CHURCH AS CONTRAST SOCIETY: A REVIEW ESSAY, THE

Encounter, Winter 2006 by Watkins, Keith

THE CHURCH AS CONTRAST SOCIETY: A REVIEW ESSAY

One of the most interesting and perplexing aspects of the 2004 presidential election was the attempt by several Roman Catholic bishops to impose eucharistie discipline upon Catholics who disregarded the church's teachings against abortion. Two or three bishops announced that they would refuse to give communion to John Kerry if he were to come to the altar in their churches, while others stated that Kerry should voluntarily refrain from receiving communion. A concerted movement by some two dozen bishops insisted that any Catholic who voted for candidates supporting abortion should consider themselves disqualified from receiving communion.

These actions by the bishops generated a strong, negative response from many Americans who feared that the bishops were trying to impose their theological convictions upon the political process. Other Americans, including Jason Byassee of the Christian Century's editorial staff, were more accepting of the bishops' actions, concluding that they were properly insisting that Catholics live according to the theological and ethical principles of their church.1

Candidate Kerry continued to attend Mass and receive communion. While a large number of Catholics voted for Kerry, the percentage of Catholics voting Democratic declined. Some switched parties because of abortion; we do not know how many who voted for Kerry absented themselves from communion.

This brief episode in American presidential politics calls attention to a pair of questions that are becoming more urgent: How is a religious community-whether it be Catholicism, mainline or evangelical Protestantism, Judaism, or Islam-related to the American system? How does a religious community participate in American political life?2 My reflections upon these questions have been enriched by two books written by William T. Cavanaugh, who teaches theology at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.3

The earlier book began as Cavanaugh's doctoral dissertation at Duke University, under the direction of Stanley Hauerwas. Its arresting title, Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ, is fitting since the book is a case study of the Catholic church's response to state torture in Chile during the dictatorship of Auguste Pinochet (1973-90) and an extended discussion of literature dealing with the relationship of church and state. Cavanaugh describes the way that torture was used methodically to destroy social groups so that only the state remained as "the de jure and de facto guarantor of rights" (4). Terrible pain was inflicted on individuals-in secret-which increased fear in the entire Chilean population. Part of the process was "disappearing" people, and gradually entire social groups were disappeared.

The Catholic church was a major participant in the Chilean opposition to the Pinochet regime's torturous reign, but it was not always so. Not only was this church historically the dominant religious entity in Chile, but Pinochet and major leaders of his governing apparatus were observant Catholics. In addition, the bishops were accustomed to places of prominence in Chilean society. Undergirding this social and political prominence was a longstanding European tradition of Christendom in which the state and the church exercised a dual sovereignty: the church cared for the soul while the state cared for the body. What was happening in Chile, although in an especially brutal fashion, was a process that had been developing in Western societies for centuries: the state was gradually expanding its jurisdiction so that it exercised sovereignty over all aspects of human life.

Although the bishops resisted this movement, they initially maintained harmonious relations with the regime. Gradually, they realized that the old relationship and the theory that supported it could no longer be sustained. Drawing upon earlier experiments in social ministries and revised ecclesiological understandings, the Chilean church began a process by which it would become the one social body that could resist the state's monopolizing movement. As its confidence in the idea of Christendom faded, it adopted "the New Christendom," an understanding of the relation of the church to the political and social order that Jacques Maritain had been developing in his effort to "save European civilization" (177).

In his summary, Cavanaugh highlights Maritain's distinctions between the temporal and the spiritual on the one hand and the individual and the person on the other. "As an individual, one participates in the social, political, and economic activity proper to the temporal sphere, and subordinates oneself to the temporal common good as structured by the state." This yielding to the temporal common good, however, is modified by the fact that an individual is also a person, "a spiritual whole oriented toward God whose dignity transcends any ultimate claims the state makes on her" (166). In the temporal world, "there is trash to be picked up, businesses to be run, wars to be fought," and at these tasks Christian individuals work according to the principles within the temporal order. At the same time, "the spiritual life of persons [these same Christian individuals] is to animate and superelevate all their temporal activities. Reciprocally, the earthly ends of the temporal order are meant to serve the eternal end of the person, to facilitate the attainment of supernatural life with God" (167).