Thursday, April 28, 2005

Religious Politics v. Political Religion

It is instructive to notice that those who clamor most vociferously for the complete seperation of religion from political life display no such qualms about politics involving itself with religion.

I'll point you to a couple more examples of folks attempting to make Catholicism safe for liberal Democrats. (See Mario Cuomo and Andrew Sullivan.) As usual, I find these attempts on the part of the Cuomos and Sullivans of the world to inforce their personal political ideology on every adherent of the faith despicable. I would feel exactly the same way if some Republican was arguing that the Catholic Church should change its beliefs to accomodate some plank of the Republican party platform. However, I have never once seen any Republican advocate that the Catholic church should change its views on, for instance, the death penalty to bring them more in line with "modern thought" as emcompassed by the Republicans. Has anyone else? Has anyone ever heard a Republican demand the Church change to suit the party's needs in any way?

Yet we are told, ad infinitum that it is only Republicans that are upsetting the church/state balance. Somehow that doesn't strike me as being even plausible.

I wish more Catholics would step up and demand that ideologues keep their political philosophy out of the faith, but they won't. It's a crying shame.

1 comment:

Rich Horton said...

You are absolutely right.

I guess I should make it clear that i don't have the slighest problem with folks whose political beliefs are shaped by their religious conviction. Conversely I have no problem with folks who choose their religion on the basis of their political ideology. (Although I'll add that while I find the former laudatory, I find the latter to be more than a little mastubatory.)