Sunday services: Biden's faith on display in renewed presidential ritual
As the first president in decades to regularly attend weekly religious services, Joe Biden has plenty of options.
I like this story because in one sense it is not news at all. It is one of those good news stories, life is going along well, things are working that typically gets ignored.
It is the life of a typical church going, community or professionally active Catholic, finding a way across a busy schedule in multiple locations to celebrate Mass each weekend.
It is also the story of a pastor who after seeing a Catholic attends regularly, but notices that he has not been coming recently, simply says "Is he still on the rolls" And when the answer is yes, says there is a virtual Mass, two in-person Masses and that he will send a priest to the White House if that is needed.
It is also the story of relationships of pastoral attendance and pastoral care that persisted across time, and space.
On the other hand Presidential Church-going, like church going in general has been declining. So it is breaking news when a president changes all that.
Will it mean anything? Will many religious leaders show appreciation for Presidential support for this ritual which keeps them in business? Will some or many liberal, Democratic Catholics return to more frequent church going? (Perhaps if the culture warriors in Catholicism ignore Biden- not much chance of that, however).
Note to all pastors and pastoral staff: We now have not only a Pope but a Catholic President who is popular with liberals and Democrats. Maybe now is the time to emphasize the poor, the environment, and social activism to make these people welcome in our parishes!
If I was president, I would feel like I am burdening a parish by having to make it accommodate the security arrangements. I'd probably take up the offer to have a priest come to the White House each Sunday morning to say mass there. I'd invite anyone from the White House staff to attend.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, in the 1990s, our parish had a "regular visitor" priest - a priest who was not assigned to the parish but said mass there pretty frequently on weekends. He stopped coming because he was appointed to be the chaplain to the US House. His name is Fr. Dan Coughlin. How he was selected for that post is kind of a long story, but in brief, an Illinois Congressman, Dennis Hastert, was Speaker at that time, and he asked Cardinal George to recommend someone. This guy Coughlin didn't have a a parish assignment so George floated his name. Turns out Coughlin has his own Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Coughlin
This bit interested me:
"He has spoken of a special pain on the part of Catholic members during debates within the Catholic Church over withholding Holy Communion from public officials whose votes (especially votes that could be interpreted as "pro-choice")[19] were interpreted as being antithetical to Church teaching.[20]
"Referring to such debates as "very upsetting," Coughlin said that he "talked to members of the hierarchy on that as well as members of the House," telling Church leaders that he would "stay with my people whatever you do. I will be with my people whatever you do. I will hear them out. I will be with them."[20] Coughlin has called this situation – the threat of using the liturgy "as a threat" – "one of the saddest stories I heard."[19]"
Having Mass at the White House is probably the best solution given the security issues and the pandemic.
ReplyDeleteHowever, Biden might be sensitive to the issue of creating a "Catholic group" that has more access to the president since they see him at Mass. The new Secretary of the Army (a Catholic) came to Biden's attention in part because he went to Mass with Biden's son.
When I was in the public mental health system I often wished there were ways that Catholic professionals there could come together without creating a Catholic group that appeared to exclude others.
Unfortunately at that time we did not have Commonweal local communities. If they are been invented at that time I would likely have promoted one as an opportunity for professionals to discuss issues of religion, politics and culture.
I feel that making the church either a "liberal" or "conservative" place is not the way to reverse declining attendance. The way we welcome people is our best hope at evangelizing people, whether they are coming back, or have never been there before. And by welcoming, I don't mean hugging and gladhanding them, that kind of thing turns off many people. I'm going to set the bar really low. The first thing we need to do is not to make them feel unwelcome. Which we do in many ways. One of the ways is being overprotective of our *brand*. A couple of threads back we got to discussing who could go up for Communion, and not only that, but who could give a blessing, and if someone was allowed to go up for one. The liturgy purists would say that Communion is not the proper time or place for a blessing (I'm sure we've all heard the joke about the difference between a liturgist and a terrorist). It is however tge time and place where visitors feel excluded. And if a blessing can mitigate some of this feeling, why not do it? And why limit blessings to the clergy? The clergy, I'm speaking primarily of priests, are very protective of their brand. And it's hard to understand why, they have the best job security in the world. Lay people give blessings in their homes. It's a prayer, and the blessing really comes from God. This is just one instance of humans making themselves gatekeepers to God, instead of opening gates.
ReplyDeleteIn the NY Times, Ross Douthat suggests that the confluence of Pope Francis and Joe Biden marks a revivifying of liberal Catholicism. He observes that presidents usually come from the center of Christianity, and he suggests that liberal Catholicism might be a candidate to occupy that position in American culture, filling the vacuum left by the decline of the Mainline denominations.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/23/opinion/biden-liberal-catholic.html?campaign_id=39&emc=edit_ty_20210125&instance_id=26372&nl=opinion-today®i_id=87407961&segment_id=50162&te=1&user_id=7bba122dbc8acf5289c69a5c9f2867a2
I don't see where he does that at all.
DeleteHe acknowledges that conservative Catholicism hasn't been able to stand above partisanship, but he doubts liberal Catholicism will either.
I have a hard time following Douthat's essays at the best of times. But he seems also to be criticizing liberal Catholics for claiming "bad Catholics" [my term] like Anthony Fouci reflect a truly Catholic spirit.
That's an interesting point, and in making it, Douthat seems to be restricting the definition of "true Catholics" [again my term] to those who believe all the correct things and fulfill all their holy obligations. And by associating liberal Catholics with "bad Catholics," he thus sets up the notion that liberals are not "good Catholics."
It's clear to me that many Catholics are uncomfortable with Biden's Catholicism and the this will get a lot of public airing. No other religious denomination I can think of so quickly and constantly heaps praise or scorn on its adherents in public.
Not sure what this means outside of the already obvious fact that the Church is very divided. Douthat certainly seems happy to slice and dice and sort Catholics into categories.
I got paywalled out of NYT, but I found the Douthat article here.
DeleteIt seems like Douthat is still thinking in very binary terms. But I think he is accurate in this assessment;
"This is a challenge for any form of faith that aspires to supply a new religious center to our divided society — how to find a place to stand that’s actually outside partisanship, that’s clearly religious first and liberal or conservative second.
On this count it’s fair to say that religious conservatives of every tradition have often failed or fallen short.
But it’s equally fair to doubt that liberal Catholicism, brought back from what had seemed its twilight years to this unexpected apotheosis, is prepared to pass the test."
But it's outside of a president's purview to do this; the presidency is by definition at least somewhat partisan. it's really up to the rest of us to "...find a place to stand that’s actually outside partisanship, that’s clearly religious first and liberal or conservative second."
While the combination of Francis and Biden may revive Liberal American Catholicism briefly, it is unlikely to last long. It is difficult to imagine that we will have more than four years of both, and certainly not more than eight. So any revival really needs a more solid base than those two personalities.
ReplyDeleteDouthat is however on to something when he talks about Catholicism as being the potential moral political center of America. Catholicism at its best and fullest embraces the moral issues of both the right, e.g. of life and sexuality often represented by Evangelicals, and the moral issues of the left, e.g. poverty and the environment often represented by Liberal Protestantism.
In order for Catholicism to assume the leadership of the moral center of America which unites the moral issues of both the right and the left several things are needed.
First of all we need to think in terms of promoting virtues rather than opposing vices. We are pro-life rather than against the abortion, and we are for the poor rather than being against the rich. We do not become virtuous by pointing out other people’s vices.
Secondly we need to agree that there is so much work to be done in promoting goodness in so many aspects of life that we all need to specialize. Some people need to serve the needs of pregnant women and the unborn, others the needs of the poor and marginalized, others the needs of the immigrants, others the needs of the elderly, etc.
Finally we need to support each other in our specific callings to promote specific goodness without being asked to take upon ourselves the vocations of others.
I spent most of my professional life serving the mentally ill. Some social scientists have argued they are among the poorest of people since they have the psychological challenges of unusual thoughts and emotions, the social challenges of prejudice, and the economic disabilities of completing an education and finding consistent long term work.
I never had the time to invest in all the other challenging problems of our society. If those problems are like those of the mentally ill, they are not going to be solved by protests, or pointing fingers at other people and even sending other people checks!!! I was well known in the mental health field for not caring about money. “if we just do the right things, money will be there.”
Jack, I agree with you that "...we need to think in terms of promoting virtues rather than opposing vices." Also that we need to specialize and support each other in our specific callings.
Delete