The Problem With E.J. Dionne

We've cited Patrick Deneen several times.  Here he takes on E J Dionne's mis-construal of the Catholic Church.  By co-incidence, I heard Dionne yesterday when Hewitt interviewed him.  It was clear to me that Dionne does not grasp Catholicism very well.  Deneen agrees.

...I have grown increasingly distressed by his tendency to define the Church and its activities in terms of American partisan politics. By doing so he diminishes the Church and threatens to make it merely an extension of modern politics and even the State. 

... In one recent column, “The Battle Among the Catholic Bishops,” Dionne divides the Bishops between “moderate and liberals” and “conservatives,” and points to the vast majority of dioceses that did not file suit against the HHS mandate as proof that there is a silent majority of liberal Catholics. He points with particular delight remarks by Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton, CA, who “broke the silence on his side” to express reservations about the lawsuits.

Yet, while Bishop Blaire expressed concern about tactics, he stated robust agreement with his fellow bishops who “very strongly support whatever action has to be taken to promote religious liberty.” That is, Bishop Blaire’s concerns are prudential, not categorical. Such differences do not suggest the fundamentally opposed worldviews of “liberals” or “progressives” against “conservatives.” They are properly and appropriately Catholic, in which there are properly and appropriately differences that are prudential in nature...

Here's the guts of it:

 ...By describing discussions within the Church in terms of American partisan labels, he threatens to instruct his readers that there is no difference between internal Church discussions and debates in American politics. Dionne portrays a Church whose internal discussions are simply an extension of contemporary political debates.

The labels themselves are inappropriate, particularly that of “progressive Catholic”—a combination that is fundamentally a contradiction in terms, yet a label that Dionne uses again and again to describe his approach to the Catholic faith. The Progressives were theologically millenarian, even Arian, believing that salvation could be achieved through human effort and especially through the twin avenues of science and politics. In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Progressives such as John Dewey, Herbert Croly, and Walter Rauschenbusch were self-described critics of the past and hostile to tradition. John Dewey equated Christianity and democracy, believing that democracy had become the new means of ongoing revelation, and in which the teacher should seek to bring about the kingdom of God—progress advanced in the classroom could accelerate the coming of the millennium on earth

Yah, that's worked out real well...

G.K. Chesterton wrote that “the fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.” Catholicism is an accumulation of tradition, including a magisterium that does not waver from the fundamental truth as divulged in the teachings and life of Jesus. It is a faith that traces itself back through apostolic succession to its point of origin with Jesus' commission to his apostles to go forth and spread the Word. It is a faith that is populated by constant remembrance of the cloud of witnesses, the communion of the saints, who are remembered in every Mass during the Eucharistic prayer. While Catholics look forward to the future with hope, they do not invest their hopes in perfection of the City of Man. If Catholics are anything, they are not “progressives,” and to import the political term for the description of Catholics is to collapse the Church into a political program that cannot be reconciled to the Catholic worldview...

Just ask the Wisconsin "Progressive" Republicans why the Catholics vote(d) Democrat for 60+ years.

...Dionne’s other preferred form of self-description—“Social Justice Catholic”—appears only to endorse the Church’s charitable work on behalf of the poor, with a heavy preference for government’s role in that effort. But is the Church’s efforts on behalf of the dignity of every human life—born or unborn—any less a part of its commitment to social justice? Is not the defense and preservation of the family a central focus of social justice? Should not we understand the Bishop’s opposition to the HHS mandate, and preservation of the Church’s ministry without needless interference by the State, also to be a part of social justice? Dionne seems to define social justice to be activities that conform solely to the platform of the Democratic Party, but, here again, American partisan positions map poorly onto the Church’s rich tradition of Catholic Social Thought. His portrayal of “Social Justice Catholics” as distinct from “conservative Catholics” is a disfigurement of the fullness of Catholic teaching...

Oh, yes--just like the Left-O-Lemmings at Marquette University, and G'town who "think" just like Dionne.

And there's a lot more to Catholicism than "liberal" or "conservative" politics.