Catholics in Politics

...He is not necessarily the one who makes of every cause a 'crusade,' presenting himself like Carlyle's crusader as 'the minister of God's justice, doing God's judgment of the enemies of God.' He should himself avoid unwarranted appeals to religion...

...Believing this, Senator McCarthy must argue, "To say that error has no rights is, of course, true...

...In one sense, Senator Eugene McCarthy may be better equipped than John Kennedy to discuss the question of Catholicism and democracy...

...To those who regard talk of coexistence as a diabolical plot, McCarthy rejoins that it is "pointless" to raise the question "since we are now coexisting, and it seems that we will coexist for some number of years in the immediate future...

...He must avoid "confusion such as that which was manifest in the attempted justification of the Inquisition...

...The apostles of "innocence," parading under the standard of "no compromise with evil," seem to him to breed false optimism, oversimplification, and eventual hysteria...

...The election of 1960 raised once again the question whether belief in Roman Catholicism is compatible with loyalty to American democracy...

...Above all, Frontiers in American Democracy should make Americans grateful that there sits in the U.S...

...He is deeply versed in Catholic theology...

...A comprehensive understanding of the...

...The state should not attempt to eliminate all evil, only certain extreme forms of evil...

...These terms define Senator McCarthy's political outlook...

...Catholic role in our American democracy would obviously require a more general canvass of Catholic opinion...

...The "ideal Christian politician" is "not necessarily the one who is seen most often participating in public religious activities or conferring with religious leaders...

...The innocent is disposed to favor massive effort and all-out war rather than containment or limited war, to demand action leading to final decision when postponement of trouble or limited and even temporary good may be the best that can be expected...

...So far as domestic policy is concerned, Senator McCarthy displays a mistrust, well grounded in papal encyclicals, for the domination of society by an "exploitative and individualistic philosophy...

...Neither history nor political theory," he writes, "establishes any basis for the application of the label Christian in any absolute sense to politics...

...He can even on occasion repeat the ritualistic condemnation of "relativism" and "positivism" and assail poor old Chief Justice Vinson's maxim that the only absolute is that there are no absolutes...

...Where Kennedy's education was entirely secular, McCarthy went to St...

...He prefers the Democratic Party, "the party of the newcomers, the challengers, and of those who although once economically and socially established, have been disestablished," to the Republican Party, "the party of the established...

...One can disregard the contributions of Bible-belt bigotry to this discussion...

...Senator McCarthy, it is true, does invoke natural law from time to time...

...When the innocent discovers that historical complexity does not respond to his own sense of self-righteousness, McCarthy suggests, he tends to swing to the other absolutist extreme...

...During the campaign this question was most generally put to John F. Kennedy, who responded, as nearly everyone agrees, with impressive directness and candor...

...and he adds that it does not follow "that the man who is in error has no rights...

...My emphasis...

...But Kennedy is not the only Roman Catholic in our politics...

...neither does it follow that the state should suppress every idea which in the opinion of the rulers of a country is in error...

...When one believes in absolutes, one believes in a distinction between truth and error founded, ultimately, not on empirical demonstration, but on a priori analysis...

...The Christian in politics should be "the last to label every proposal for social reform 'socialistic' " His natural-law commitment creates difficulties for him only in the area of civil liberties...

...He continues, "The state can, in the interest of the common good, suppress error which is subversive of the good of human society in its temporal achievement...

...The right of freedom of religion holds the field...

...He is not necessarily the one who is first and most vociferous to claim that his position is the Christian one...

...His testimony on the problems of reconciling Catholicism and liberalism is hard to dismiss...

...The state does not "have the right or the responsibility to impose what any majority considers true faith upon all of its subjects...

...In foreign affairs, McCarthy categorically rejects formulations like that of the Congressman who denounced the Truman Administration for having tried to "make a settlement or an arrangement with the devil, Communism, instead of spurning him as Christ did when he was tempted...

...The Christian in politics, McCarthy says, must take care not to mistake his own purposes for those of God...

...but an area of legitimate inquiry remains where thoughtful people earnestly seek answers to the question of the relationship of an authoritarian church to a pluralistic society...

...And in the religious and moral area, "the right of the state to determine and to decide and to suppress error no longer prevails...

...Nor should we forget that the emergence of men like Eugene McCarthy and John Kennedy as leading Catholics in our politics will have the effect of establishing the Murray-Weigel position— the whole-hearted acceptance of a pluralistic society—as the dominant position in the American church...

...The serious liberal argument, I suppose, is that the social philosophy of Catholicism rests on an abstract conception of "natural law" and that the need for an authoritative interpretation of natural law invites all manner of ecclesiastical interference in the civic domain...

...He would amend Lincoln's famous aphorism: "Whereas it is true to say that, theoretically speaking, government should do for its citizens only what they cannot do for themselves, in the practical situation it may sometimes be necessary to do for them what they should and could do for themselves, but do not do either individually or through corporate efforts below the level of government action...

...Senate a man of such sensitive intelligence and conscience, such discerning wit and such powerful eloquence as the junior Senator from Minnesota...

...With his sense of the profound ambiguity of concrete historical reality, he prefers conciliation to crusading...

...Thomas, and for a while contemplated the priesthood as a career...

...At the same time, as his record in the House and Senate has amply shown, he is a committed and courageous liberal Democrat in politics...

...He has a very special obligation to keep the things of God separate from those of Caesar...

...If he does believe that absolutes exist, he does not suppose that they can be easily applied to the complexities of public affairs...

...But his seminary training in dialectics does not fail him...

...But it is apparent that McCarthy does not interpret natural law in any rigid or dogmatic way...

...It reminds us too that the Catholic Church is not a monolithic institution, like the Communist Party, but includes a wide range of opinion on nontheological issues...

...John's University, taught at the College of St...

...Frontiers in American Democracy provides further evidence that Catholicism constitutes no necessary barrier to a vigorous faith in liberal democracy...