothy Cardinal Dolan” seems to evoke the attempt to make the Roman Catholic Church fill the role that once earned the Episcopal Church the nickname “the Republican Party at prayer.” The way conservatives have flocked to his rallying cry of religious liberty in the wake of the HHS mandate, and Dolan’s subsequent acceptance of an invitation to pray at the Republican National Convention, have greatly strengthened this impression.
But criticisms of Dolan have come from more than one side. By inviting President Obama to the Al Smith Dinner—an annual fundraising event for Catholic charitable activities—Dolan has disconcerted many conservative Catholics. Some critics, like First Things’ David Mills, have offered tempered criticisms, while other have accused the Cardinal of betrayal and demanded that he retract the invitation.
Dolan did not knuckle under. He instead wrote an intelligent, sensitive response pointing out that “an invitation to the Al Smith Dinner is not an award, or the provision of a platform to expound views at odds with the Church. It is an occasion of conversation; it is personal, not partisan.”
Dolan’s response can be seen as an enactment of the teaching on the dignity of the human person. He refuses to operate in a world of “yes man” allies and “straw man” opponents, showing us all that each voice in this conversation is a human voice that must be heard. His ethos of “affirmative orthodoxy” has no room for merely opposing those who disagree. It shows us that we must humanize our opponents.
When news came that Cardinal Dolan would be offering prayer at the Republican Convention, his detractors began to murmur again. Such a partisan move! Surely this constitutes a tacit endorsement of Mitt Romney’s candidacy! But again, Dolan offered a sensitive defense of his decision to pray at the Republican Party’s convention. After the invitation was made, and the local bishop gave his blessing, Cardinal Dolan agreed to come. As the New York Archdiocese’s press release stated, “It was made clear to the convention organizers, however, that the Cardinal was coming only to pray not to endorse, and that he would be willing to accept a similar offer from the Democratic Party as well. That same sentiment was conveyed to the Democratic National Committee.” And now, we learn that the Democratic Party is taking him up on the offer. Surely those who would portray Dolan as a force of the Republican Party are deeply misunderstanding.
In the third century, Gregory Thaumaturgus writes of how his master, the great Origen, instructed his students to draw on all sources except the atheistic, without giving preference to any one of them:
And it was with great wisdom and sagacity that he acted on this principle, lest any single saying given by the one class or the other should be valued above others as alone true . . . and lest it might enter thus enter our mind and deceive us, and, in there by itself alone, might make us its own.
Gregory’s Origen exhorts his students to use all schools of thought, without swearing allegiance to any of them; for the Christian’s goal is always truth, and truth is found in part everywhere, but in totality nowhere except the Church. What Origen enjoined in study, Dolan is enacting in the public sphere, not with Platonists and Stoics, but with Democrats and Republicans.
One might hope that Cardinal Dolan will use the opportunity to gently push back on those areas where the Republican vision does not match the Catholic vision, as Cardinal Mahony did with the Democrats in 2000. Even if he does not, his effort to keep doors open and keep conversations going on both sides of the aisle models for us a refusal to align ourselves fully with either side of the debate.
There is a growing sentiment that the orthodox Christian has no political home in today’s arena, but must stand, in some sense, outside the system, or drink from both wells. While the media may cast him as a partisan, closer examination shows that Cardinal Dolan, too, stands outside, speaking the word of God, and praying that the seeds he plants will bear fruit.
Joshua Gonnerman lives in Washington, D.C., where he is a doctoral student in historical theology at the Catholic University of America.
RESOURCES
David Mills, A Certain Kind of Etiquette
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Al Smith Dinner
Become a fan of First Things on Facebook, subscribe to First Things via RSS, and follow First Things on Twitter.
Comments:
I have further corrected the last "corrected" version of my post. ;o)
Since it hasn't yet been added to the thread, I am posting it yet again. I hope my doing so isn't a nuisance.
Thanks
=============================================
" ... each voice in this conversation is a human voice that must be heard."
All the voices are heard by God. Every one of them. Especially those of Christ's precious brothers and sisters who are the very least in the eyes the world. How we had loved these who are so precious to God, or had callously disregarded their plight, will be all that matters one day when we know that only one of two divine commands are about to be addressed to us: "Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world," or "Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels."
Most of the damned will probably be nice, respectable folks who didn't cause anybody any trouble. Such was the rich man who didn't hear the groans of Lazarus. He didn't do anything mean to Lazarus. He didn't chase him away from in front of his home. He just lived as though what was happening to Lazarus wasn't happening -- and he ended up tormented in flames. Yes, many nice and respectable folks will be among the damned, folks who disregarded the plight of Christ when He was a naked stranger the world refused to make welcome -- an innocent unborn baby, the very least of Christ's brethren in the eyes of the world. Damned, like the rich man, for living as though what was happening to the Lazarus of our times wasn't happening.
Yes indeed, “... each voice in this conversation is a human voice that must be heard.” These little ones have a voice that is heard by God. We had better strain to hear it, too. We are deaf to it at our own eternal peril. God hears it and says to us: "The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the earth."
Each and every child killed in the contemporary holocaust of innocent human life was only the "least" of His brethren in the eyes of the world. Each one of them was so precious to God that His love for them drew Him down from heaven and up onto a cross. Just as with us, He died for them when they were yet unborn. And just as with us, when they arrived in this world in their mother's womb, God didn't think to Himself, "That child of mine doesn't really matter for the next nine months." There is no nine month gap in God's eternal love for us. If these children matter to God they should matter to God's people.
The mass murder of these children matters no less to God than if born babies were being murdered by the millions. If the Democratic platform eventually calls for the legalization of “after birth” abortions – infanticide – which is now beings seriously considered in medical journals and already has its advocates among medical ethicists, would it be appropriate for Cardinal Dolan to say the closing prayer at that Democrat convention? If it would have been inappropriate for a Catholic bishop to legitimize in the minds of Catholics homicidal Nazi policies by attending a Nazi convention that openly advocated such policies, then there is a line that can be drawn somewhere, and when it is crossed by those holding some kind of political gathering, it becomes inappropriate and scandalous for a Catholic Bishop to attend it.
Where one wants to draw the line will depend on the measure in which one has been afflicted with contemporary bigotry. A bishop attending a Nazi-like convention? No, that is over the line. A bishop attending a convention of those who insist on the right to kill children in the womb by the millions? Apparently Cardinal Dolan doesn't think that is over the line. A bishop attending an infanticide promoting Democrat convention? Still undecided on that one? Your decision will depend on the measure in which you have become afflicted with contemporary bigotry. I don't think God is undecided about any of those scenarios. He isn't afflicted with bigotry. He sees His own image in each and every human being and has loved each and every one them, born an unborn, unto an agonizing and humiliating death on a cross.
They sin against the holy Spirit, which is unforgivable (i.e., they do not repent) †
But I’d like to humbly remind the good Cardinal, as he parades under the spotlights
of the political conventions: that there is room for only ONE real super-star in his religion. The one who started it!
For as the Cardinal addresses and blesses the Republicans and their billionaire buddies,
as he smiles upon those who would destroy Social Security & voucher Medicare to death,
and as he struts on the stage with those who readily admit they “don’t care about the very poor”
......it would be good for the dear Cardinal to remember -and take to heart-
the words of his boss, who once said “Whatsoever you do for the least of these - you do for me”.
Unless perhaps, ...just perhaps, the Cardinal is working for someone else these days? Just asking.
Our Founding Fathers wisely realized that politics, secular power, and religion do not mix. That they bring out the worst in each other, ....that ultimately they would destroy each other, and us.
A pastor.....should stick to his pulpit, not political conventions. Period.
I'm not Roman Catholic, but I do try to keep up....did I miss the point when that voucherizing medicare became an intrinsic evil political act?
His answer is well known. Just as morality is concerned with good and evil, aesthetics with the beautiful and the ugly, and economics with the profitable and the unprofitable, so politics is concerned with friendship and enmity. That is what makes politics different from everything else.
The political comes into being when groups are placed in a relation of enmity, where each comes to perceive the other as an irreconcilable adversary, to be fought and, if possible, defeated. As Schmitt says, “'every religious, moral, economic, ethical, or other antithesis transforms itself into a political one, if it is sufficiently strong to group human beings effectively according to friends and enemy.”
No amount of discussion, compromise or exhortation can settle issues between enemies. There can be no genuine agreement, because, in the end, there is nothing to agree about. That is why political action consists, not in deliberation, bur decision.
Needless to say, it is not personal; you do not have to hate your enemy. But, you do have to be prepared to vanquish him if necessary.