Pax Christi hires organizers?

Pax Christi USA and the Catholic Alliance for the Common Good are looking for field organizer types to "identify, build, train and resource a network of diocesan leaders who can promote the common good Catholic message within their communities . . ."

 

Hmm. Common good Catholic message. Reading between the lines, does that sound like organizing Catholic voters around social justice issues like poverty and health care?

 

"Field Organizers will be hired to work beginning in July/August and continuing thru mid-November/December. Placements will include Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. "

 

Why yes, it does. What do you think about this? Myself, while I'm beyond all for "promoting the fullness of the Catholic social tradition in the public square," as the Catholic Alliance does, I do get hinky whenever faith is used as a whip to the polls. Absolutely, our country--any country--needs citizens who inform their voting with the full resources of their intellect and ethics. But pollsters and organizers, whether they're working for a living wage or against marriage equality, have a regrettable tendency to (a) oversimplify the religious teachings that touch on their issues and (b) to exaggerate the importance of adherence to those teachings for a person of faith. 

 

I read somewhere that the current Catholic "cult of encyclicals"--the climate that encourages bishops to deny Communion based on a single political issue, among other things--actually originated with politically liberal Catholic intellectuals in the fifties. The bleeding hearts used Catholic social teaching as a weapon against fiscal conservatives, saying that if you weren't in favor of unions, for example, you couldn't possibly be Catholic. Hmm, where have we heard that one recently? Thanks, Catholic fifties intellectuals! You guys rock!

 

Bringing nasty political tactics into religious discourse is always a bad idea, even before it backfires against one's own beliefs and interests. We don't need a backlash to be hurt: we've already hurt ourselves at the moment we try to shame or exclude those who share our faith. God, not humans, gets to choose the members of the Body of Christ.

 

To bring this back to Pax Christi's organizers, I imagine they'll encourage many Catholics to take a closer look at Catholic social teaching, which can only be a good thing. I hope they'll succeed in electing people who will fight in the interests of the American poor. But if they can't do that honorably--without reducing theology to sound bites or moral encouragement to fear--any gains made for the poor will come at a sad cost to Catholic honor.