Good heavenly daze, there he goes again: One of the News Tribune's most frequent letter-writers unleashed another outrage Feb. 12 (Reader's View: "Catholics who don't follow doctrine are hypocrites").
He correctly observed that President John F. Kennedy, campaigning in 1962, distanced himself from Catholicism in a political move that may have won him the presidency but called into question his understanding of the role of religion in public life. However, to assert that Vice President Joseph Biden, U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, "among others of the same ilk," are following Kennedy's problematic stance, was troubling at best and incorrect and uncharitable at worst.
The letter-writer judged them to be "supposed Catholics" before moving quickly to one of his favorite targets: "President Obama and his chief backers seem to be constant standbys of this hypocrisy." Interestingly, he concluded, "To profess one thing but to support the opposite brands oneself as a complete phony." I quite agreed: to profess Christian charity but to engage in mean-spirited, dismissive judgments certainly is a grave problem and a sin against justice. As a priest, I always advise that such a problem be mentioned, sorrowfully, to one's confessor.
The letter-writer, and also my retired-but-not-retiring brother priest, is constitutionally entitled to hold and announce his distressing opinions. But such assertions are not compatible with Catholicism. His political views do not allow for the Christian understanding that politics, politicians and social organizations all fall short of the promised justice of the reign of God. This human imperfection does not render any one of them "a complete phony." He may, of course, support a particular political strategy. He can even watch and reverence cable's Fox News. But we know his political strategy is not religious doctrine because of the injustice that features so prominently in his approach.
William C. Graham
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Duluth
The writer is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Duluth and directs the Braegelman Program in Catholic Studies at the College of St. Scholastica.
