CNS STORY: Catholic polarization reached new peak in 2004 election, speaker says

The whole CNS
public Web site
headlines, briefs
stories, etc,
represents less
than one percent
of the daily news
report.

Get all the news!

If you would like
more information
about the
Catholic News
Service daily
news report,
please contact
CNS at one of
the following:
cns@
catholicnews.com
or
(202) 541-3250

Copyright:

This material
may not
be published,
broadcast,
rewritten or
otherwise
distributed.

Copyright
(c) 2004
Catholic News
Service/U.S.
Conference of
Catholic Bishops.

CNS Story:

SOCIAL-DINGES Feb-22-2005 (830 words) xxxn

Catholic polarization reached new peak in 2004 election, speaker says

By Jerry Filteau
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Addressing a national gathering of about 100 diocesan social action leaders, a religion researcher said Feb. 19 that the divisive polarization long felt in the U.S. Catholic community reached a new peak in the 2004 election season.

A "more ominous" element of the election-year divisions, said William A. Dinges, a professor of religious studies at The Catholic University of America and a member of the university's Life Cycle Institute, was the "vitriolic and escalating" rhetoric and "uncivil behavior, characterized by confrontation, harassment and attempts at intimidation."

He said much of this was fueled by a relatively small number of groups and individual Catholics who sought to get the entire Catholic community to make the election hinge on the issues of abortion and embryonic stem-cell research, but the polarization itself runs deep across the Catholic community.

"This is hardly a faith community in dialogue with itself. This is a church at war with itself. This is a church in the posture of a circular firing squad," he said.

Dinges delivered the main address at the annual meeting of the Roundtable, a national association of diocesan directors of social action and justice and peace offices. He based his comments on in-depth phone interviews with 20 diocesan directors after the elections, coupled with research on American Catholicism he and colleagues at the Life Cycle Institute have been conducting over the years.

He said the degree of Catholic polarization in the months before the election varied from one region to another and one diocese to another, but "everyone reported some polarization" and several people he interviewed said they had never before seen it that intense.

When social action directors tried to teach or speak about the U.S. bishops' most recent statement on political responsibility, "Faithful Citizenship," he said, they reported that they were repeatedly challenged by "a few who were very vocal and relentless ... ideologically motivated and situated more often than not on the right wing of Catholicism."

The bishops' document, issued more than a year before the election, discussed political responsibility on a wide range of issues, from abortion to the death penalty, from war and international economic policy to domestic policies affecting workers, families, children, immigrants, the poor, the elderly and other members of society.

Dinges said the church has experienced polarization "across a broad spectrum of interests" since the Second Vatican Council 40 years ago, as different factions in the church have sought to control or influence its agenda and future directions.

"Now, 40 years from the great drama of Vatican II, our church manifests a healthy pluralism, a greater lay responsibility in its life and mission and a heightened social justice agenda," he said. "However, our church also has a weakened and more diffused institutional identity, we are in the midst of a very serious leadership crisis and a serious problem with regard to polarization.

"We have a 'blue faith,' if you will, and a 'red faith' as much as a community of faith," he added, drawing on the customary use of blue and red to distinguish between Democrats and Republicans, respectively. "In significant ways our church remains a house divided against itself as interest groups, ideological factions and in some cases individual Catholics compete to control the narrative of the Second Vatican Council, to act as a de facto magisterium (teaching authority), to fill or exploit leadership voids and to define Catholicism on their own terms or in terms of single-issue politics."

He said his talk focused on Catholic groups of the right because it was from there, not the center or the left, that the social action leaders experienced opposition and contentious challenge during the election campaign.

"The issue is not a matter of Catholics simply holding different positions or trying to control the political or ecclesial conversation, or even advocating a particular single-issue agenda," he said, "but doing so in self-righteous, authoritarian, exclusionary and really in fundamentalistlike ways that create the impression that if one does not think and act as some individuals or groups do then you are not a 'real' Catholic. As one of the Web sites of one of these groups has it, 'You're a Judas, just undermining doctrine and spirituality.'"

Dinges said the polarization among Catholics "mirrors polarization in our country at large, along with the general climate of rancor and incivility, coarseness, recrimination and name-calling" found in much political and social debate.

For American Christians in general, including Catholics, because of interfaith marriage and a variety of other factors, "Christian identity has grown more generic," leading to a "restructuring of American religion," he said.

The result, he said, is that "for many people today in American society, the significant marker of faith is not primarily or essentially denominational identity. ... It is much more significant to know where an individual falls on the left-right continuum. That is far more predictive of where people are going to be in terms of belief and behavior."

END

Copyright (c) 2005 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
CNS · 3211 Fourth St NE · Washington DC 20017 · 202.541.3250