Are We Making a Shipwreck of Our Faith?

I entrust this charge to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophetic words once spoken about you. Through them may you fight a good fight by having faith and a good conscience. Some, by rejecting conscience, have made a shipwreck of their faith (1 Timothy 1:18-19a)

 

I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship. Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect. (Romans 12:1–2).

 

With the Presidential Election happening in two days, the most alarming thing is not that Candidate X (X being the candidate you dislike) might win. It’s that American Catholics are so entrenched in party politics that they think that only the other party is in the wrong vis a vis Catholic teaching and if the Bishops should dare speak out on an issue where their own party is in the wrong, it is seen as “proof” that they favor the other party. It is not unusual to see partisan Catholics of both factions in social media simultaneously accuse the bishops of being pro-Democrat and pro-Republican^†, while denouncing fellow Catholics for doing exactly what they do themselves: Excuse the evil in their own party as being less important than the evil in the other party.

 

You have probably heard the counter-slogans already. Those who intend to vote for Biden will stress racism and immigration. Those intending to vote for Trump will stress the issue of abortion. Both will act as if only the other side’s voting for a party supporting evil is intolerable while their own is a justifiable sacrifice. Some even go so far as to make excuses for their party and their personal failure to oppose the evils within. Both sides are confident that they stand on the side of Christ and equally confident that those they disagree with are deliberately, and with full knowledge, choosing evil. 

 

I say this makes a shipwreck of faith because all of us need to constantly ask ourselves where we have done wrong and work to turn back to God. We need to bring the world to Christ, not to our political party. If we call ourselves Catholic Christians but make excuses instead of work to change the evils within our own party, we are conforming to the world instead of transforming it… which is a perversion of our calling.

 

Yes, we can find both Catholic Democrats and Republicans alike who are morally concerned about our country. Yes, both belong to one party because they are appalled by the platform of the other. But it is never enough to stop at condemning the other side for doing something you personally are appalled by. If we are not also appalled by the evils within our own party, we are no better than those we condemn. 

 

Yes, some evils are worse than others. But that does not mean that the others are morally acceptable. Gaudium et Spes (#27) gives us a litany of evils that indicts both Democrats and Republicans for their silence on them:

 

Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator.

 

I do understand the temptation to fear the consequences of calling our own party^‡ out. I used to think that way. We fear that calling out our own party means weakening our party or even being forced to vote for the other party. But nowadays I think it we should think of it in a “You break it, you bought it” way. If you identify with a political party, then—win or lose—you “bought” the responsibility to work to change that party when it goes against Catholic teaching. If you vote for a candidate who is at odds with the Catholic teaching and he gets elected, you “bought” the responsibility to oppose him on those issues. You do not get to shirk responsibility for living out and making known Church teaching just because you voted a certain way. You do not get to be silent on, explain away, or downplay those evils that are inconvenient to your own party just because you think other evils are worse. That is called being corrupt, and the cost is greater than the gain.

 

Corruption is everywhere: for two pence many people sell their soul, sell their happiness, sell their life, sell everything. (Pope Francis, “Holy Mass Celebrated for the Gendarmerie Corps of Vatican City State. Saturday, 3 October 2015)

 

For Wales? Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world.… But for Wales! (Bolt, Robert. A Man For All Seasons (Modern Classics). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition).

 

When the Church teaches against an evil that we have grown accustomed to, one that strikes at the human institutions we have put our trust in, we need to change how we think. We must stop thinking of that teaching as a “threat” or “capitulation” to the other side. If we feel fearful or resentful of the Pope or a bishop speaking out, we should ask ourselves why we are taking sides againstthose given the authority to interpret God’s teaching and guide us and bind us on what we must do or avoid if we hope to be saved.

 

If we are tempted to say that we are not the ones taking sides, but they are, we should ask ourselves why we are so sure of our own understanding of the Church teaching while the Pope and bishops consistently go “wrong.” It is easy for corrupt culture to blind us to the evil of their practices after all. It’s easy to be so accustomed to our vicious customs that we grow blind to the fact that something is evil, and we think the attempts to overturn it are themselves evil.

 

We should remember that Jesus Christ established the Catholic Church with the intention to teach with His authority and with His protection. If we are so certain that we, not they, are in the right, that is a sure sign we are making a shipwreck of our faith.

 

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(†) As always, I put candidates, ideologies, and parties in alphabetical order to avoid accusations of bias.

 

(‡) I will not say how I voted. Yes, I think one party is worse than the other. But that does not make the other party “good.” All I will say is I looked at both parties and decided which I thought would do the most harm to living a Catholic life. From there I voted with an intention to block it. But, no matter who wins, I will oppose the evil they stand for. If the reader immediately assumes that I ignored the evils on “the other side,” it’s kind of proving the point of my article.